Viewing from both ends, virtual worlds and gamer. I’ll go with gamer first. First, it’s been way too long. If you delay releasing a project as many months as Home has been, it doesn’t matter to the rest of the world what you’re opening to and in what form. You have to keep up with what’s going on outside especially in the gaming industry.

So to release with only Uncharted and Farcry 2 as areas? Huge no-no. It really just gives the impression that you’re not with it. And as a self-admitted Sony fanboy, I still believe that you have to wow your players. The system itself does that, and back when it first started the closed beta and even perhaps when Home said it was going to go open the first time…. this might be acceptable. But from where it stands now, today? Unacceptable. If you’re going to release, release with a core base that’s finished and provide areas to give the gamers more things to do. Roaming around gave me about an hour or so of amusement, and maybe thirty minutes of trying to figure out what I could buy and mess with. That’s not enough time to hold your “easy captive” audience. Need way more than that.

Virtual worlds wise: I agree. The framework is far greater than Second Life, and the Xbox virtual worlds. However, here’s where my virtualization and gamer worlds collide. Regardless of how beautiful the framework is, the industry of virtual worlds moves forward and doesn’t slow down for anyone. Just look at how Second Life started and where it is now. The point is that while technologists might be wow’d by what’s under the hood, the majority of your audience are not technologists. Thus, you have to captivate them in a different fashion. That’s where I think Sony has failed or will fail in the Home open beta unless they some releasing some content fast.

It’s like buying a car. A lot of people don’t really care what’s under the hood, as much as how it drives and how it looks. Home looks good but the driving is only so-so for now. And the longer it waits for content, the more it opens the gap between to have users flock to different worlds.

So far? I’d say that implementation wise, SL has done the best job although their execution as of the past year or two has been extremely sloppy which has decreased their user base. Home itself needs to have the content from that end if they want to compete, or they’ll just go the way of most virtual worlds.

I’ve been in the beta for a while, and it has improved over time, I’m quite happy with (just not the jump from a few hundred thousand to million people over night). The console is for gaming first and downtime second in many cases (some use it for a media console, sure). The potential of every ‘freemode’ in manmy games connecting to a space so freestyle in nature is promising, and the economy/rewards part has yet to be realised to its fullest potential.

It’s also great that Home isn’t so visually condescending and childish like Xbox with their Mii World [sic]. Home itself is just a compartment of 3D socialization that already takes place in freeplay game modes, it’s just scrutinized more because of its placement in plain view. The userbase is built in, with zero barrier to entry.

I fully expect it to be hated, and having to deal with ‘you are as good as your competition’, even Sony has to sell being ‘not like Second Life’. It’s tough, but not impossible.