Playstation Home

Playstation 3 owners such as myself have eagerly awaiting the release of the virtual world Playstation Home for quite some time now. The free world will provider gamers with new ways to interact and socialize, and is expected to be released sometime in 2008.

With the establishment of a new in house ad agency at SCEA, Sony is hoping to bring in extra revenues from the Playstation Network and services such as Home. The new unit will be responsible for advertising strategies across all of playstations platforms. Darlene Kindler, previously the VP of Adscape publishing, will be in charge as Director of Network Advertising. With the use of Home, the ads could be delivered as virtual walls in a room, or even feature videos of upcoming games. With the great deal of flexibility provided to advertisers within a virtual world, there are numerous possibilities as to how the content may be delivered.

As a proud playstation 3 owner I have always been excited at the prospect of home and have recognized the potential it has to create a gaming community. The placement of ads within Home makes sense since it is a very segmented audience (playstation 3 owners) so the ads can be very narrowly tailored. Ads will also ensure that this service remains free, which is something playstaion has always supported. This is in contrast to Xbox Live where subscribers need to pay $50 a year just to access online features and play games online. I am intrigued to see the type of content that Sony's advertising strategies come up with, and also to see how they integrate it into a part of the world of Home.