http://www.ign.com/articles/2014/10/01/playstation-home-was-a-commercial-success

NDreams CEO Patrick O’Luanaigh calls Sony’s PlayStation Home a commercial success in a goodbye letter to the virtual world.

In a post on GamesIndustry.biz, O’Luanaigh says that UK developer nDream and other studios generated up to seven-figure revenues for years on Home, refuting claims that Home is a “commercial failure”.

O'Luanaigh lobbied Sony to let nDreams create unique virtual content for PlayStation Home before it went live in December 2008. NDreams launched Xi, an alternate reality game that combined “Home spaces, games, websites and live events around the world”. The studio was a driving force behind the project's success.

Despite Sony's attempt to make PlayStation Home a PS3 "advertising platform form" or a gaming platform within the PS3, Home would become a unique platform where users could socialize and share experiences, O'Luanaigh argued.

O’Luanaigh says the departure of former president of Sony Computer Entertainment Worldwide Studios Phil Harrison in 2008 hampered its success at the highest levels. The loss of Home’s “founding father” meant the loss of its biggest champion and promoter.

“I still believe that had Harrison stayed at Sony, things may have been very different,” O’Luanaigh says. “But regardless of how you feel about PlayStation Home, no one can deny that it has been an incredible experiment.”

At one point, 19 million users populated PlayStation Home.  The service came back "bigger and stronger" after the infamous hack that crippled the PlayStation Network for a few weeks in April 2011.

Last week Sony announced it will be shutting down the virtual world social networking service on March 31, 2015.

“My feeling is one of sadness,” O’Luanaigh says. “Not because Home is closing, but because Sony doesn’t appear to appreciate what an incredible experiment PlayStation home was.”

Sony will cease publishing new content on November 12. Players will not be able to download content after December 3. Sony will be offering free content to players who stick with the service until its March 31 shutdown.