SCEA's told Joystiq that Home's "launch is imminent". "We've been saying it will launch by the end of calendar year 2008," said PlayStation Home director, Jack Buser. "And that's getting very, very close."
Before that, company boss former Sony studios head Phil Harrison has said that the development team had "brilliantly realised their ambitions," and predicted that Sony "will have a very successful platform".
Of course, not everyone was in favour in favour of his view. EA founder Trip Hawkins has questioned the goals of PlayStation Home - suggesting that going after a Second Life- or World of Warcraft-sized audience would be a bit silly and probably result in custard pie on face.
"What I can't really tell yet about the various announcements Sony has made about online and what they're doing so far, I can't tell whether they're going more towards this mass market idea - the way I'm describing this 'omni-market' - or if they're being lured into essentially trying to compete with Warcraft or Second Life," Trip Hawkins told Hatchet Job.
"My own personal opinion is: if Sony makes Home feel too much like a World of Warcraft environment, they're just never going to create the kind of audience size that you're going to see Nintendo and Microsoft create.
"Because clearly Nintendo is orientated towards the mass audience, and even Microsoft has learnt a lot of valuable lessons from things like Xbox Live Arcade," he added.
About PlayStation Home
PlayStation Home (also marketed and referred to simply as Home) is a community-based service for the PlayStation Network which has been in development since early 2005. Home allows users to create an avatar for their PlayStation 3 console. This avatar will get their own virtual apartment space (called a "HomeSpace"), which can then be adorned with items users can receive in several different ways. It should launch into open beta before the end of the year.
Resources: Eurogamer
