Sony to shut down 'Second Life' alternative PlayStation Home early next year

[Shawn Knight]

Any hope that PlayStation Home, Sony’s virtual 3D social gaming platform, would one day arrive on the PlayStation Vita or PlayStation 4 was recently dashed as the company announced the service will be coming to an end next year.

PlayStation Network senior community manager Tempest_Fire recently broke the bad news to PlayStation Home hopefuls on the PlayStation Forums.

Specifically, Sony said they would cease publishing new content for the platform starting November 12, 2014. Gamers in the US, Canada and Europe will be able to download content until December 3, 2014. As a token of their gratitude to the community, Sony said they plan to release a series of free content prior to the platform’s closure on March 31, 2015.

News of the closure shouldn’t be a total surprise as Sony revealed plans to shut down Home in Asia just last month.

The service, which began development in early 2005 and hit public beta in late 2008, was used by tens of millions of users around the world according to the shutdown notice. As GameSpot points out, Home was pitched as a free alternative to Second Life in which users created a virtual avatar of themselves. Despite attracting a lot of attention early on, the project never really lived up to Sony’s vision for it.

The company officially blamed a shifting landscape as the reason for the decision.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/58221-sony-to-shut-down-second-life-alternative-playstation-home-early-next-year.html

 

[davislane1]

A shifting landscape isn't why they are shutting this down. What did in Playstation Home from the beginning was Sony's amazingly poor development of the project. The lack of functionality, content, and polish that defined the Home experience drove anyone who spent five minutes with it right to the data management in the XMB to ensure the software didn't take up valuable hard drive space. For Home to work, Sony needed people to spend money in it, but they never supplied a product worth purchasing.

 

[Adhmuz]

Well Sony tried to do something with PS Home, what exactly that was, I haven't the slightest of ideas... It was honestly the biggest waste of time available for your PS3. First issue was load times, always had a loading screen going from anywhere to, well anywhere, at least that was the way I remembered it. There was little to nothing interesting to do in this virtual world, oh boy bowling... And scavenger hunts, two activities that are barely enjoyable in real life, what ever gave anyone the idea these would translate to fun virtual games has me at a loss. Lack of content early on, lack of free content, the idea of buying a virtual shirt for real money is just plain stupid. Now if you did buy into this crap, well you and those other 4 people still using PS Home will just have to go and live your actual live, tough break, I know. It should be of no surprise Sony wants to ditch this, the whole "my virtual life" experience is fun, for about 15 minutes, then it's boring and makes The Sims look interesting.

 

[cmbjive]

I'm surprised PS Home lasted this long. The controls were sluggish, the content boring, and accessing PS Home was more of a headache than an enjoyment. Good riddance to it.

 

[slamscaper]

The only thing I can remember doing in this "virtual world" was walking around and exploiting bugs to get to areas that normally were off limits. You could walk on air in a few places, lol.

Other than that I don't remember much more about it, because Playstation home was quite forgettable.