Q-Games chief Dylan Cuthbert told Kotaku that the popularity of his company's just-launched PlayStation Home space nearly crushed his team's servers. Plus, he and I discovered independently, gamers there want to convey a message: "I'm hard."
I stumbled across the PixelJunk space by accident this morning, while checking out PlayStation Home on my PS3 for the first time in many months. Later, I chatted with Cuthbert about the space and some of the early success Q has had with it.
Click the thumbnails to see more and get more explanation about what I learned today. (Note that most of the images were taken off of my TV using a still camera. Apologies for the poor quality and for the creepiness of my mushroom-hatted guy.)
The PixelJunk space was launched a couple of weeks ago in Japan and here in the U.S. just a few days ago. It's set up as a museum for the company's line of downloadable PS3 games; PixelJunk Racers, PixelJunk Monsters, and PixelJunk Eden. This is the lobby, where I found people dancing and flirting, the two cliche actions of any Home community.
See that video screen? It runs a trailer for the upcoming PixelJunk Shooter. Cuthbert said it runs off a Q-Games server and was getting accessed 10s of thousands of times in the space's first few days of release in Japan. That's the closest he has to attendance figures so far.
Right at the entrance is a store where shirts are being sold for 49 cents. PixelJunk Monsters headphones are sold for men; slippers for women. "In Japan only we have sold 1000s of virtual goods in just the first week," Cuthbert told me.
Cuthbert said this is the most popular t-shirt in the space.
Though he said this one is popular is well. Given the constant flirting and sex-talk I see whenever I'm in Home, I'd say Q-Games knows what it's doing with these shirts.
Walking into each area of the space cues music from the related game. This is the PixelJunk Eden area.
This is the PixelJunk Monsters area.
This is more from the Monsters section, with Racer in the background. Cuthbert hopes that his team can iterate on the space and make it more active and interactive. For example, he'd like the fire tower here to occasionally shoot flame.
More Racers.
And the rest of the items on the store. The PixelJunk Home space is free for users in Japan and North America to access online through their PS3s.