"Home" on PS3

[zero2000]

A completely interactive, FREE Online sims community for the Playstation 3 will be available for download through the playstation network.

This has to be the best secret sony has ever released for the PS3. This could very well possibly push playstation online network above Xbox Live.

PlayStation 3 - GDC 07 Home Trailer HD


Discuss.

[Libertine]

More info direct from Sony :


PLAYSTATION®3 Home Information Thread - PLAYSTATION®3 Home - PlayStation.com Forums

Making your own personalized 3D character or avatar. These realistic human characters are highly customizable with different body types, skin tones, ages, clothing and accessories, creating a unique personality for each user.

Exploring the 3D community that is Home – a sleek, modern indoor space featuring spacious common areas, retail shops, game lobbies and extensible, customizable personal apartments.

Communicating with others through text, audio and video chat, along with sophisticated emotional animations for each character.

Being assigned an apartment in Home where others can be invited to join you as you show off your own style in an area you can personalize yourself with furniture, art and other items. You can even show your video, pictures and music content stored on your PS3 hard drive.

“Hall of Fame,” where you can display new 3D trophies that will be unlocked through in-game milestones in PS3 games.

General Information:

Published by: Sony Computer Entertainment

Developed by: SCE Studios London

Number of Players: Unlimited

Price: Free

Media: Download from the PLAYSTATION®Store

Release Date:

* US: Quarter 3, 2007
* UK: Quarter 3, 2007

Platform: PLAYSTATION®3

SCEI Announces Ground-Breaking, Next-Generation 3D Online-User Community For PLAYSTATION®3 - "Home" (SCEI)

Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. (SCEI) today announced the unveiling of a first-of-its-kind 3D online user community service for the PLAYSTATION®3 (PS3™) computer entertainment system. The service, known as “Home,” will enable users to create their own avatar and explore a real-time virtual community, as if they are playing a detailed 3D game for PS3. The service will become available globally beginning in fall 2007.

Home will be demonstrated at the Game Developer’s Conference (GDC) in San Francisco, California on March 7 as a key element of SCEI Worldwide Studios’ President Phil Harrison’s keynote presentation titled “Game 3.0: Developing and Creating for the 3rd Age of Videogames.”

Home is a real-time online 3D, networked community available on the PLAYSTATION®Network. It allows PS3 users to interact, communicate, join online games, shop, share private content and even build and show off their own personal spaces to others in real time. Home will be available as a free download from the PLAYSTATION®Store and will launch directly from XMB™ (XrossMediaBar) on PS3.

With an avatar uniquely customized according to each user’s preference, users can explore the 3D community that is Home – a sleek, modern environment featuring spacious common areas; custom spaces dedicated to specific games; and personal apartments. Each user is assigned an apartment in Home where they can invite others to join them as they show off their own style in an area they can personalize themselves with furniture, art and other items – even a different view from their windows. They can also show their personal video, pictures and other digital media content found on their PS3 hard drives in their apartments. Very rich interactive communication with others is achieved through built in text, audio and video chat, along with sophisticated emotional animations for each character.

Sharing continues in the “Hall of Fame,” where users can display new 3D trophies that will be unlocked through in-game achievements, as well as real time score rankings in PS3 games.

“This is a significant step forward in the area of user community services and emergent entertainment experiences,” said Izumi Kawanishi, Corporate Executive and CTO Software, SCEI. “While the 3D graphics demonstrate the power of PS3 and the PLAYSTATION Network, the most impressive feature in Home is the variety of ways in which multiple consumers, as well as our third-party partners, can experience the next generation of communication by interacting and sharing among each other. I feel strongly that this unique blend of community, user-generated content, collaboration and commerce will expand the future of computer entertainment.”

Home will go into a closed beta test this spring with a full launch targeted for later this year. By having a broad range of business partners participate in Home, along with an expansive catalog of upcoming game software titles for PS3, SCEI will continue to enhance the new world of entertainment and vigorously promote PS3 as the next generation computer entertainment platform.

Source
GDC 2007: Home Explored (IGN)

Phil Harrison likes to speak in public. Sure, he may not admit it -- but every time I see the man, he's standing on top of a stage or blocking a television set with his elongated frame, microphone in hand.

Want proof?

At this very moment (10:30am Pacific Standard Time) the SCE Worldwide honcho is presenting his "Game 3.0" keynote speech as the opener to the 2007 Game Developer's Conference. There are hundreds of industry folk in attendance, and Big Phil is no doubt grabbing their attention with his company's PS3 initiatives for 2007. He's like a sunrise, that one.

Of course, Phil had to prepare for today's big moment in some way or another, and prepare he did on the top floor of a rather trendy club in San Francisco's Embarcadero yesterday evening. As a special favor to the 80+ press members in attendance, Harrison practiced for this morning's presentation by unveiling everything he's elaborating on right now. The creative new project known as "LittleBigPlanet", the company's philosophy behind the current game generation, and 32-player online-only Warhawk were the major topics. But none of them, not even LittleBigPlanet, took up as much time as "Home" -- Sony's forthcoming PS3 community service.

You've no doubt heard of Home thanks to a pre-conference leak out of popular gaming blog Kotaku, and as it turns out, a lot of the early rumors were true. Users do get their own Mii-like avatar to represent themselves in Home's Virtual space, and there is an achievement-type system that awards players with trophies for accomplishing specific tasks ( unofficially known as "milestones" ).

Described as "the first of its kind," Home is an avatar-based virtual neighborhood built on the shoulders of every PS3 owner who participates. Offered as a free download from the PlayStation Store, the new networked feature installs a unique icon to your XMB and then launches just like a game does. Once connected, users are able to join online games, go shopping, talk with other people, and mess around with various media types for as long as they see fit. And to be honest, it's actually pretty cool.

Virtual PSP

"Your Virtual PSP gives you access to all the navigation, features and options of Home."

Our first taste of Home was a brief look at the 3D world that represents it. Bright and colorful, the environments look similar to a bare bones Grand Theft Auto title, only the surroundings were serene and centered on a garden and water motif. But before we could study the architecture any further, Phil keyed up the "Virtual PSP" component and we were on our way.

Used as a quick navigational tool, the Virtual PSP allows users to hop between bookmarked spaces in their Home universe. Over the course of the entire 30-minute presentation, the PSP was only ever used to transition to new areas, so how much functionality this digital portable actually offers is still a mystery.

Character Customization

"Each person can customize their clothes and facial characteristics, with millions of potential combinations."

Next on Phil's agenda was showing off how to customize avatars, and while they're essentially the same thing as a Mii (re: Nintendo's Wii), they're far more advanced. Not only do character models look legitimately "next-gen," they're also highly modifiable. Heads, torsos, legs, feet, and accessories (plus gender swaps) serve as base edit types, while an indeterminate number of options can be selected from there. Harrison also confirmed that items and clothing will be both free and premium depending on the piece, and that playing certain games unlocks even more bonuses. Phil even mentioned that face customization would get better with time.

The Central Lounge

"The Central Lounge is the large social meeting space and is your initial starting point in Home. Communication is key in Home, and there are many simple ways to get to know people. Emotes are animations that get your point across fast. You can access short phrases using Quick Write, or if you have something big to say you can type with a Virtual or USB keyboard, or talk with a Bluetooth headset."

Once an avatar has been chosen, it can then move about the world freely and its first stop will likely be "The Central Lounge." Here, patrons will be able to see other people moving about and conversing with one another, and Sony has truly thought of everything when it comes to communicating (Quick Write options, USB keyboard support, and Bluetooth voice chat seem to integrate seamlessly). Clients can also use emotes to convey moods or just be ridiculous with motions like disco dancing, shoulder shrugs, pointing, waving, and plenty more.

One of the more interesting aspects of Home is actually made for businesses as opposed to users. That is, every wall can be used for dynamic content -- or more specifically -- advertising. Posters, HD-quality imbedded video, and eventually even websites can be slapped on the walls like a coat of paint. "Free through advertising' is obviously the model being used here (it's pretty non-invasive too).

[Libertine]

continued..

Games Space

"The Games Space is where you can meet and relax with your friends with free casual games such as bowling, pool and retro arcade games."

If hanging out and talking to strangers or reading ads isn't your thing, the main lobby comes stocked with a couple of neat little mini-games. "HomePool" and "HomeBowling" were the examples shown off in the demo, but Phil also revealed a mini-arcade where you could play new downloadable titles that would be updated frequently. What's particularly cool about this setup is that you never leave the world when playing since you're free to look around your surroundings and zoom in and out of the arcade screen at any time.

Apartment Space

"Your Apartment Space is your private apartment where you can invite your friends and family. Your free, initial apartment can be decorated and upgraded to the height of luxury with furniture, accessories, pictures and videos from your own collection."

If there's one area where people will spend most of their time, it's definitely going to be "Home Space." Here, users can design their own apartment and modify their living quarters into a quaint little hideaway or a lavish two-story pimp pad. Plus, just like the outside areas are customizable for a paying businesses, your own home can likewise be customized by you.

Pictures, movies, and even websites can be imported from your hard drive or removable memory stick and put onto virtual television sets or picture frames in a matter of seconds. Wallpapers can be customized as well (some selections are even game-themed), and any furniture you buy is entirely physics-based (so there aren't any arbitrary slot restrictions in how many items you can have). Phil showed this off by dropping his virtual Bravia down the stairs a couple of times and made a joke about it being just as sturdy in the game as it is in real life. As an added bit of fun, Harrison even proved that his digital Bravia television set was outputting proximity-based audio, and when he walked too far away from it the sound reacted accordingly.

Sony is hopeful that friends and (more importantly) clans will use these apartments to get together and talk about strategies or setup gaming sessions. Users will be able hang out and listen to MP3s or audio CDs via virtual stereos if they choose, or can launch a group multiplayer game without having to leave their space. Eventually, players will even be able to add personal pool tables and arcade units of their own should they not want to venture out into the Lobbies. It's definitely a cool feature (we just wonder how effective it will be in pulling people in and keeping them there).

Hall of Fame

"The Hall of Fame is the space where your game accomplishments are stored as 3D Trophies and video for public and private display."

As Phil left his apartment, he moved on to my favorite space of the entire presentation -- The Hall of Fame. Sony's answer to the Xbox 360's achievement system, the HOF gives users the ability to view trophies they've earned from playing games in a real 3D way (some trophies even have audio or video aspects to them). What's more, is that patrons can even modify trophy cabinets and pick which trophies they want to show to friends.

Star Wars Episode III fans should also be happy to learn that you can view trophies for games that you haven't even earned yet in another room. Why would they be happy? Because those unearned trophies look like they're sitting in the floating soapboxes from the senate scenes of the last Lucas flick (it's a vast high-tech warehouse). Also of note: among the games scattered throughout the Hall of Fame, titles that have already been released, like Resistance and MotorStorm, had accessible trophies as well. Whether or not that means that you'll get these accomplishments retroactively or through a patch that comes later is unknown.

Sports Lobby

"Both game and non-game brands can strengthen their user communities in Home by custom building their own spaces."

Harrison's next stop was one that we didn't get to see much of, as it was more of a philosophy than it was a currently-existing room. Known as the "Sports Lobby" in this demo, it was an area was where fans of a particular type could congregate for specific games, franchises, characters, or even publishers. The example we saw, while not officially EA, looked a lot like an Electronic Arts room -- with a dedicated sports theme and plenty of mini-games (including a three-point basketball challenge). Obviously, the types of things that companies could do here are limitless, and Harrison plans to have non-gaming content have their own rooms one day as well.

Home Theatre

"The Home Theatre is a shared viewing area for the latest trailers, films and user-created content."

Our last stop was a convincing recreation of a local cinema known appropriately as "The Home Theatre." It's pretty straightforward, though pretty flexible too. Here you can watch DVD or Blu-ray movies you already own, view movies off your hard drive or memory stick, or simply stream content from the PlayStation Store and view it in a room with others while you do so. In the demo, Phil showed a bit of the Casino Royale trailer, a smidgen of Resident Evil Extinction, and then just walked the halls to show off some more navigational stuff.

Leaving the theatre concluded the Home demo, but not the information about it. We learned that it will appear in beta form sometime next month (April), with a finished version available for everyone ready to go this fall. Personally, I can't wait to see more of it. I can't recall having seen application with this much potential for any videogame system prior -- and after all the questions and criticisms that Sony has been hit with since November, it's good to see that it still has tricks up its sleeves, and finally explained what that "Home" button on your Sixaxis controller really does.

Source
GDC 07: PS3 phoning Home this fall (GameSpot)

Imagine a three-dimensional avatar-based socializing sim like Second Life. Now cross it with the online gaming and matchmaking features of Xbox Live. Leaven with dynamic streaming in-game advertising a la Massive, throw in some Pogo.com-esque casual gaming, and add a dash of Sneak King-like merchandising. Heat, stir, let cool, serve, and--voila--you've got Home, the new online service for the PlayStation 3.

Following a flurry of rumors, Sony officially opened Home's doors at a secretive, invite-only event on Tuesday evening at a nightclub near the base of the Bay Bridge. Following the requisite signing of nondisclosure agreements and plying of attendees with high-end nibbles and libations, Sony Worldwide Studios president Phil Harrison took the stage to give a preview of the keynote speech he would deliver the following morning at the 2007 Game Developers Conference.

Using a PowerPoint-like slide show via the PS3's cross-media bar, Harrison outlined the concept behind Home, which he called "Game 3.0." As the executive himself freely admitted, the concept is a riff on Web 2.0, the term applied to the new, more interactive and customer-focused services and sites like Pandora, YouTube, and Flickr.

All the aforementioned sites embrace the concept of what Harrison calls "emergence entertainment," allowing users to upload their own content. When it launches this fall, Home will offer similar functionality to PlayStation 3 users. However, instead of a stripped-down interface, the service will feature a detailed three-dimensional environment with graphics and physics on par with many next-gen games.

Harrison first showed off Home's slick look by showing "the lobby," one of the public forums where PlayStation 3 users can meet and greet each other. Looking like a sleek building out of pre-Cylon-nuclear-holocaust Battlestar Galactica, the lobby was filled with avatars sporting hip hairdos and euro-chic wardrobes. The avatars can communicate on several levels: simple emotion animations (waving, dancing) like those in World of Warcraft, text chat via keyboard or predictive text, voice chat, and video chat.

Besides the lobby, Home will offer a host of other public spaces with a variety of activities. To demonstrate, Harrison had a coworker jaw with a colleague in Europe, then saunter through a fully rendered entertainment complex with bowling lanes, pool tables, and realistic old-school arcade machines like those in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. The machines will offer visitors casual games, with a Choplifter-esque mockup being used for illustration purposes.

Another public space Harrison visited was a movie theater, with posters of and trailers for real-world films. Visitors to the virtual cinema can watch the previews playing on monitors in the lobby or enter actual theaters, potentially to watch full-length films streamed on screens.

Harrison also showed how a Home user could watch video in his virtual abode. Each Home user will receive a basic apartment free of charge and can invite their friends over to their abodes to socialize in a more intimate setting. Harrison said Home apartments can also be used as smaller-scale lobbies for close-knit gaming groups, and even touted them as potential clan headquarters. Users will also be able to host virtual parties in apartments where they can DJ using music files streaming from their PS3 hard drives.

[Libertine]

continued..

Home apartments can be customized with both abstract patterns and game themes; heart wallpaper and Resistance: Fall of Man-branded posters were offered up to the briefing audience as examples. Said virtual abodes can also be filled with designer furniture that can be moved, thrown, or otherwise dislodged with realistic physics. Users can also put picture frames on the wall, to which they can upload any image from their PS3 hard drive. To show the ease of this process, Harrison snapped a shot of the crowd and uploaded it into a frame on the apartment wall within seconds.

Home users can also deck out their apartment with a variety of electronics--all Sony-branded, of course. Not only will said electronics look like their real-world counterparts, they will also function like them. To illustrate this fact, Harrison selected a 42-inch Bravia LCD TV and hung it on the wall. He then selected the trailer for Casino Royale and began to stream it to the television. As a comic afterthought, the demonstration avatar then threw the television down his apartment's stairs. The set didn't break, but it bounced realistically, and the trailer's video continued to play without any skipping.

Throughout his presentation, Harrison made a point of saying that the Home function would be a free download which would be accessible from the PS3's XMB. However, the executive left no question that Sony has come up with plenty of revenue streams for Home. The most basic of these are things PS3 users will pay for: Harrison said there will be high-end--and possibly branded--items of clothing which users can purchase for their avatars. He also showed a "luxury" apartment which will have several floors and a lakeside view--and heavily hinted it would not be gratis.

But while premium content is a no-brainer, Harrison also showed off other, more ingenious ways Sony will glean coin from Home. First of these is in-game advertising. All public spaces and lobbies in Home will have large, dynamically generated virtual video monitors, banners, and billboards hawking various products.

Harrison also showed off a mockup of a whole constellation of public home areas that can be branded to a third-party publisher--or any other company willing to pay the price. He showed off a concept Home area that resembled a cross between a carnival and the EA Sports booth at the Electronic Entertainment Expo. There, visiting avatars could hit balls at a golf-game-branded driving range, sink three-pointers at hoop stations slathered in basketball game logos, or take out their virtual frustrations on boxing-game-themed foam dummies. Presumably all these features will be made available to publishers--for a price.

Lastly, all Home's menus will be accessed via a virtual PlayStation Portable. The demonstrations Harrison used were very reminiscent of the PDA in Doom 3, with avatars pulling reproductions of the handhelds out of their pockets, sustaining the illusion of a virtual world. However, the population of said realm won't be known until later this year. Currently in a limited closed beta, Home will enter a wider beta in April, with launch set for this fall in the US and Europe.

Source
GDC 07: PS3 gamers to get "trophies" (GameSpot)

There's little doubt that the Xbox 360's Gamerscore system can entice console polygamists to spend the night with the platform at the expense of its rivals. After all, when faced with the prospect of playing a game that looks the same and costs the same, why not choose the option that will up what Epic Games' Cliff Bleszinski calls "nerd cred"?

Soon, though, Sony loyalists will literally receive trophies for their own in-game accomplishments.

At a press event last night in San Francisco, Sony Worldwide studios president Phil Harrison unveiled Home, a new online service for the PlayStation 3. Besides avatar-based social networking, Home will sport three-dimensional meeting places, movie theaters, and minigame halls replete with pool and bowling. The service will also give gamers virtual apartments that PS3 owners can decorate with furniture, wallpaper, and Sony-branded electronics.

Home apartments will also come with a "trophy room" in which PS3 gamers can showcase their "gaming accomplishments." Each chamber of honor will have virtual display cases in which users can select fully 3D trophies that will be awarded when a certain milestone in a PS3 game is reached. The awards shown off by Harrison included statuettes for the PlayStation Store games LocoRoco 2 and Super Rub-a-Dub, as well as a Hellghast villain from the forthcoming PS3 Killzone preserved like a heavily armored pheasant under glass.


The virtual trophy rooms will be part of a PlayStation Network-wide service Harrison calls "The Hall of Fame." Users will be able to access a vast hall reminiscent of the Star Wars prequels' senate chambers that will allow them to browse trophies from games they have not yet played. They will be able to see their friends' trophies by paying a visit to said colleagues' Home apartments.

Harrison did not mention whether or not all PS3 games, like 360 games, will be required to award trophies. The Hall of Fame feature will launch alongside Home in the US and Europe this fall.

Source
GDC07: Sony Unveils Home (Kotaku)

As you read this Phil Harrison is standing in front of a packed auditorium at the Game Developers Conference unveiling what I think is a pretty damn cool new, free application for the Playstation 3.

Playstation Home is essentially a living world inside your console. It's probably a flawed analogy but think of it as Second Life meets the PS3.

The free service, which will go into beta this April and hit consoles this fall, will become a new menu item in the cross media bar.

When you select it you will be dropped into a virtual world peopled by life-like avatars. From what we saw during a press screening, customization of these avatars is incredibly flexible, allowing you to create something that looks as much like you as you would want.

Home starts you out in a central lobby. You use a virtual PSP in this world to access features, but can also just walk around. The main lobby we saw included dynamic advertising on billboards, games you could just walk up to and play, like bowling or pool and even a mini arcade that featured some cool little arcade titles.

You can communicate with others in the lobby by talking, typing, using motions or pre-written phrases.

After walking around inside this home lobby for a bit, Harrison jumped his avatar to his private apartment.

The apartment, and there are lots of different types, look very realistic and can be customized with real-world furniture, wallpaper, picture frames that show images from your harddrive, even televisions that stream your own original video content.

The idea, it seems, is that your apartment will become the nexus of your Playstation 3 experience. It is where you can listen to music, look at pictures, watch video, invite your friends over to talk and even go into multiplayer games together to play as a group.

"This could become your clan heaquarters," Harrison said. "From within home you can launch multiplayer games directly. You can then come back into home afterward and talk about it."

Next Harrison showed a more sophisticated apartment. This one had several levels, an outdoor deck and a much nicer design.

Home will also have other public spaces, like the Home Cinema, a sort of virtual movie theater complete with a large front lobby and separate screening rooms.

It's also possible for companies or publishers to create their own spaces. For instance Electronic Arts could create a space that shows off their current and upcoming games in a virtual world that looks more like a mall than a store.

I think this is going to be one of those features that people didn't realize that wanted until they get it. But I think I'll really have to experience it first hand to decide just how well it works.

[Libertine]

........

Source
GDC 2007: Phil Harrison, Sony, Unveil 'Home' (1UP)

Last week's reports on Sony's potential 'Home' service either generated even more hype for Phil Harrison's Game Developer Conference keynote or stole the thunder from Sony's big unveiling. Maybe it did both, and considering what Sony showed with 'Home' -- that may not be a bad thing.

Home is officially being branded as a "3D user community for PlayStation 3" by Sony, but it's also being called an "innovative user community title," effectively blurring the line between "service" and "game." The two-pronged approach to marketing this product may show some confusion as to what home is. That's a question Sony won't be able to answer until this Fall, when PlayStation 3 owners will get their hands on the final free download (the experience enters beta next month).

So, what is 'Home?'It's difficult-to-describe nature places it firmly where Sony wants it -- as the videogame successor to web 2.0 technology. Taking cues from existing MMO, Second Life 'Home' is an extremely customizable user interface that combines form and function into a single elegant package that may ultimately serve as an interface-based foil to Microsoft's Xbox Live.

Right now in 'Home,' players have an avatar that they create and customize via an EA Gameface-type interface. In 'Home''s world, there are public and private spaces. The public spaces are dotted with advertisements (fully customizable, Harrison points out) and those ads may feature game footage running in HD, or movie trailers, or static image advertisements. Additionally in the public space, players may find an arcade game where they can play a new title -- eventually being able to purchase these titles -- or play a game of Pool or go Bowling with their newfound electronic friends.

In 'Home' you'll communicate with those friends via typing on your USB keyboard, a series of selectable short phrases, and via voice chat. It wasn't discussed as to whether or not the voice chat was proximity-based or a private one on one chat.

Home's private space is an apartment that players will be able to customize and expand with the furniture Sony provides (or furniture and knick-knacks that players purchase via the PlayStation Network Store). Harrison indicated that simply purchasing some PlayStation 3 games would unlock some items for your home. Maybe a Motorstorm wallpaper or a Resistance recliner? The first version of the private space we saw was a single room studio-style apartment -- the upgraded 'Best' version that Harrison showed was a multi-level mansion with a huge patio.

Another key function the private spaces offer is the ability to go from game to game with your friends. Want to play Motorstorm with your friends? Invite them to your home and you can start the game with your friends from your apartment. It's, quite literally, the visual representation of the Halo 2 couch-system. Where your buddies will be able to play with you and return to your 'Home' throughout the night.

If a real-time 3D version of your 'crib' isn't enough to impress your friends, Sony's finally making due on the long-rumored "entitlements," though under a completely different branding -- Trophies. The 'Hall of Fame' is another private area of 'Home.' In the 'Hall of Fame' players will track and display their '3D Trophies' from various games. By choosing what to display when players come into your 'Hall of Fame,' your friends will see what you've accomplished in various titles. However, these aren't just trophies like what you'd find at the local trophy trolley. They can be assets from in-game, maybe a writhing Hellghast from Killzone 2 or a shark eating one of the ducks from Super Rub-a-Dub.

Additionally, if players want to see the trophies from other games, there's a Star Wars-prequel Senate-style menu that will eventually be filled with a sea of trophies.

Inevitably, some of those trophies will come from a game Sony unveiled at the keynote -- LittleBigPlanet. The game is equal parts game, creation tool and toy and it's all tied together by the community. That community will be responsible, along side developers for creating the content that will populate the "plots" (each user's space is called a plot) in LittleBigPlanet. For a complete look at what LittleBigPlanet is, check out our first look at the game and no doubt keep your eyes on our GDC homepage where editors will have something to say about one of the most unique ideas we've seen.

Source

PLAYSTATION®3 Home as you know will be coming out this fall and will make a huge impact on the PLAYSTATION®3. Home will allow you to go online, talk to other people, and even go shopping. I my opinion, this is a great feature Sony is releasing for us PLAYSTATION®3 owners. If this doesn't get people to a PLAYSTATION®3, I don't know what will.

Character Customization is just one of the many features that will be available when you download Home from the PS Store. You will be able to customize facial features, clothes, and accessories which will be cool. The more I read, the more this reminds me of a next-gen Sims game. I love how you wil be able to walk around in your own customized character talking to people, shopping, and playing games, and many other features that are yet to come - our very own fairy tale virtual world. What more could we ask for?

[RickTheRipper]

I think you guys should merge this and NUN-PUNCHER's topic on the Trophies system. Then if you do, you should delete my post, because it's off topic.

[tha123]

this looks like a great new thing for the ps3, and its free. its like a fun way for ps3 people to meet up chat, play games, visit eachothers decked out houses etc. i see this becoming huge withing a few years ex. cars, buisinesses. many possibilities

[Swiss Miss]

Wow... this is very exciting news indeed! I am a Sims addict...

The XBOX 360 has nothing like this as far as I know... and certainly not for free. I read it is supposed to come out "Open Beta" in August... does that mean beta for anyone who wants to participate? Final release is set for October. Looking at the demo video it looks pretty complete already.

[Tuhan]

Extremely, unique idea. I have to admit this is looks very creative, useful, and fun thing that SONY added. It may not seem like much, but I think it's a fatas5 plus to PS3.

I was wondering if SONY had something similar to the 360's XGUIDE thingie. They did not and I was like meh **** it. But, this is something very creative. It looks great. I wonder if you can function during games though like the 360. That'd be sweet.

Overall, nice find and thanks for the articles.

[RickTheRipper]

The site that's holding the beta signups is right here: http://http://www.homebetatrial.com/

As of now, they haven't allowed anyone to register, but keep checking back.