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playstation's answer to xbox live

Last week, Sony has just announced their online capabilities of the Playstation 3 called "Playstation Home." It will be available in Fall 2007 at no cost (whatever that means...). Essentially it will be a hybrid of XBOX Live achievements, Nintendo's Mii's, and Second Life/Sims.

PS Home allows you to communicate with other people online with text or voice via USB keyboard or bluetooth headset. Similar to Cyworld, you can also customize your own little home with digital furniture and wallpaper. It isn't clear whether there will be some cost to this downloadable content; however, I'm sure the Sony folks saw the success (and huge profit potential) from social networking sites like Cyworld. Gamers do like accessories, and they do like to brag about their achievements. I can definitely see some gamers' homes as hallmarks to their "1,000,000th kill" on Halo multiplayer.

Let's think about this. It's been general knowledge that the console game industry is becoming a behemoth comparable to the movie industry. With all this hype about user-generated content, social networking is definitely coming to the console game. The target demographic for social networking and console gaming is similar. Users on both markets are young and net-centric. They also demand connectivity nearly 24/7. I can attest to this. When I was traveling through Europe for a week, I brought my laptop so that I can "borrow" other people's wi-fi networks if I didn't have access to the internet at my hostel.

Regardless, Europe was an interesting market to look at because social networking is not as pervasive as the United States. Although there is a significant social networking presence in the U.K courtesy of bebo, the rest of Europe has been slow to embrace social networking. It is starting to gain steam due to rising popularity and usage of sites such as SkyBlog and tillate.com. MySpace is also rolling out native language versions of its websites in various European countries, and they are already being extensively used by users in Czech Republic and France.

Another thing to note is that online gaming is very popular in Europe, especially for XBOX live. In every major electronics store I've been to in Paris, there are prominent displays of the XBOX 360 and its online capabilities in their console gaming sections. Even when my brothers and I meet up through XBOX live, it is very common for us to play with/against European players (as you can recognize them from various phrases of German and French).

Nonetheless, the popularity of online gaming may be due to the proliferation of broadband internet access in these markets. Let's face it, there is no way I would play Halo or Second Life on a dial-up connection. In high school, I accessed the internet through dial-up. I usually ended up going to my dad's office at RIT and using their broadband lines. Now that I went to college, my digital lifestyle has made me dependent on broadband internet, and I will happily pay $50 per month for this privilege after I graduate. Not only will social networking websites allow me to keep in touch with my friends who will move due to their post-graduation plans, but console gaming will allow me to stay in touch with my brothers as well.

Would I pay to "pimp" my home on PS3? Well, it is a cheap Blu-ray player after all. Given Sony's performance thus far (*cough* hardware issues and lack of suppy during launch *cough*), I will happily wait until fall 2007 and see for myself what Sony has come up with.

posted by Koh @ 3:17 PM