Upon Home's open beta release, most people started wondering just why they had been
so excited about Home. There was nothing to do (unless you really loved bowling and
cheaply thrown together arcade games), took forever to load anything, and making your
person took forever if you wanted it to look anything like you. I was invited to the closed
beta before a while before it opened up for everyone to join, and after signing in and
looking around the first time, I didn't go back until the open beta was out and friends
were pumped about finally signing in to it. After that, I completely ignored it... until I
read about Xi.


the Xi graffiti (above) acts as the portal into "The Hub"

I updated Home, remade my person really quick (the old one sucked), and went off to
find the Xi graffiti. Upon leaving my place, I saw the main area actually populated by
people, the world map had game lobby's open, and the mall had much more in it than
my first few run throughs. After spending way too much time in The Hub, trying to
piece together parts of the ARG's puzzles, I finally logged out and got a few hours of
sleep before work. But as I fell asleep I kept thinking about the damn puzzles. At work
I ended up looking up help cause it was driving me insane. And when I got home,
I didn't even shower or change before I had the PS3 on and was in Home again.

That's when Home's opportunity for Sony really became clear to me. It could seriously
become a social network and hangout space unlike anything the other consoles
have to offer. What if they made a portable version for the PSP? Gave the PS2 some
sort of minimal interaction with it. All of a sudden, the delays, the shitty beta, and the
slow start seemed like they could actually pay off in the end. Maybe all the prep-time
was worth it... maybe the focus on completing the vision and finalizing a road map
before releasing anything was a solid decision (even so, they should have at least
not primed everyone up about it so soon if it wasn't gonna debut until the PS3's third
year on shelves).


a screen shot of "The Hub" itself... the center of action for Xi's ARG

Maybe it won't be that big. Maybe the ARG thing is just a prep for it's full launch and
will be forgotten afterwards. But all I know, is that since Xi started, I've been in Home
every time the PS3 has been on. I actually spent a dollar on a new shirt and some better
looking shoes (something I originally scoffed at even possibly doing). I really want to
buy the Street Fighter 4 costume for Blanka. And the arcade games have gotten a little
better... heck, I signed in just to play the Maximum Tilt game again to see if a better score
got me anything.

I write all of this to say: Sony, the ARG is a brilliant use of Home (and I hope you have
more stuff like this planned). You could turn this into an example of how developers
and publishers can market games to the community (ARG stuff to prep a games
release would be completely badass). It would give games a reason to give the PS3
something special that the other systems can't offer. In short, it could put you in a prime
position to gain some ground on the more successful systems of this generation and
maybe turn some profit (and then you can drop the PS3's freakin price to something a
bit more manageable for us cheap/poor gamers).

And people reading this: if you have a PS3 and haven't started the Xi puzzles yet,
sign the hell in and do it. It's fun, it makes you think (unless you cheat), and for all we
know it could pay off in some way at the end. Or it least it will if Sony is on top of things.

Clarification: as the "game" goes on, day by day, new stuff is added, revealed, etc. So,
if you haven't logged in since it started, you might be surprised at what's been happening
since then. And if you don't log in for a while, you'll have new stuff to catch up on later..