I don't have exact numbers to post, because I can't access my friends list, but a few months ago, I decided to go down my friends list and see how many people had more trophies than me. At the time, my friends list was nearly full, and I met almost all of them on PlayStation Home. There were no more than five of them who were not from PlayStation Home. There were about five of my friends who had more trophies than me. This wouldn't be too noteworthy except for the fact that I haven't even been online with my PlayStation 3 for a whole year yet (at the time of typing THIS post).

It seems to me that the majority of the people you find on Home bought the PS3 and a few games, played them a little bit, discovered and downloaded Home, and then effectively stopped being gamers--if they ever were gamers. Home has very little to do with gaming. There are tons of people who play Home almost exclusively, and the vast majority of clubs/fams/mafias have nothing to do with video games.

I think Home would be much, much, much better if Sony would do one thing:

Scrap the rules. They're broken, nobody obeys them, and they don't work on Home. In my ideal version of Home, the only rule would be, "Don't break the law." No silly rules, no reporting system. If you don't want to hear somebody, you just block them and you vanish from each others' view. If you want to talk to the person who's berating you, you do. If you don't, you don't. Magic. All problems solved.

You're welcome, Sony.

There are many many different kinds of gamers in Home. Some play online. Some don't play online. Some love FPS games. Some hate FPS games. Some care about collecting trophies. Some consider trophies to be of no interest to them. There are so many opportunities to find other gamers in Home who share someone's taste in games and love to talk about their gaming adventures that the original purpose of Home has worked well.

For example, many of us spent hours talking about FF13 last year. Comparing it to other FF games. Discussing the characters, graphics, battle system, etc. No need to exchange any real life personal information. Your position that "the natural response is to try and expand your interactions with this person beyond the confines of the PS3" is your motivation. But there are many of us who do not want to share any personal information.

So Sony is trying to accommodate everyone - all tastes, all interests, etc. That means, by trying to please everyone, they do not completely please anyone. It's rather like the US. government: it is not a democracy, it is a republic and, as such, it has some serious flaws, but compared to other governments, it's the best one for us.

Basically, it is up to US, Travis. You and me and millions of others who like to hang out in Home to make the best of it and to try to help others enjoy it also. If Sony tried to remake Home to be perfect for each person in here, they would need to create 17 million versions of it. So we take what we like and ignore the rest.

By the way, if having accounts in multiple regions jeopardizes the licensing agreements that Sony has with developers, I am not interested. Show me that region hopping does not hurt anyone including the companies involved in the contracts, and I will back you on that one.