Fewer than 1 in 3 PS3 systems connected to PlayStation Home

by Andrew Yoon on Jun 25th 2009 5:30PM

According to Peter Edward, director of PlayStation Home for SCEE, PlayStation Home has gained 7 million users worldwide, with 3 million in Europe alone. That certainly sounds like an accomplishment -- but with over 21 million PS3s sold worldwide, that number reveals that fewer than one third of PS3 systems have connected to Home. That's a surprising figure, considering Edward calls Home "the starting point for PlayStation 3 online."

There are a number of factors behind the PS3 community's slow acceptance of PlayStation Home. A long-delayed launch was marred by infrequent updates; the service received a mixed response from hardcore gamers. Since then, Home has expanded quite significantly, with the promise of more to come. Edward told Gamasutra that we can expect "more games [to] support Game Launch from within Home" in the future.

Source

Tags: home, peter-edward, playstation-home, psn

Reader Comments (168)

I bought my PS3 to play games. Not social network.

Agreed. When I sit to play I really don't feel like going through the Home experience. It just doesn't appeal to me at all.

Bingo. I can't see a single reason why I would be wasting my time in this retarded sterile marketing dystopia with people who are even dumber than the people I encounter on XBox Live (yes I realize how horribly low a standard that is) when I could playing a /game/ like inFAMOUS, or even Flower.

same. i could just leave the house if i wanted to meet people. and if i want to talk to people without breaking out my phone or leaving the house, i can just voice chat with them in game. so home just isn't appealing to me ATM.

This

I'm working on my Doctoral Degree in Anthropology and I have an Xbox. Does that mean I'm dumb. Of course not. Though I will admit that Live is full of arrogant, misanthropic children.

I've logged into Home maybe 3 times, but even that one game that was closed off was lame. my PS3 is for the games and bluray. joystiq is for the social networking. ;)

Think you are gonna get realy disapointed in the future then...social nettwork is one of the most hot topic for this gen consoles and sertanly the next.

yeah. i'm in the same boat as umm...hello???.

I've logged into Home before, but I'm not going back.

Agreed! I consider myself a PS3 fanboy, but I sure as hell have seen no reason to ever launch Home.
And I'm not sure how 'In Game Launching' is supposed to fix that...

so in other words you dont care to use the Facebook and twitter features on the 360 either??

Agreed. My first impression was that Home was going to be more like Free Realms in execution, where there would be several minigames etc that you could use to interact with other users. More or less this is a graphically updated version of instant messenger which I haven't used since the A/S/L days of AOL.

If I wanted to play house, I'd poke holes in my condoms and pay more attention to my wife and her needs.

I can see the appeal for some people, but I don't think the average PS3 user is of the Second Life type.

But it's not even like Second Life!

I'm one of the 1 in 3 who did log on, and then got bored after 10 mins and have never been on again. There's no custom content, you have to navigate the on-screen keyboard to chat and then there's nothing to do, and almost nowhere to go.

I've been on a few times checking out the different spaces (the EA one is really cool) and there is actually stuff to do and games to play that don't cost money which is cool. I think of the service as a pre-cursor of what's to come in the future more so than everything it is at the moment. It's one of those things you like or you don't. Just depends on the individual. But, if some people tried it and gave it the old college try they might be surprised there is some fun to be had. With all that said it's not something I log into all that often but I can see the appeal of it for some. At the same time I can understand while a pre-dominantly core fanbase install base isn't interested in social networking. Thats why the whole 360 E3 announcements confused me as well.

I'd use Home a lot more if there was FREAKING VOICE CHAT!
Here everbody! Enjoy a social network in which you can't socialize!

Sweeeeeeeet

You can socialize quite easily with home assuming you have basic motor and spelling skills. The point of home is not to Play it the point of it is to network with like minded individuals. Play with them in your online games, find new friends to play and compete against and to add a sense of customization to your experience with the system in terms of an avatar that you can make look almost how ever you want it to look.

Of course not everyone is going to want to use home. Not everyone comes to forums, or uses talk backs or even goes online for that matter that doesnt make it a failure and even if you wanted to compare it to similar things: 1/3rd of 21 million is still 7 million, I'm sure there are plenty of MMOs out there that wish they could boast that many users.

Hmm, that's interesting, seeing how I signed in with my roommate's PS3 at 3am the other morning and was very surprised at how many people were in the Plaza and in Uncharted's bar. All chatting it up.

Are the home lobbies region-free?

Could explain the high population at odd hours

@Mr Khan - No, each region has it's own servers, and there's several 'instances' in each region.

After a night of drinking a pubs trying to attract girls, nerds realize they are going home to play with their left hand. Desperately seeking human interaction, they log onto the Playstation Home network at 3 am about 1 hour after the local bars closed at 2 am?

I'm wondering if these 7 million connected users include people who sign up for the service, log in once and then once again some other date and never visit for a period of say six months? Does the PS3 connected imply it connected once? or does it imply is there's been a connection made within the past 7? 14? 30? days?

Without reference to what being connected means, this number is kind of useless.

I'd say follow the source link. That way you can get the source information and not process it like a total douchebag unlike this writer.

"Only 1 in 3..."

Seriously, REALLY?!? I say this because according to MS's latest numbers, roughly 45% of purchased 360s never seen an internet connection. So to validate Home to Andrew Yoon, it has to BEAT Xbox Live percentage users. Not just Gold, mind you. Gold and Silver.

Everyone else reads the article and says stuff like "HOW in the HELL did they manage to sell over 450,000 Star Trek uniforms for avatars?!?" But nope, not here. Screw Home, it is "teh Ghey."

Think about that for a moment. 450,000 trekkie uniforms. Even if we're talking $.99, that's $450K just from one item. Yep, Home sure is Teh Phailz!

i agree that Home is successful in a business outlook, but the majority of the Playstation 3 consumers couldn't care less - Sony has more to gain by catering to us majority than by continuing with petty $450k gains here and there.

Don't read too much into this-my friend has a 40GB model and hasn't downloaded Home because of space concerns. As I have the 160GB, it wasn't a concern for me.

I've used up over 90GB of space, so I can see how the smaller models would be scrunched. DMC4 took up a whole 5GB. Home just isn't important enough to me that I would keep it over games if things got tight.

Hell I have a 60 gig that's full, definitely not going to waste space on home again. Had it downloaded, thought it was absolutey pointless and uninstalled that shit. In home launcher? I have to swap the disks anyway, so why not just do it from the xmb instead

21 million PS3's sold, yes, but not nearly the same amount connected to the internet. I'm guessing it's a little more than one in three purely because of that.

That said, I have no interest in home. To me it just seems like a complete waste of time, and the only reason I installed it was to check out that XI stuff.

I liked the idea of home, but I only log on once a month, get bored rapidly, then ignore it for another 30 days.

Yeah, I fire it up every now and then to take a peek at the new zones, but I just don't really find any value at all in home. I'm never going to buy anything in it, and the little minigames aren't terrible, but honestly, I'd just much rather go play Uncharted or Infamous or Resistance 2 instead.

I've had a PS3 for at least a year and have yet to log into Home even once. It just doesn't appeal to me in the slightest.

Try it, you may just like it!

It just never stood out enough to go through the process. It just seemed like ad driven social networking. Am I wrong? Should I take the time to try it?

IF you see any ads, they're all very natural feeling, i.e. they're mostly, if not totally, advertisements for games. it makes the environment feel "realistic" but the infrequency is enough to keep it from being too much. the process of getting into Home is, to me, very easy to go through, and if it means anything, it's somewhat staggered throughout the experience to get some things going right away, rather than getting one huge download going.

It's really not all that bad. The cool thing is you can go into the different spaces and play some really cool games for free that are XBLA/PSN quality. It's just an interesting little time sink for an hour or so a week.

That actually seems high. I've never even installed the client. I would expect less than 1 in 50 are "regular users." I.E. twice weekly or so.

I couldnt care less about game launching from Home. Its still a lot less hassal to go straight to the game.

Not a very good poll question.

Have I logged into HOME? Yes.

Will I ever do it again? No.

"Have I logged into HOME? Yes.
Will I ever do it again? No."

That's exactly what I was gonna say.

Psst. There's a "Reply" button under the first post in every string of posts. Use it.

The Joystiq reply button functions properly fewer than 1 in 3 times.

I put no since I only logged into the beta and have never logged into it again. Like most of you, I just don't see the point of it.

Having to download the areas each time is a buzzkill-it takes too long. And no, my Internet is not slow.

No, it doesn't. Unless waiting 15 seconds is too much to you

...if by 15 seconds you mean 2-3 minutes, yes, it IS too long.

Must be nice to have Fiber Optic...I'd rather spend the extra cash on games. 512k up/down is enough for me. I don't stream media. Call me old-fashioned, but I like physical media better.

Um watching stupid dudes dancing is not fun , i will never go "Home" again

I'm in the same boat... logged in once about 6 months ago, walked around a bit, and haven't logged into Home since.

Just another useless Mii copy. I've only gone into Home like two times on my PS3.

Now that you mention it, I don't like the Mii social networking stuff either.

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Fewer than 1 in 3 PS3 systems connected to PlayStation Home

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