After numerous delays following its debut at the Game Developers Conference in March 2007, Sony seems ready to get serious about Home.

At this year's Leipzig Games Convention, Home producer Van der Meulen told Ryan Clements of IGN that "it is a 100 percent guarantee that Home will be released by the end of this calendar year." 

Aside from this bold statement, he's also made several more assurances while showing off some of the service's unique features to Clements, who seems confident in der Meulen's promise:

"He has absolutely no doubt that this will be the case, so it looks like the long wait to come Home is finally reaching its conclusion.  Van der Meulen also assured me, quite adamently, that Home will always be a free service -- only premium content will need to be purchased.  I know some gamers were concerned that once Home reached a certain user base, a fee might be applied to the service, but this is not the case.  Van der Meulen says that there are no plans to charge for Home, even in the far future...

I know some people are skeptical about the service, bu tI think Home has a lot of potential and cold really personalize Sony's online service.  I look forward to really getting into Home sometime this year."

Well, a promise is a promise, and 100 percent is a pretty steep figure.  To the development team of Home, we wish you Godspeed.