The man in charge of Home for the PlayStation 3, Jack Buser, has called the service a "huge success" for Sony and believes the business model may well be used as a template for other commercial endeavours in the future.
Home is Sony's stab at a virtual world and its 'director' is quick to respond to some of the criticism the service gets from the gaming community.
"I think it takes some time as the industry as a whole, whether that be consumers or whether that be the media, to start to shift their focus to these new types of platforms and see how people are actually spending their time with the console and with gaming in general," said Buser to Gamasutra.
"I think we are part of that evolution, part of that conversation."
Business time
As for Home making money, Buser says that Home is "quite profitable" and that the model is something Sony may use again.
"I would say that it is a very good business model for PlayStation, and quite profitable, I might add," explains Buser.
"I like to say it's one of the highest-margin businesses in the games industry."
One thing Home does have to its advantage is micro-payments – something which has been a success for Sony, selling songs online for the likes of SingStar and skins for games like LittleBigPlanet.
This is something Buser is keen to be a part of with Home.
"[Consumers are] understanding that through micropayments, they can gain social context and social capital, or they can through gameplay context, upgrade their gameplay experience through microtransactions. And that's just becoming part of gaming."
Back in March, Sony revealed that 12 million people were using Home – a 20 per cent boost in figures from 2009.
Via Gamasutra and Digital Spy
