In this world, which looks incredibly impressive, every PS3 player will get their own ‘apartment’ and a lifelike avatar, one that looks quite real, as opposed to Nintendo’s Mii characters, which look like cartoons.

Better still, Playstation Home is free to all PS3 owners, and has Sony very excited. Phil Harrison said that “We are building a very rich 3-D social-networking service for PlayStation 3 users all around the world”. When questioned about the similarities to Second Life, Harrison explained that they had been working on Playstation Home for two and a half years, and explained that it wasn’t a demo that GDC attendees were seeing but the Home environment running live.
 
When you start Playstation Home, you are in a lobby with other avatars milling around. At present, all the action is only indoors, but as Home is developed, outdoors locations will inevitably feature.

Players receive a free selection of clothing, with more add-ons and accessories for your avatar able to be purchased online, or unlocked when new PS3 games are purchased. Communication is done through voice, text chat through a USB keyboard or the on-screen virtual keyboard (used with the wireless PS3 controller), along with gestures and speech bubbles with pre-defined words.

Besides free clothing, everyone gets a free apartment, with free furniture to boot, although more furniture can be purchased, and it all looks very realistic and impressive. You get a TV and stereo, and you can stream shows and music on your PS3 hard drive to those units to watch and enjoy. Harrison also showed how he could take a digital photo, transfer it to the PS3, and then ‘hang it on the wall’ inside his apartment, all within minutes.

Friends can join you in your room to ‘hang out’, and from there, a multiplayer gaming session can be initiated. You can also store and display items from games as trophies in your apartment. All most impressive!

A range of areas are available within Home besides the lobby and the apartment. There is a movie theatre showing different movie trailers, with the possibility that user-generated content from Sony’s Grouper will be viewable in the future. A games room offered a very nice looking game of pool, bowling and traditional arcade machines.

There can be no doubt that Sony will be improving Playstation Home with all kinds of new features, giving PS3 owners a virtual place to hang out with their virtual friends. It’s not designed to be something to ‘destroy’ Second Life, but to give PS3 owners their own online space, online gaming network and virtual world to explore and enjoy.

If anyone thought Sony was going to play dead and let Microsoft or Nintendo walk over them, developments like Playstation Home show the critics they’ve got another thing coming.
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