Its was mocked by many at the time but according to PlayStation boss Jim Ryan the PS3’s PlayStation Home was 10-15 years ahead of its time.
Even if you had a PlayStation 3 you’ve probably long forgotten about PlayStation Home, the free social hub for the service that, at the time, was derided for a lack of content and having too little to do.
In the years since, though, the idea of a virtual meeting place, where everyone has their own custom avatars, has become a lot more mainstream, and it’s easy to see PlayStation Home as a precursor to Meta’s, admittedly nebulous, metaverse plans.
PlayStation exec Jim Ryan seems to agree, as he not only suggested it was ahead of its time but revealed, ‘We have a couple of projects underway that are very exciting for us, in terms of creating some sort of game-type metaverse which can possibly have collaboration with other parts of Sony.’
He didn’t, as you might imagine, offer this information willingly; it was instead part of the revelations from the legal battle between Microsoft and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).
Thanks to a mistake by Microsoft a number of documents that were supposed to be kept private were released to the public and some of them are still being sorted through.
One is an interesting Q&A between Ryan and investors from financial services corporation Fidelity. A version of the discussion was previously made public but was heavily redacted, while the version leaked by Microsoft reveals everything, as shown on Reddit.
In it, Ryan discusses his long-stated plan to have 10 new live service games by 2026, despite the fact that none of them have been announced yet (The Last Of Us multiplayer game is assumed to be one but that’s never been confirmed and the game now seems to be on the backburner).
Ryan suggests that many of the titles will be based on existing IP, which fits with rumours of a Horizon multiplayer game, but insists that, ‘First person, graphically beautiful narrative rich games will continue to be the bedrock of our first party publishing business.’
(None of Sony’s recent first party games are first person so he probably meant single-player when he said that.)
This was back in 2022, so given how Sony has announced nothing since, either in terms of single-player or live service games, it’s impossible to tell whether plans have changed.
One thing that Ryan hasn’t mentioned at all before is the prospect of a PlayStation Home successor. He was initially asked about his VR plans for the metaverse, but his comments suggest that whatever he’s talking about does not require a headset.
‘We had something called PlayStation Home for the PS3 and that was a very early manifestation of a platform metaverse. It was probably 10- 15 years ahead of its time. The second is from the studio perspective,’ he said.
‘We have a couple of projects underway that are very exciting for us, in terms of creating some sort of game-type metaverse which can possibly have collaboration with other parts of Sony.
‘Sony’s entertainment assets have huge potential in the metaverse area. As for VR2, we see it as having a role down the road, more in the mid-term.’
That suggests a non-VR metaverse that will appear relatively soon. Sadly, it also underlines Sony’s tragically poor support for PlayStation VR2, with Ryan barely mentioning it, despite that being what the question was supposed to be about.
Email [email protected], leave a comment below, follow us on Twitter, and sign-up to our newsletter.
MORE : The Elder Scrolls 6 is absolutely definitely not coming to PS5 reveals new court documents
MORE : Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth only PS5 exclusive for three months
MORE : PS5 shock news: September State Of Play was yet another nothingburger
Follow Metro Gaming on Twitter and email us at [email protected]
To submit Inbox letters and Reader’s Features more easily, without the need to send an email, just use our Submit Stuff page here.
For more stories like this, check our Gaming page.
![GameCentral Newsletter](https://metro.co.uk/wp-content/client-mu-plugins/metro-newsletters/signups/images/gamecentral-signup-logo.png)
Sign up to all the exclusive gaming content, latest releases before they're seen on the site.
Share this with