Here's sarcasticgamer's take on the Home delay. And is basically my response to people going overboard on their reactions.
http://sarcasticgamer.com/wp/index.php/2008/04/theres-still-no-place-like-home.html
Yeah, Sony does need to get their crap together, but a delay isn't a big deal when it makes the final product better.
I also just read their prior article (linked several posts back) detailing what home is and isn't. Of key interest to me is a
game independent place to meet up online where games can then be started, come back to once the game is over, and hopefully tracked in some way. There's IRC, chatrooms, message boards, etc... but none with this kind of integration.
So say, if we had a general CAG PS3 game night, we wouldn't need to all coordinate too much before hand other than meetup time and general games we wanted to play. Instead, we all jump in Home, meet up in someone's apartment, then talk while waiting for others, then fire up a game with friends, or maybe form a party within a game directly from within Home. Anyone who doesn't want to play that particular game, or if the game is full can still hang out, or launch their own games.
I wasn't too keen on Home before, seeing it as little more than achievements and such, but that functionality above could be worth it. I can see a group meeting up in Home to play a few rounds of CoD4 multiplayer while they wait for a friend to get home from work. Once that friend gets online they all drop back to the Home room to chat, then hop in Resistance 2 8 player co-op or adversarial multiplayer. It doesn't seem like much but it's very convenient, a bit more than having to fire up the games individually and send out a bunch of messages and invites back and forth across a large number of people.
In another case, Eye of Judgement anyone? Imagine meeting up in a Home space similar to a local game store where not only can you setup matches, you can also talk with other players while you wait. Maybe even have tournaments within home, and if there's ever a good case for integration, EoJ could allow Home users to view finished or in progress EoJ matches. All this without EoJ's funky multiplayer system. Heck, you can join a room just to chat and discuss decks and stuff. Card games aren't my thing so I won't be doing that, but you can imagine what kind of online community that can create for a card game.
I'm actually hoping that something similar will be patched into xbox live and all future consoles as it's a good concept. It works much like in real life where a group my meet up in a place with just a general goal in mind to have fun.
CAG specific, just imagine a CAG space in Home, no need to fill up precious friend list spots with CAG acquaintances, instead, just hop in the CAG Home space and start games with fellow CAGers.
My only concern right now is with Phil Harrison's departure from Sony, the word is he was a champion of this kind of community stuff so without him there they may not utilize it as well as they could.