Home was too ambitious, says Sony Europe boss

Sony was being too ambitious with the non-gaming applications of Home and delayed the project to focus on gaming, says SCEE president David Reeves.

In a brief interview at PlayStation Day London, Reeves admitted that Sony wants to make sure the gaming parts of the service, like trophies and Home-to-game launching, are ready before it goes public.

"It is definitely coming out in autumn," assured Reeves. "Whether that's October or November, I don't precisely know, but it is an open beta."

"We've realised that maybe we were too ambitious with the non-gaming applications within Home, getting sponsors and stuff like that," he confessed.

"In that sense we were deserting gamers. So, we're concentrating on the gaming by launching games in Home, and attracting people who are into gaming in first - instead of the Nike people, or Adidas people who are into fashion and not necessarily into gaming."

Reeves also spoke of the diminishing importance of platform exclusives from third parties, as first-party games become more prominent. "We did Buzz, we're doing LittleBigPlanet, Killzone, and there are obviously others that we're developing. We're becoming less dependent on third parties."

But, he added, Sony will seize exclusivity opportunities for games that attract new customers.

"It's got to be something that catches our eye and we think will bring new consumers into the industry. We can't keep recycling consumers from one iteration of PlayStation or Wii to another. We've got to gather up new people as we go through the years."

Courtesy of CVG.

May 8, 2008