A website is claiming that Home may be being pruned to replace the XMB of the PS3. They claim that this would be a bad move from Sony as Home will not appeal to all gamers despite being interesting in its nature, it is believed that Home is simply nothing more than a novelty.

This last point is both encouraging and disappointing. It is good to see that Sony will continue to improve the quality of their product (which they are distributing for free after all). While the XMB has substantially improved since its first release – and continues to do so –, we would expect that this launch does not suffer from too many missing or incomplete features just so the product can be pushed out the door before Christmas.

As for Home replacing the XMB: Aside from whether this would even be feasible, we can’t stress enough how bad of an idea it is. Home, as it stands, is an interesting experiment, but it will not appeal to all consumers. We believe that many consumers will grow tired of its novelty after a few uses at least in the short term. It is very possible that it will gather momentum as it matures, and more critical features are added. Sony, in its effort to address the feature gap between its XMB offering and Xbox Live is pitching Home as the next-gen interface for consumers. Unfortunately, most consumers only want a simple, easy to use and direct interface to play games, communicate with friends and be entertained. We are therefore skeptical about its potential as a replacement for a simple interface.

Subzer0 via maxconsole.net »