With the announcement that PlayStation Home will be officially closing at the end of March 2015, nDreams CEO Patrick O’Luanaigh went on Games Industry to write about the service in a piece called PlayStation Home: Sony’s Most Successful Failure.
Chronicling his journey from first seeing PlayStation Home in 2007 at the Edinburgh Interactive Festival, then convincing Pete Edward and PlayStation Home Founder Phil Harrison to let nDreams create something for it, O’Luanaigh believes Harrison’s departure in 2008 was something Home never recovered from:
[…] Whilst many people at Sony worked incredibly hard since then to make PlayStation Home successful, I think it always suffered from the fact that its founding father wasn’t around to promote it, guide it and make sure it was championed at the highest level.
Even to this day, O’Luanaigh still believes that, “had Harrison stayed at Sony, things may have been very different.”
Elsewhere in his post, O’Luanaigh talked about how PlayStation Home came back stronger after the infamous PSN hack in 2011:
When the PSN returned after the famous ‘hack’ in 2011, it was PlayStation Home that came back bigger and stronger than any other part of the network. At its peak, Home had several million dedicated users, a large proportion of whom forged genuine, strong friendships that will endure beyond the platform itself.
Although some say it was a commercial failure, nDreams “generated seven-figure revenues for several years from Home, and other studios did as well. Try telling us that it wasn’t successful.”
All in all, O’Luanaigh is sad about Home’s departure. “Not because Home is closing (the PS3 is entering its twilight years, and the timing makes sense), but because Sony doesn’t appear to appreciate what an incredible experiment PlayStation Home was,” he said.
Calling themselves “the largest global publisher within PlayStation Home” on their website, nDreams is currently focused on virtual reality, with their next game, The Assembly, aiming to be a launch title for Project Morpheus and Oculus Rift.
Will you miss PlayStation Home when it’s gone?
[Source: Games Industry]
