Sony’s hardware marketing director John Koller gets my props today for saying something that would send other flacks into panic mode. He recently showed astonishment that people buy virtual goods for their Playstation Home avatar with real currency. “It’s amazing to me that someone would buy a 50 cent chair for their PlayStation Home apartment with real money, but the revenue that comes from that is significant,” he said at iHollywood’s Digital Living Room conference in Santa Clara,  Koller said Home is a profit maker due to the advertising revenue and, of course, the things people buy for their virtual selves. Koller didn’t provide figures, but at E3, Sony noted that branded virtual goods for Street Fighter IV and Resident Evil 5 sold 200,000 units over two months.

Koller’s comments were part of a larger discussion on how Sony wants to build out the Playstation 3 as an entertainment hub. In addition to expanding Home, Koller said Sony will experiment with original, television-style content such as reality shows, exclusive to the Playstation Network. “We’re starting to turn the PlayStation Network into an actual network as defined by what you’d expect from an HBO perspective where new and interesting content constantly breaks through,” he said. Though the content will probably be gamer-centric at first, Sony would expand its offerings if the idea caught on. The first show will launch in the coming months

http://gamercrave.com/people-buy-crap-for-their-avatars-even-sony-cant-believe-it/1173/

and who said home was a failure?

It'd be nice if you can fight in Home when your avatar is wearing SF costumes.

Well then he would be really surprised if he say how much I spent I my Home avatar. LOL

200k units. That's insane.

A fool and his money are soon parted, I suppose.

200k units over 2 months.

Imagine what FF13 things will do!

Oh yeah, another nice article to show to the Home doubters

lol, he is laughing at his customers and must really think they are stupid

He's not laughing at people. He just doesn't understand it, personally.

If you like the kind of social experience Home gives you for free, I can understand why you might be willing to pay some small sum of money to spruce up the experience, for you and your friends, some.

People buy postcards, and plastic trinkets from vending machines next to bubblegum machines, for more. I think I understand it from that perspective -- which isn't to say I understand it directly, but I do see the similarity.

I don't understand why people spend money to watch movies in the theater (where the volume is always WAY too loud), when they could just rent the Blu-Ray at some later point, and watch it in their home theater with their friends, while eating better popcorn/snacks than are available at the movie theater anyway.  Yet people do it.  Lots of people.

I have never bought any XBox360 Avatar/PlayStation Home clothes, but I can see how some people might be tempted to spend a few bucks a week to splurge on those.  But to compare the guilty pleasure of those microtransactions to the sheer joy of watching a movie in a real theatre is plain silly.  I like buying Blu Ray just as much as the next guy, but to watch a Blockbuster movie on a giant screen with 4K digital projection (with 3D glasses on in many cases) beats the pants off anything I do at home on my 60" plasma and 5.1 Surround sound setup.  And I can never play the movie at home as loud as I want, because my wife always makes me turn it down.  One must be able to feel the bass thump of each explosions through the subwoofers as well as hear every line of dialog being whispered by a couple during their intimate moments in order to truly experience a movie.  And I don't go there for the quality of snacks.  If I am hungry before the movie starts, I might get some food, but I won't be doing it for the taste and not comparing it to someting I buy for that purpose.

Your take on the theater illustrates my point well.  I cannot stand the theater, because I have no control over the volume, and its always deafeningly loud.  On top of that, a single movie ticket is near $12 where I live -- I can rent a BD for less than that, and have a half dozen friends watch it, to boot.  I'd rather rent a movie and eat $70 in good food with friends, instead of having my eardrums sore the next day, and have to risk my life driving through traffic in a 3-car entourage to see a show at the local theater with pals.
From that "different things, different people" perspective, the Home/Avatar purchasing makes sense.

Of course people buy things for there avatars,what else is there to do really? I personally think home needs more interactive items,like in the sims games.