My Theory: If Sony really wanted to increase revenue, they would make the avatar a mandatory digital representation on the XMB, akin to the avatar system on Xbox Live. Having a forced presence would make the advertising investment worthwhile to gaming corporations and other entities looking to push their brand, as I can only imagine the conversion rate of in-Home advertising to real world purchases isn't the greatest (I would be curious to know who went out and bought Axe body spray or a ticket to see TED purely because of the Home related promotion), and the reach of advertising in a closed virtual world is inherently limited to reach of that world's audience. Those advertisements won't extend beyond the Home crowd, unless you force it upon everyone.
I like all of your suggestions though Julie I have always thought those points should be implemented, but we live in a server where the mall still has a kiosk up holding LAST springs' content in it, and is seemingly a weekly error farm so I wouldnt hold my breath really.
julie_love wrote:
ck2875 wrote:My Theory: If Sony really wanted to increase revenue, they would make the avatar a mandatory digital representation on the XMB, akin to the avatar system on Xbox Live. Having a forced presence would make the advertising investment worthwhile to gaming corporations and other entities looking to push their brand, as I can only imagine the conversion rate of in-Home advertising to real world purchases isn't the greatest (I would be curious to know who went out and bought Axe body spray or a ticket to see TED purely because of the Home related promotion), and the reach of advertising in a closed virtual world is inherently limited to reach of that world's audience. Those advertisements won't extend beyond the Home crowd, unless you force it upon everyone.
That would generate more traffic, that's for sure. PS3 has sold over 70 million worldwide, last time it was publicly announced in 2011 23 million PS3 owners had downloaded Home, at that time it was about 50% of owners. I had my PS3 for a couple of months before I got around to downloading Home.
It would generate more traffic and we'd have a lot more default avatars walking around, but some of them might enjoy Home and decide to stat a while.
If you've ever been on Xbox Live, you'll notice that almost everyone is willing to buy content for an avatar that genuinely serves no purpose other than to stand there or sleep if you're not online (though it does work in the occassional game). But my point is that people generally (not always) care about how their peers perceive them, so I think if the Home avatars were a mandatory part of a profile card, then not too many people would be content with a default look. That would in turn spur Home clothing / companion / whatever sales and lead to people being willing to invest time and money into Home games if it meant a trinket to showcase to friends. Gaming companies pump out a ton of content for the Xbox Avatar marketplace, likely because it's good marketing in that it reaches people who buy games (a lot of Home users don't), as it's always at the forefront when communicating with friends. Ultimately though, I am sure this idea isn't anything the Sony wizards haven't already debated in great detail and decided against for whatever reason.
smokingpistol wrote:
We were progressing along quite steadily and well until the Hub update in NA. I would wager EU and JP have been the perfect examples in different ways to how to make Home successful and popular. Their really are a ton of users seemingly there and they still incorporate Sony music, movie and game promos on the regular while splashing in popular culture like Total Recall or Anime franchises respectively. I always wanted Home to be my link to my friends while promoting mostly game related content and having game related experiences. The decline of that in our server since last year and other game related goodies (preorders costumes, etc) have made me wonder why I still am here at times. But it is what you make of it and I still have years worth of old content to keep me happy
I like all of your suggestions though Julie I have always thought those points should be implemented, but we live in a server where the mall still has a kiosk up holding LAST springs' content in it, and is seemingly a weekly error farm so I wouldnt hold my breath really.
We did have some pretty awesome TGIs and events for a while. Dead Island, KZ3, UC3 to name a few. That all seemed to change when they announced thaty the Home Community Managers and Specialists were becoming Digital Platform Managers and were taking on more projects.
For all we know 100% of their time might have been assigned to other projects. That would explain some of the old content you mentioned as well as why the theater rarely gets updated and some of the odd holiday events.
JP has always had good events and unique content, but EU has been thriving lately with the new Community Managers they hired.
It may be time for SEN to look at hiring some new Managers dedicated to managing NA Home.
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