PlayStation Home Is Seeing Record Traffic After The PlayStation Network Outage.

Of course, this is surprising because it comes on the back of the PlayStation Network outage.

“We’re having record traffic in Home. The week we restored the service, we hit a new record in terms of weekly unique users,” PlayStation Home director Jack Buser told Gamasutra, explaining that the virtual world is the only service to experience growth since the PSN's return.

“We were watching the numbers and we were just so excited. We were just dancing in the streets,” Buser said. Presumably he was doing the robot.

“The numbers are through the roof. I think it speaks to the loyalty of our user base, and to the power of these kinds of platforms.”

We actually jumped into PlayStation Home last night to check out the E3 2011 booth, which is a real strike of social marketing genius. As you explore the space you can watch trailers from various banner PlayStation 3 titles — each of which rewards you with a new avatar item. The Sweet Tooth mask you receive after watching the Twisted Metal trailer is particularly cool.

The Space really dangles the cord though, promising you access to a VIP area if you watch all eight trailers. There's absolutely nothing of interest in the VIP area — a demo version of an upcoming PlayStation Home arcade cabinet is about the only highlight — but we ended up watching all the trailers anyway. It's pretty genius. Given the casual audience of PlayStation Home, a lot of people are probably getting their first taste of games like Twisted Metal and Resistance 3 by visiting the space. That's smart.

We will just add, there were about 60 people hovering around the booth at the same time as us. It was late too. PlayStation Home is constantly packed. Sony must be making a tidy sum from the endeavour.