At one time, I was craving new virtual items to purchase even though I’m sure that I showed more restraint than many. Nonetheless, I purchased a fair amount of content for a while but my interest in buying more has rapidly declined. I don’t really feel the need for more virtual clothing or personal spaces unless something very special comes along. The marketing tactics of Sony and the 3rd party devs are pretty much lost on me at this point.

It’s probably a good thing for me that all of this content did not exist in 2010. Home could have become an expensive proposition for me. My SCEA account for this year shows that I’ve spent $27, including the Wild West Saloon for $7 and a bunch of Midway green tickets. Beyond that, I’ve spent less than $10 in 2012. And all of that has been done with complimentary SEN vouchers so, in actuality, I’ve spent nothing on my SCEA account this year. Maybe a couple thousand yen in Japan but only because the funds were already in my wallet there. My EU account has had funds in the wallet for several months that have barely been touched.

With the Mall content expanding at such an exponential rate, I just don’t bother trying to keep up anymore. I mostly just socialise and collect free rewards these days.

Home could also copy the strategy used by Amazon.com (and indeed many online sellers) — Artificial Intelligence. Amazon regularly pulls me in with its “People who bought this also bought…” suggestions. Are you buying a bathing suit? There should be a simple way to “see more beachwear”, or “see beach-themed furniture.”

There should also be a way to search on item names or keywords. Enter “red women’s shirt” (or select from pulldowns for color, gender, and item) to see what’s available, regardless of developer. This would go far to solve the problem of seeing an interesting item in Home, but not knowing where to find it. (For that matter, a keyword search option in the Wardrobe or Inventory could be really, really useful.)

From time to time I suggest that Home add a Retro Store to the Mall — a place to showcase older content on a rotating basis. Items there could be offered at a discount, for additional incentive.

It does seem that, for a platform that depends on separating us from our money, Home uses remarkably little savvy in its marketing techniques.

A user has to have a time investment in Home, as well as some assurance that their interest will continue, before they’re ever going to consider cracking their virtual wallet open. Customer acquisition is so much more difficult in this environment, and it’s one of the reasons why games perform as well as they do. People can grasp the concept of buying a game, or paying to play a game, much more easily than they can grasp the concept of buying new clothes for an avatar.

Take a look at the Top 10 over the last 12 months…the recurring theme is that items unique to Home and tied to game spaces wildly outperform everything else. Home users want Home content. This should play into developers’ favor.

But then we get to the second major problem: The lack of a central source for information. A few sentences in a single post on the PlayStation Blog, no matter how visible, doesn’t set the stage for long-term success.

Home’s whales have a week to make a decision on content before the next batch of shiny things arrives, often with no more information than a brief blog description, a few seconds in a Virtual Item Showcase video and some comments on the PSN Forums, if they actually use them. Older content disappears into the labyrinth of the stores, where it can be impossible to find.

So you’ve got seven days (five, really, Wednesday through Sunday) to make your content sell before the biggest spenders move on to the next wave of content. If something really big happens to hit during your seven-day cycle, you’re even further down the hole.

It doesn’t help that the nature of nearly all Home marketing and media coverage is reactionary. A dozen sites with their own limited and loyal audiences all scramble to be the first out of the gates with their videos and stories. This is a ripe environment for misinformation (a danger that HSM deftly avoids) and for things to fall through the cracks.

In terms of much of the generated content, it boils down to what a thing is, rather than why it’s worth a customer’s money. A few sources do a great job of providing that context, but in a realm of reactive content development, by the time those articles see the light of day, we’re often into the next publishing cycle.

Add in some other risks…too much content of a similar type or style in a given period, an established developer launching a new upgrade to one of their popular games…and you’ve got a very tough marketing challenge.

I see three ways to fix this, and I disagree with Deuce_for2’s views in one of them. This is rare. Generally he’s right on the money.

1. More support from Sony itself.

Every new developer should get a kiosk in The Hub or The Mall that showcases some of their content in 3D for at least a month. Too expensive? Every new developer should get their own post in the PlayStation Blog to fully introduce themselves, accompanied by a developer-produced video of their content. That’s a minimum for establishing them on a solid footing.

At the same time, the store needs to be reorganized. Drop the Mall categories under the Shopping tab and organize by developer. This will dramatically reduce the clutter under Furniture, Costumes and Threads and provide a shorter path to each developer’s content. Keep the organization as it is for the actual Mall stores, for those who want to browse.

2. Promote early.

Get the web site, Twitter feed and Facebook page up at least three months before the content goes live. Introduce yourself. Tease the content. Ask for input. Build a relationship with the community long before the content is due to arrive, and there will be heightened interest when the official blog announcement is made. Be as specific as you possibly can be about what’s coming, what it does and what it costs. Talk about why you decided to develop this content, what influenced it and where it fits in your larger plans for Home. Put together teaser videos for the really unique stuff, so that people can see it.

One of the big reasons why Granzella has so many followers in NA is the advance publicity that users generate by discussing its content in JP, which can take six months or more to appear in NA. By the time it gets here, people have heard so much about it, and know so much about it, that they want to buy it. This proves the benefits of advance information.

Home marketing right now is the equivalent of a pitchman pulling a veil off a box and yelling, “You must buy this!” It works on those with loose wallets, but most of your customers want to know what’s in the box.

3. Create context.

It’s a given that not every item is going to appeal to everyone, so define who the item is made for and where it fits in the larger Home context. Loot has done this exceptionally well with its machinima tools and stage sets. All of these items work together for those who want to create videos, and the E.O.D. and active cameras provide the means to produce and share content within Home itself.

A few developers have this built in to their approach, like Lockwood, Hellfire and Granzella. For new developers, looking at what’s popular and filling the voids could be a quick path to success. Everyone’s hanging out at the beach? Make some really cool beach wear, or a range of wicker furniture for the beach-themed personal spaces.

The other option, of course, is to go big. Build your own world within Home, update it regularly and link everything together. That’s probably more than a new developer can or wants to do.

As long as Home’s consumer base continues to grow and Home generates sufficient returns to justify further investment in the platform, we’ll continue to see developers releasing new content for it. I wouldn’t be surprised to see numerous Home developers start shifting some of their efforts over to Vita, though, or the greater PSN; barring some sort of formal announcement from Sony that they intend to support Home for the long term and somehow migrate it to the next console generation when the time comes, I suspect Bigyama’s announcement is merely the first of many more to come.

Bigyama have big problems, and it’s going to be a tough climb for them if they want to reach that peak that LW, Loot and others sit on. I just hope there’s room since they do such quality stuff. Juggernaut did a trick with their estate, I think one of it’s succeeding factors was its timing; just before Halloween. Given its themed space, time of year and all the little folks who like to celebrate that holiday, it had to be a big hit. Even I thought I had my space ready for my Halloween Fancy dress competition, until I saw their estate. I spent the next couple of days re-organizing the whole event to fit around that place, and it payed off -- big time.

All you have to do to get a slight idea on what works for Home advertising is look at this article and its examples of what’s been done so far. In fact, this whole article would serve well as a How To for aspiring new Home companies. But then, given your obvious natural brilliance with business Norse, it’s hardly surprising.

Ugh! Did I just say that? *removes face from butt-area in shame*

Having other developers step on your release with an announcement or a bigger release has to be a nightmare. I think Home should reduce the time that things are announced ahead. Anything announced more than a month ahead of time in Home I think has little to no effect.

I think it is important to gain customer trust. Keeping the number of bugs down is essential. And fixing them when they are found is also essential. I think the Home community has been more than cooperative in letting things go. When it is real money, the standard for developers should be high.

It is all getting better, but I think it is harder to enter into Home now, than it was even a year ago. The place is packed with good options.

Excellent analysis as alway! A great article.

You think I am kidding? We need walking billboards in Home to let all those people who still have never heard of HSM know that we are out front with the latest and greatest.

And if it means putting my 74 year old DarthGranny body into a thong and two eyepatches, I am willing to do it.