Oh I imagine Home is costing Sony a fair bit more than that.  As someone above mentioned, maintaining it will be just as expensive.

And of course, if the software isn't going to take off, its all non-recoverable.

Taking what I assume is you're sarcastic jab at Microsoft, we can look at a better way to spend money on software:

-Make a $50 million recoverable LOAN to secure exclusive content for a franchise affiliated with ANOTHER console brand which goes on to ensure that brand switches to identifying with Microsoft's brand, mitigates ANY console boost for it's competitor and this is all BEFORE the arrival of said content.

-Ensure that the full $50 million LOAN is likely to be recovered (and in this case, its likely to be recovered and THEN some) so that it can then be re-invested into more AAA titles.

HOME will be better than XBox Live and it will help boost PS3 hardware sales. HOME is also free.

Abusolutely, it's free and walkthrough videos already look fantastic!

I am happy Sony decided to polish things up further before release, listening to feedback from the community. IMO it was absolutely right to show it early and delay the first full release to suit consumer and developer wishes, finally seeing what Sony has been working on for all those years this gets developers and the community thinking about the potentials in PS3 games, cool unthought of features, how to best implement support in games, address points of criticism, etc.

IMO this and future firmware updates should take the social aspect much further than anything which can be done on the 360 with it's full 16 MB firmware flash memory chip and lack of default harddrive (vs 2 x 128 MB firmware flash memory and default harddrive on the PS3).

Home allows for customized virtual homes with custom personal content, watching or listening to user content with friends within a highly interactive environment, play games of pool, bowling, chess, darts, etc with you friends, interactively watch content with friends in virtual cinemas, virtual arcade mini-games, launch games within home with newly met people, etc all for free!

I understand mostly 360 fans are usually highly sceptical, it's not on the 360.

Worth the price of admission? Yes.
Worth the wait? NO.

MikeB said: Abusolutely, it's free and walkthrough videos already look fantastic! I am happy Sony decided to polish things up further before release, listening to feedback from the community. IMO it was absolutely right to show it early and delay the first full release to suit consumer and developer wishes, it gets developers and the community thinking about the potentials, cool unthought of features, how to best implement support in games, address points of criticism, etc. IMO this and future firmware updates should take the social aspect much further than anything which can be done on the 360 with it's full 16 MB firmware flash memory and lack of default harddrive (vs 2 x 128 MB firmware flash memory and default harddrive on the PS3). Home allows for customized virtual homes with custom content, watching or listening to user content with friends within a highly interactive environment, play games of pool, bowling, chess, darts, etc with you friends, interactively watch content with friends in virtual cinemas, virtual arcade mini-games, launch games within home newly met people, etc all for free! I understand mostly 360 fans are usually highly sceptical, it's not on the 360.

Jesus crizzy, your post sounds like a Sony press release on Home.  They should pay you for all the promoting you do.

Except Techblorge is a highly PS3-biased website.  And they have been HIGHLY sceptical of Home lately. 

Unfortunately, as some other people in this thread have pointed out, it looks like Home won't be of a quality significant enough to justify the amount of time people have been waiting for it.

Even if it is free.

Yeah, 'cause free online gameplay with less lag than XBL sucks ass.

Has anyone read Snow Crash?  Home sounds like the online world in Snow Crash.  And that world was pretty sweet for haxxor ninja pizza delivery heroes.

If you read the Kotaku guy's article, he complains about two things:

1. Lot's of loading.

Well, it is a beta, so I'm sure they're working on that. He also said it was the first time Home had been installed on the ps3 he had been using, so the load times may have been abnormally long because of that.

2. It's boring.

Of course, he also mentioned that he was the only person roaming around in the thing. What's a social network without all the people? Once this opens up to the public, things should be a bit more lively.

It seems to me that the main complaint about Home is that there's lots of loading. So long as they trim that down, I'm sure it will be fine. Once they get more people in there and have more developers make cool dev spaces (for example, the Uncharted space will provide you with a free 2D sidescroller, and the Warhawk space allows friends to meet up in a war room before jumping directly into a server and going to battle), then I'm sure Home will become a pretty cool place to roam around in.

Plus it's free. :P

Looking forward to it still, just not anticipating until it's finally available. It certainly can't hurt.

You get what you pay for. I would be more optimistic if Home cost money.

I still cant get my head around the concept that the majority of the console market will want a "Second Life" to explore on their Gaming Machine. Sony must be banking on getting some massive advertisement revenue from Second Life since surely its only going to stop people from playing and therefore buying new software?

What would have been much more interesting would have been if sony had put together a MMORPG to see how viable they are on a console.