Things look to be heating up for Playstation Home, which is now in the final stages of beta testing. If you’ve been living under a rock for the past year, Playstation Home is Sony’s answer to social networking, providing a virtual world where you can hang with your friends, meet new people and create your very own Home.
Within Home you will firstly create your identity. There are thousands of different combinations from changing eyebrow position to giving yourself a beard. Extra items such as additional clothes will be available to purchase right within Home’s clothes store (Threads).
Every user has a private apartment space that they can modify and change over time. The basic apartment is free and will offer users lots of options for customization and personalization. In the future, Sony will provide tools that will enable users to have an even greater ability to create their own Home spaces and content.
From there, you can walk around and talk to anyone within home via short pre-defined phrases, microphone or by connecting your USB keyboard to chat away, as if you were on msn or yahoo messenger. The real beauty inside Home is being able to connect with anyone in the world who owns a PS3 and the ability to launch straight into a game with them.
Over the last few weeks more and more information has been leaked out about how Home is shaping up, from the mini games playable in the main foyer to the new shops in the Market Place, where you can purchase new apartments, additional clothing and furniture.
Advertising will be a big part of Home, and Sony expects retailers to create their own lobbies and deploy them for commercial purposes. At first, Sony will stream advertising from their own Home servers. Later, other companies will be allowed to insert their own ads into the network, including dynamic advertising targeted at particular users.
Home is really set to send a shock-wave over the console gaming world, upon its release later this year. Both the Wii and Xbox 360 neither have anything similar to what Home will offer, continuing to make the PS3 the #1 choice for console gaming into the future.
For exclusive footage from inside Playstation
Home, head on over to DLB’s Youtube Channel.
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