PlayStation Home has seen a ton of improvements since it launched almost three years ago, with 2009 being its biggest thus far. Over 50 new spaces and a 100 new games have been added already and we’re not even halfway into the year.
It’s not doing too bad, the thing is Sony once praised Home as revolutionary but the service has fallen shy of the heavy weight placed on it, and so advertisers are not too interested. FOX, Red Bull and the US Army have all advertised on Home but recent reports conclude that the service hasn’t been able to keep clients interested.
According to this report by Brandweek, advertisers are mostly ignoring Home, choosing to advertise on Xbox Live instead.
“From moment one, it kinda felt clunky. And once you got through that, there wasn’t much there,” Ad agency Publicis Denuo’s John Rafferty said.
Adding insult to injury, there’s also a high cost of entry proving to be a huge barrier against Home, with “labor extensive six-figure deals” required to created content for the community.
Sony’s Jack Buser counters saying Home offers “a chance to cut through the noise and actively engage directly with a large, targeted and highly desirable consumer base.”
Even with all the high talks from Buser, advertisers still seem unmoved, choosing to pursue another path to advertise with the giant altogether, the PlayStation Network. “Sony is a little more conservative in embracing their system as an ad platform,” the report suspects. But with the addition of What’s New screen (image below), and advertising on the PlayStation Store, one must testify to the strides Sony has made adapting, painstakingly transforming PS3 into an avenue advertisers can use.
Via Joystiq.
