Later this year, Sony plans to unveil a "virtual world" a lot like Second Life or The Sims for PlayStation 3 owners. "But Sony's world will feature heavy doses of video games for avatars to play, as well as virtual arcades, music, movies and other Sony-approved media downloads," reports AP.
"Phil Harrison, president of Sony's worldwide game studios, unveiled Home in a speech at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco on Wednesday. In an interview afterward, he said Sony has been working on the project for 2 1/2 years," according to Dean Takahashi at the Mercury News. However, this isn't compatible with Phil's other claim, in the same report: "Harrison pointed out that a pivotal inspiration for this was Time magazine's cover in December that identified 'you' as the Person of the Year."
Apart from that, Takahashi says "Sony isn't the name you think about when you think of social networking," while numerous other reports also cite Second Life, The Sims, Xbox Live and so on.
This is somewhat unfair to Sony!
Sony launched a hugely popular multiplayer online game called EverQuest back in 1999, and the Sony Station site now offers other games such as PlanetSide Aftershock, The Matrix Online and Star Wars Galaxies. It was EverQuest that inspired World of Warcraft, which arrived five years later.
Sony's online strategy for the PS3 may be a bit of a mess, but the company does have a track record in this field, and was doing good stuff long before Second Life appeared.
