Shortly after the announcement of Home Sony further detailed what the service could offer, pointing out the "virtually limitless" possibilities for promotion and advertising. Sony obviously has plenty of faith in the viability of ad placements considering that this new social network is going to be primarily supported by it. Casting their hat into the ring of in-game ads showed the significance of the ad medium and certainly gave pause to any company impacted.

"You look at these live networks, and advertising is [only] one revenue stream," said Townsend. "When you look at how one can monetize digital assets, these sorts of things are critical going forward. They have the games that they produce, the forums that gamers will be able to use and [they] provide an isolated universe for each game. They want as large an audience as possible so they can monetize more people. In-game ads are still embryonic, but the money is increasing. It's getting more and more significant."

"They haven't defined how the advertising opportunities will work," said Epstein simply. "It's tremendously important to Sony publishers to help their revenues with their games. And while the Home announcement wasn't about in-game, it says strongly 'We believe in advertising and believe it has a place on consoles.'"

It's clearly obvious that both Double Fusion and IGA would want to be involved with Home. As yet, however, Sony has not officially stated how or if these companies will be involved with their 3D online community. Indeed, Sony declined to comment because it's hammering out advertising deals with companies right now, so the details revealed to GameDaily BIZ on the record were only in the most general of terms.

"I'm limited in what I can say there," confessed Epstein. "We have partnerships with leading publishers across the PlayStation platforms. We don't take it as a right to be on the console. Our experience positions us very well to participate, but it's up to Sony. Publishers would certainly like to see the platform remain open. It's like Lending Tree; When in-game advertisers compete, you win. When you compete, you get leverage. When you're open, you'll have a wide variety. Should Sony want to work with us, we think the market would support us."

"We hope they'll be open to us, because otherwise that will lead to more fragmentation in the market," asserted Townsend. "Right now, when IGA goes to the market and starts to sell the ads in-game, there's going to be fragmentation with Massive on Xbox 360, whoever is on PS3, and whatever is on PC. What Microsoft's [approach leads to] is buying bulk over different mediums. For example the CPM for Xbox 360 might be $15 dollars for ads, and on the PS3 it might be $31. This sort of attitude from Microsoft is very self-serving and undermining while we work with Madison Avenue and push this as a premium medium. The question becomes: How can we maintain this moving forward? If 360 became an open system, IGA would take on all 3 SKUs of the game, and we would have a higher CPM for it moving forward. As for how Sony will monetize? It's been rumored that the toll is around 15 to 20 percent."

"These devices, the 360 and PS3, are more than games machines; they're media devices. Because of this gaming audience, which has a broadening demographic, there is a lot of opportunity to grow them. Major publishers have to start thinking like media companies, not game houses. Games are more than just games; they are hot media properties. The more collaboration between advertisers, console makers and in-game companies, the better," Townsend added.

It seems likely that online communities such as Home will become more common on consoles. Whether third parties will try and bring such products in, or if they'll even be allowed, is unknown. As for Microsoft, they're offering something somewhat equivalent in Xbox Live, and while an online community with Miis would be a dream come true for many of Mario's true believers, only Nintendo really knows what Nintendo is going to do.

"I think we'll see the use of console devices in a lot of different ways, and Sony's pointing to one of them: as multimedia devices," commented Epstein. "Sony and others have not lost the focus on gaming, however. These are powerful computers hooked to the TV and now the Internet."

"You'll definitely see more online communities," agreed Townsend. "You see the success Xbox has online with its community. You see it on PC. In Germany alone, we saw a great increase in gamers with the use of gaming communities. Communities like this lets them engage the gamer, and maybe monetize them. Xbox is heading in that direction anyway. And Nintendo integrated a GameSpy option recently. I'm surprised Nintendo is using GameSpy instead of something internal, but it could be a short term solution. There are great qualities if you can connect gamers."

"If you're one of the big three, it's very efficient to market over e-mail," he added. "These communities have multiple ways to be monetized. Most game publishers and branders look to more effective ways to reach their consumer in a more cost effective way. If you sought them in their communities you could reach them in a much more cost effective manner. If you they gave more incentives to register, like with media assets, it would help build these communities. It's just not happening effectively right now."