SCEE’s Darren Cairns and Liam Wickham have spoken at the Develop conference, making strides to distance Sony’s Home product from social networks. The PlayStation creator’s official stance seems to be that Home is all about the games, and not about the socializing.
“Home is not a social network – it’s focused on games,” stated the two men. “It’s a visual representation of the PlayStation community.”
That’s an interesting suggestion, not least because up until now, Sony has done nothing but talk about Home as a social network. When Phil Harrison was still with the company, he referred to Home as a “3D social networking service.” Harrison stated that Home was “not just about Sony products and Sony games,” but was “a much wider network of connected spaces.” Sony has also gone on record as stating that they will be “implementing a fully featured social networking experience within Home.”
See, this is the problem with Sony. It can’t get its stories straight. Sony already knows what a lack of focus and official definition did for the PlayStation 3 in its first year, and Home isn’t even out of the gate before we’re having conflicting definitions of what the product can is. Sony needs to keep its facts straight, because customers and developers alike will be confused as to what it is Sony actually offers, and that’s not a good scenario.
