Home is too isolated to find the same sorts of success as other social media games. Sony isn’t taking the concept of social synnergy to heart and until they do (by tying Home into the outside world) they will continue to falter.

On one hand, I get the logic behind developing Home versions of popular games. Having an FPS (Bootleggers) or a really slick multiplayer racing game (Sodium2) in Home is a great way to help publicize the power of the platform, and in an era where games are sixty bucks a pop (and climbing), Home’s freemium model provides a fairly decent substitute.

That said, Home right now is playing to its weaknesses instead of its strengths. I totally understand the need to turn Home into more of a gaming experience, because its original vision of a social network for gamers requires sufficient numbers of people who have the technology and social skills to make it viable.

Home, right now, is unique: it’s the only console-based virtual reality application out there. And it would be highly advisable to incur the expense of a core client update which dramatically enhanced the social aspects of Home, for exactly the reason you cited, Gideon.

What I’m *hoping* will happen is that someone will turn Home into a true MMO. It has the engine and architecture of an MMO, and it would make Home a “must see” experience, instead of a static platform for various gaming experiences. If we’re very lucky, Home may have something like this already in development (consider how long they were working on the Hub before anyone ever knew about it), but I’m very curious to see what the new year brings.

My biggest peeve with the way Home is run is with WHAT they are developing. IMO the time and effort put into Bootleggers (as cool as it is) was a waste. Why would I play a sub-par FPS on Home when I can just gamelaunch Killzone or Resistance?

You guessed 24,640 users spend money in Home regularly. Let’s assume that means $5 a month (I think I’m low-balling that figure) That’s $123,200 per month, or 1,478,400 annually. That is PLENTY of money to invest in more robust Home development. Do we have any idea how many people are even ON the Home team? Is it just an undergrad and a chimp that’s available to code new features for Home?

Wait… no… I just decided. Im trading it in. hehehe.

And this is what Home needs to do to keep from getting stale… make an impression on us.

We had a story assignment a while ago about what elements make up a successful public space in Home, and I think that’s more relevant now than ever. If there are a lot of derelict spaces in Home, it’s because they’re just not particularly interesting, nor are they conducive to social gatherings. And, as cthulu pointed out, Home will never be able to match the graphical superiority or intensity of a pure gaming experience that’s had millions upon millions of dollars thrown at it.

There is no question in my mind that what Home is lacking — badly — are social enhancements. Granted, it’s not like I’m alone in this assessment; enhancements to the social aspects of Home have been some of the most frequently repeated community requests for years. Yes, they require core client updates and yes, they’re expensive without a clearly defined way to show an ROIC. But they’re absolutely necessary. If Home cannot match the gaming experiences a PS3 user is looking for, then it must offer a truly engrossing social experience to compensate.

Granted, a big chunk of Home’s society is young, dumb and boring. Hence why HSM’s greatest criticism of Home has nothing to do with the people who built it, but rather the people who populate it. That said, it doesn’t eliminate the sound business logic in improving Home’s social features.

I like the idea of Home becoming more of a game. That makes a lot of sense to me. The catch is that they’re still using a formula that inherently lends itself to stale results. If Home is to be more of a game, then *make* it a social game. Home’s engine has the interface and architecture of an MMO; it’s practically screaming for a large-scale MMO development. And it would make the Home experience itself something compelling to return to on a frequent basis, which hasn’t been seen since Xi.

Just because something doesn’t change doesn’t mean it’s stale. Things that are epic and classic never get old. If the content within Home was good enough… it would be enough. While this isn’t a blanket statement about ALL content within Home, I think it could cover a lot of it. How often did the IREM spaces get updated? How popular were those until their demise?

Many times, the fact that something is stale is more a commentary on those using the product than the product itself. People keep touting Home as a social gaming platform. Is it possible that the social aspect of this platform is the part that is truly lacking? Maybe it’s the community that needs an upgrade (with tools from Home)

I was also struck by the nothing that Xi was the “high-water mark of Home”… that was over 2.5 years ago… how sad that Home hasn’t A) replicated that experience since and B) that there hasn’t been better experiences since.

You’ve got my mind going Norse… Time to put pen to paper… so to speak.

Sony also could benefit from spending a little time on redeveloping the avatars interaction with the Home environment and items. So much as been spent on Spaces Items and features, the avatar at its core has not been updated much since launch.

I would personally like to see the pop up menu with the different emotes be removed and replaced with a side bar that would change with a list of emotes, as your avatar moves about the Home world. For example if your avatar would approach other avatars,a menu of greetings and attitude emotes would pop up, if your avatar approached a items interactive emotes would pop up in the side bar..