As far as retracting items: I don’t know the specifics of the agreement that is made with Sony, but we can use Kindle as and example. 1984 and Animal Farm were retracted and removed from people’s devices.

As with any service, and Home is a service, that service can be removed at anytime and with it all your in service purchases. In this sense, it can be veiwed as nothing than a long-term rental. As HIW said, I hope the rental period is a very long one.

If a new Home was released for the PS4, I’d look at my Home investment the same way I look at a bar tab at the end of the night: Worth the money for the experience, more often than not. And my bar tabs regularly eclipse my Home spending.

I think the best point in this article relates to format. I’ve bought movies on VHS, laserdisc, DVD and Blu-Ray. I’ve repurchased the same games on different consoles through the generations. If I really like the content, it’s worth it to me.

Ultimately, PS3 Home is the VCR; that is, it’s little more than a content delivery platform. If all of Home’s third-party developers started publishing the same content through a PC-only platform, or on a different console, at some point in the future, there’s no doubt in my mind that I’d follow them, and I think a great many Home users would as well.

There is every possibility that Sony could shut down the current version of Home, to make a new one for PS4 users, but look at the logic: what’s the size of that install base? In comparison to PS3 users, not even a drop in the ocean. So where’s the financial drive to create such a scenario?

I think it far more logical (and typical of Sony’s behavior) to continue the current Home program as is until it’s at the point of bring deserted. Making our current “purchases” transferrable would be the ultimate solution to all this, but your view on Home items as nothing more than spot-on Orion. If you go into your purchases section of your XMB menu, will you find a single thing from Home on that list? No, you won’t. Why not? Because they’re all in your services and rentals section. Speaks for itself really.

A lot of people don’t understand that little (insignificant?) BETA tag on the Home franchise, they missunderstand their “property” as their own. Fact is, that one little label means Sony van take it all away from you and you can’t say a damn thing about it. Fair? Probably not.

Home has opened a lot of eyes into future ways of business, and a cleaner, smoother way of personal digital socializing. More than Facebook could ever dream of! Not only that but despite Nintendos efforts with the Wii and the casual gamer, I think Sony have found a way to bring people who’d never concider a console into the demographic far more successfully.

Great read Orion, thanks.

I suppose with the friends I have met on Home -everything I have purchased -I have considered money well spent to that end. In other words, I could be sitting across from you right now paying for our coffees -10 dollars easy… Or we could go to a movie together -Like maybe 25 dollars, or maybe we just take a drive in the country and watch fireworks… how much in gas, time in travel, and will they even allow fireworks?

On the other hand I am in California and you are in? where? Somewhere else- which would make it impossible for us to have a conversation over coffee- or we never would have met because I would have never came in contact with you.

And you know, What if you are in Scotland… maybe someday I will save up enough fun money to jet over and get a hotel, a car rental, etc. just so I can sit with you for an hour before you go to work and tell you all the things I have been thinking about in the last day… hmmm wouldn’t that be nice…

All the money I have spent here seems so little compared to all the great people that I have met. Compared to all the different perspectives the fantastic conversations about creativity and art and writing etc.

And we have not even broached the subject of what it would be like if one of us were physically disabled.

Namaste.

But about the point of the article. To me the Home experience isn’t akin to rental. When I “buy” something in Home I’m not renting it. It has never been presented as a “rental”. The PSN does allow rental, check out the movies and the full game previews PS+ members get. When a gamer buys Home products they are purchasing them. If one day my DLC for Infamous just stopped working I’d be pretty miffed about it.

This is, however, an issue we are going to have to face as this free-to-play concept takes off. Games running on servers do not have the tangibility or upkeep that games on physical media have. My copy of Panzer Dragoon Saga costs $0 to sit on the shelf. It has remained there untouched for years and if I ever get the desire to play it again… it will be there (as long as my Saturn still works!). A free to play game (that you may have spent real money on to purchase items in) does cost money to keep “on the shelf” just in case you’d like to play. At SOME point the Home community WILL move on to something else. I suspect it might be the developers who move on first. Hopefully it will be some new version of Home we can all “move” to but it may not even be a Sony product.

Remember when “Evercrack” was a term? Things change pretty swiftly in this digital world of ours.
Unfortunately Home was pretty unique when it came on the scene and I don’t think the growing pains are over.

Now I’m wondering about the “rental” concept as it could relate to Home. $5 to buy a place for ever… $2 to rent it for a week. Hmm… Clothes, companions… I wonder if it could work.

PlayStation Home on PlayStation 4 would do fairly well IF they do a few things. Start fresh and new with Home on PS4. Completely new.
Take everything they have as far as ”Info gathered” and develope PS4 Home with third party developers in mind. Give them “4” times the power, memory and tools to develope the Home they must have been wanting for years now.
Sony needs to give up big as far as ”limits” go.
Space, estate and Club limits need to be much greater than they currently are.
Game launching has become a failure on Home because there are no companies stepping up and creating in-world designed spaces that can cater to gamers needs. Clan group spaces or specifically designed clubs that allow “Special” meet up’s before launching is only a dream on our current Home. Current third party Developers are limited by two things currently in Home. Pace is one of them. If you think about that awhile you’ll understand it.
The other thing is that they face a lot of limitations currently. They do know how to do great things now and I can see a whole new world open up for them if Home goes to PS4.

Read over my comment and I think it’s safe to say that much.

Nice article.