I was incredibly excited the first time I heard of PSHome, and that lit the initial flame that fueled my eventual purchase of a PS3. By the time I actually got a PS3, I was burnt out on HomeHate, and I couldn't really remember what I was so excited about to begin with. On the CAGcast, Cheapy mentioned that Home would benefit from being the interface that the user is given as soon as the PS3 turned on. That statement was like an epiphany to me. Imagine, if you will, PlayStation Home:

You hit the PS button on your controller and flip on your system. You hear the orchestra warm up, but then, rather than going to the XMB, you see your apartment. You want to play a game? Hit the arcade machine. Want to watch a movie? Sit in front of the TV. Want to listen to music? Flip on the stereo. Very intuitive and easy to use for all, which is nice. But the real strength would come from the PlayStation Store. See, I have this habit of turning my system on and, before I start playing my game, I have the urge to check out the PlayStation Store. Then I'll be offered a plethora of options on demos and hoohas and knick-knacks to download, but I always open it up hoping for a fun experience, like shopping in real life (yea I know, I said that, but it's true). Home could remedy that.

You leave your apartment, head to the store, which of course is an "outdoor" mall with a video store, a demo store, a game store, etc. You see, among other things, the new Revenge of Chtarlaz demo. Normally, you would ignore a game with such a silly title, but you see a bunch of people over there, looking at it, the same way you might see people clammoring aroung the Wii section of Best Buy. You go to the middle of the group of people and say "what's all this about?" and someone tells you "this is the game Bill Billerton of HooHaa Studios made and it looks AWESOME! You can shoot testicles from a cannon!" So you check it out and it turns out to be the greatest game you've ever played. You go to the real store and buy it.

What happened there is basically an electronic impulse buy. What it did was essentially the same as putting a link on a site you would go to anyway that takes you to a fanboy forum and then gives you a link to the demo. It cuts about 3 steps out of the "get people excited about a game they wouldn't otherwise notice" process.

But that scenario isn't a reason for me to want to turn Home on seperately. It relies very heavily on the fact that I'm in Home anyway, I might as well see what's going on. It really should have used a site like CAG as it's model. I boot up my browser, CAG is my homepage. I download the CAGcast, hit the blogs and peruse them before I make my own entry. After I'm done with what I came here for, I check out the forums and post things there. Sometimes I see a forum thread about a deal I wasn't aware of; I click it, Cheapy gets paid and I buy stuff that I wouldn't have normally bought. But I don't come here specifically so I can click on that, I come to post to my blog and listen to the CAGcast. If it weren't for the fact that I was here anyway, I probably would ignore the forums and the deals, but I have a reason to be here. There is no reason to use Home instead of XMB. What is Home's CAGcast? Am I going to want to see how the world has evolved day in and day out? Are there going to be community bulliten boards where I can see what other PSH users thought about that photo of a dinosaur humping a car?

So, Sony, what's the hook? Why am I in home? Don't say it'll be better when the Trophy room is ready, because frankly I never thought that was a good idea. Don't tell me social interaction, because I don't go out of my way to talk to strangers. What am I there for? Why will I want to be back tomorrow?