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Welcome home Sony

by Mike Bantick

Tuesday, 13 March 2007

Further details have arisen about the “Second Life” styled world of PlayStation Home. More information on the size, rules and money making options within the virtual world have been fleshed out.

In a Q&A PDF, Sony have given us a few more snippets of information around this PS3 driven online world, Even I am beginning to warm to the concept.

The important facts are;

Closed Beta (appx 15,000 users): April – August
Open Beta (appx. 50,000 users): August - October
Service Live (50,000+): October

Content will be purchasable through the PlayStation Network using the Sony Wallet system, at this stage the items to be purchased are simply described as “most goods and services found within the real world could theoretically be replicated within Home”

The Playstation Home idea is being pitched to publisher’s as much as home users, with revenue predicted to come from Content purchases and Auctions as well as Advertising.

Slimily business will be encouraged to set-up locations within the 3D world, with home set to support the merchandising of virtual goods as well as cross promoting real world goods.

The download for Home will be under 500MB, with games publishers not pushed to include Home content in their titles (as they are for Xbox Live achievements). Because of this non-compulsory decision by Sony, some of the Lobby functionality looks to be a bit stilted and fiddly in concept, with friends needing to be queried and organised before launching a game.

Playstation Home will feature age restrictions, PS3 content filter carryover as well as restricting the age of in Home Avatars to ‘Adult’ and a rude word filter.

Still to be fleshed out are details around content addition to the world as well as the sharing of content between Avatars domains, this of course is a sticky world of DRM and copyright that currently is a legal minefield for other essentially peer to peer networks.

All up PlayStation Home is shaping up as an interesting exercise that looks swish and seems to be covering as many bases as possible. It is intriguing that Sony were unable to get PlayStation Home ready enough for the initial PS3 launch in November, but one imagines that getting the shiny black entertainment box to Market prior to Christmas was the higher priority.

The Sony Q & A pdf can be found here. {moscomment}

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