PlayStation Home features more than 100 ready-to-play games, but hardly anyone is playing. Perhaps that will change now that Sony has teamed up with independent games label Codename to bring fresh new experiences exclusively to the PlayStation Home service.
PlayStation Home is not somewhere many gamers go to play games. I don't know of a single person who rushes home from work to log into Sony's virtual world. Hell, I barely know anyone who logs in on a regular basis, period. Hopefully a series of new social games from top independent talents can turn that all around.
Over the next few months, Codname will be releasing four intriguing new titles from various independent developers in PlayStation Home, each leveraging the platform's strengths to create compelling social entertainment.
From the official release:
• Dueling Gentlemen, created by Odd Gentleman, players strategize the right moves on a giant stage in Home's Plaza, to outsmart opponents and win this old-time battle for honor and prestige.
• Minor Battle, created by Peanut Gallery, winner of the IndieCade 2010 Audience Award, a team-based game where two teams run around a cube of four screens to beat each other in a capture-the-flag style platformer.
• Super Awesome Mountain RPG, created by Codename, a blend of tabletop board games and fantasy RPGs, where players ascend a fantastical mountain in Home's Central Plaza using a custom animated figurine.
• Cogs in 3D multiplayer, a multiplayer version of Lazy8's diabolically clever Steampunk-style game, this gear-based puzzler will also be a dynamic public spectacle in Home's Central Plaza.
"We're thrilled to be partnering with PlayStation Home to create and develop games that step outside the parameters of traditional game development and we're really looking forward to the creative opportunities that lie ahead," said Founding Codename Partner Jesse Vigil. "Our model of pulling together teams of developers and allowing them to make their creative dreams a reality has only one main tenet — any game created for PlayStation Home is graphically and visually entertaining to both play and watch, at the same time."
Now these sound like the sort of games I'd log into PlayStation Home to play. I'd daresay I'd log into Home just to watch other people playing these.
It's great to see Sony making an effort with the service, but I worry it might be too late, and that many gamers have already written the service off.
Now how much would you play?