Playstation Home is getting shut down. What does this mean for Asia?

Sony’s virtual 3D world, Playstation Home, is getting shut down. The service will end in Asian, European, and American territories on March 31, 2015. It sounds drastic; the Playstation Home service has been live since 2008 and Wikipedia reports it as having had 31 million users back in March 2013. But does it really affect Asia all that much? Well, perhaps not specific parts of Asia.

To be blunt, Playstation Home’s shutdown means absolutely nothing in Southeast Asia in particular. I personally moved a grand total of one sofa before quitting the game forever. The virtual world offered as part and parcel of your Playstation Network account back in the early days of the Playstation 3 hasn’t quite impacted the region for several reasons.

Many countries in Southeast Asia still have developing economies. Consoles are expensive when compared to the low cost of living in many areas. For instance, a Playstation 3 was priced at around $400 right up to the launch of the Playstation 4 in Malaysia. The former is still priced at about $300 in the Philippines—not a whole lot for many of us, but still an amount equivalent to the monthly wage of many people.

(See: What Nintendo’s new consoles for emerging markets need to do to really succeed)

If a gamer did happen to get her paws on a Playstation 3 console, she was more likely to jump right into its boundless catalog of games than to tinker around with a virtual social network rendered in 3D. One also needs to consider how many Playstation 3 consoles in Asia were modded so they could accept pirated discs, rendering online connectivity impossible without Sony noticing the fix.

Secondly, the same Southeast Asian countries with developing economies usually also have limited internet connectivity. While many console games work just fine on an offline console, Playstation Home is an online-only application. The lack of dedicated internet access in many parts of Asia means you’ve got an application that’s just not used.

Of course, one cannot discount the effect of the dozens of more accessible PC-based MMORPGs. Many Asia-developed MMORPGs have a social element to them, Maplestory being the least of them. Maplestory was one of the first games popular throughout Southeast Asia that had customizable avatars and “life choices,” like getting married. Social features have always been strong in Maplestory and similar games, and these don’t require a console—one simply had to hop over to an internet cafe.

Playstation Home’s closure no doubt marks an important milestone in Sony’s glittering timeline, but in the context of Southeast Asia, it doesn’t seem to have caused more than a ripple. We’ve reached out to Sony for Asian user statistics for Playstation Home and will update accordingly.

Update 29-09-2014: Sony was unable to disclose Asian user statistics for Playstation Home.

(via Gamesindustry.biz, image source)

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