It might be hard to remember now, when Sony seems to be largely on top of the game when it comes to providing network services and infrastructure, but back in the early PS3 days, they were struggling. They were struggling so much that they tried all sorts of things to differentiate themselves from the obviously superior network services infrastructure that Microsoft had at the time with Xbox Live. And one of the many things that they tried was PlayStation Home, which was meant to be a sort of ‘Second Life’ virtual simulator where an avatar associated with your PSN account would hang out in a virtual space and be able to interact with other users.
Needless to say, it was a disaster and never took off, though Sony insists that it made them money. Still, though, it was never the network defining feature that Sony had hoped it would be, and with PSN finding its footing in later years, its closure was always a question of when, not if.
And now we have an answer to said question- as of this morning, the service has been closed. For good. It’s the end of an era, I suppose. An era of even more misguided attempts at network services differentiation than Nintendo’s.
That’s saying something.