I think home can pay off in the future when the price point gets to 199 dollar mark. I just don't see a ton of hardcore gamers who are the guys who would buy a 599 dollar game machine spending thier time decorating a virtual apartment. I hope the data is stored with sony because if I did do it I would not want it leaching off my limited internet connection.
Well, data you downloaded *FROM* Sony could be streamed by just sending the URL/address of where you downloaded it from, but I doubt photos/home movies would be stored on Sony's servers, not just becaue of the added hassle of replication and disk storage needed, but because of privacy issues. I also don't think people will be able to get into your apartment without you inviting them.
As for price point, are you aware how much money people are spending on Second Life? They sell *virtual realestate* in that game, rented from $5 to up to $300 PER MONTH rent (real dollars), and people have conducted real estate deals in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.
If having a tricked out HOME becomes as fashionable as having a myspace page, you could very well have people buying PS3s for this service, if and only if, it becomes "fashionable" How many times have we heard the naysayers before? The price argument gets old after a while. The iPod was supposed to be a failure too, because it was so friggin expensive compared to other music players. Yet, the iPod became the cool, fashionable thing to have, and now they're outselling everything.
I am personally not very interested in HOME, but this idea that the only people who buy $500-600 consoles are the few hardcore people who want to play GoW or RFoM type games, I think it somewhat mistake. It is true that mainstream people do not buy $600 game consoles. But it is not true that every early adopter only cares about shooters and racers. I'm somewhat anti-social myself, and I don't even chat very much in IM or on the phone, so HOME is just more of what I don't like to do anyway. But there are lots of people who LOVE spending all their time hanging out socializing, and shooters and racers are not neccessarily the most enjoyable ways to socialize.