Exactly right. Apart from "doing it first", there is no technical reason MS & Nintendo couldn't copy *exactly* the same system. The Wii may struggle in terms of caching (and will have less realistic avatars/Mii's), but apart from that - it could be exactly the same. Still - kudos to Sony for doing it first. Now they just have to make it real... and make it work (anyone remember Killzone/Motorstorm at E3 a few years ago?).

Nintendo would never do something this wide-open because it wouldn't be kid/family-frieldly. OTOH an online-enabled Animal Crossing Wii would almost certainly be a lot more *fun*, even if it's limited to your wii-code-swapping friends.

Point taken. I did not take into account Silver users. However, I imagine it's higher than 20-30%. I am curious about this since your estimate is so low. Just seems to me that if you have a 360 that has so many games that are better if you can play online, that you'd have to take advantage of it by having what is (so far) the best online service. I've been arguing that playing online games for the 360 for a few years negates the cost savings of not getting a PS3 instead, but now you're got me very curious about what the real percentage is. That does make me happy knowing Microsoft isn't leeching off people as much as I thought they were. Also, I'd think they'd have to take the server costs either way but I'd think that $60-100 mil would cover it, perhaps not. Sony has been dealing with massive server costs since EQ1 launched and they found out their servers couldn't handle it (I was there as I'm sure some of you were as well...it sucked those first few weeks). Battle.net is free, though, heh.

A few thouhts on this: I'm getting a Wii so I'm all for Nintendo expanding the service...but some have complained that they fear the Home will not make things accessible fast enough, that you'll have to walk to places to get to them. I think there will be a menu that zooms you places. I have not played animal crossing so maybe someone can help me here, but would zooming around be possible/fair in Animal Crossing? I guess teleporting to certain places or to a menu that goes to other games would be fair. The big difference though is that the PS3 has a HD that will have more on it to access from the Home than a Wii could from a S/D card. Anyway, my favorite quote here is "doing it first" because this truly is a unique combination of features in a fantastic looking world. Creating a similar world would be copying Sony. Sony may have borrowed some features but it's features that are common to many devices and are just common sense. Kudos to Microsoft for being the first to do achievement points (although other games have leaderboards and such, but over an entire console is nice), but really, is it that unique of an idea? Why should other companies be called "copy cats" for coming up with something that keeps up with progress in games. NCAA Football has a "trophy case" from winning stuff. EA also did achievement points across all of their games first on the PS2 at least. It saved on the memory card and auto unlocked stuff when you loaded a new game based on how many previous games you played. Microsoft got the idea from other uses of rewards. Anyway...Sony is not the first to do a social online world, they are not the first to have avatars, they are not the first to stream content in a "game" world (music at least...not sure if video streaming has been done...), BUT they are the first to combine all these into a console based world and make it so good looking. I do hope they add unrealistic avatars though. I'd rather not put myself in there...maybe I will...

Well, I have to give it to Sony, home, looks pretty cool. Still won't pay $600 for a game console tho. I think this is showing the Sony will definitely rival xbox live. I personally could care less about all of those other features. All I want from Nintendo is online play. I connect to a game with few friends and kick their ass or cooperatively kick someone else's ass. I don't care about keeping trophies or downloading movies/etc on my game machine. That's what my computer is for. I can spend less than $600 and build a much nicer media computer/dvr. It could not only download and view media but, store a ton more, record tv, edit anything and so on. I want a game machine to play games.

You are saying that a Second Life clone will smash Halo 3? This feature will not increase the PS3 sales. If it became popular Microsoft would just copy it and then have it on Xbox Live. Sony needs to fix what they have before they add new features. Still no unified friends list, custom sound tracks, PC streaming or in-game messages.

What's with your sig? Whats the point by it? I may fork over 600 bucks if the ps3 reaches 4 million us sales.

i didnt know you could predict the future..

You guys are nuts. This thing has been getting more positive reviews than practically anything Sony has done in its gaming division. All the writers and gaming folks are giving it a big thumbs up and saying it may even be superior to XBL. It may not drive sales, but it is FREE and it's going to be good for anyone currently gaming on the PS3.

"may" is the key word since no one has gotten hands on. I think allot of this skepticism is well placed since home will either end up a great success or failure.