Sony has announced at the Tokyo Games Show that their interactive online service Home, currently in closed beta, has been delayed until Spring 2008.

At an Xbox 360 games preview event we caught up with a nicely placed Microsoft executive to try and find out the Sony rival's thoughts on the news, and whether Home would pose a competitive challenge, when it eventually does launch.

John Rooke, Microsoft's UK marketing manager for second and third party Xbox 360 games, cut to the chase and said: "I think Sony will struggle".

Revealing that, "We hope to have 10 million users online by E3", up from the 7.1 million they have now, Rooke talked about why he thinks Xbox Live has managed to achieve such high audience numbers:

"Lots of people complained when we launched Xbox Live about our rigorous standards, but it has meant that now we can offer a complete service that works every time, for everyone."

Aspects of Xbox Live are carefully managed by Microsoft in order to ensure that any games developer can produce reliable Live-compatible multi-playing options.

It appears that Sony has not followed this path, as well as the Home delays, Virtua Fighter 5 is an example of a title that will offer more multi-playing features on the Xbox 360 platform.