Sony admits Home reveal was too early
At least as far as the devs were concerned.
In an interview with Develop, the team behind PlayStation Home has admitted that they think the virtual world was announced too early.
Game director Peter Edward said that outside developers, targeted to create third-party content for Home, became wary when they realised how far it was from completion after its announcement early in 2007.
"Initially, there was real excitement from people, because we were showing something really different and that had a lot of potential," Edward said.
"And then there's the realisation that, well, we probably announced it too early - GDC 07 was a long time ago. I think there was sort of recognition amongst developers of 'Oh, this is interesting, but there's still a lot of work to be done.'"
Home went through numerous subsequent delays, with Sony eventually succumbing to the public pressure for some kind of launch by opening its beta to all users last month - without much third-party content in place.
However, Edward is convinced things are going to get better - and today's news of EA support would seem to bear him out.
"The feedback we've been getting is that, in the early days, it was a bit thin on the ground in terms of support and tools, but now it's mature and everybody's starting to produce some really interesting stuff," Edward said.
Elsewhere in the interview, Edward and lead programmer Mitch Goodwin talk candidly about the development Home, revealing that it started life as a lobby system for The Getaway: Black Monday on PS2.
"We recently found a bit of code which had weapon pickups in it; it was legacy from back in the day when the target was very different," Goodwin said.
Read our beta impressions or visit the PlayStation Home gamepage for more on Sony's virtual world.