PlayStation Home finally gets released but is still in beta.

          Remember when the PlayStation 3 was in the works?  They were also constructing a robust online community that would change the way people think about gaming. “PlayStation Home is truly a promising network community service on the PlayStation platform, made possible with the powerful combination of PS3's overwhelming computational power and PlayStation Network that covers many countries around the globe,” said Kazuo Hirai, President and Group CEO, SCE.  It’s a place where gamers can meet other and interact in a wide variety of ways from bowling and shopping, to just hanging out and dancing.  This experience finally got released as a beta on December 11 with mixed feelings due to its lackluster presentation and all around boring concept.

          Lets start first with the avatar and apartment customization.  PlayStation avatars are the most realistic looking out of the current generation systems and can provide some spot on replicas of you.  The first problem is the number of features that are available at the beginning is laughable (where are all the beards?).  Since this is still in beta form, Sony releases updates whenever they choose, but some are free and some you have to pay for.  Yes, furniture for your apartment and clothes for your digital self can cost money.  

          Once you create your character and step out of the apartment and into the central plaza, you have a number of choices presented to you.  There are a couple of mini games you can occupy yourself with including some arcade units and bowling.  This is where the second problem comes in; you cannot use these if there are people in front of you.  Why can’t I just walk up to the bowling lane and go bowling; why do I have to wait for the stranger in front of me to quit bowling.  Maybe their trying to keep it as real as possible, but this just seems like a bad decision on their part.  The central plaza has trailers that loop over and over, bubble machines and radios to dance with, and benches for you to sit and converse with other people.  You can launch games from the plaza with people but even that seems to take a little too long.

          When the Home beta released, it came with two distinct “game rooms” which were pulled from games like Uncharted: Drakes Fortune and Far Cry 2.  While these rooms look great and provide some items from the games, you cannot do anything with them.  They are basically there just for show and provide no interactivity with.  I cannot quite understand what these rooms are trying to accomplish other than the fact to provide an insight on the game (which is provided poorly).  More rooms will be added as the beta continues including rooms designed around EA sports games.

          I know I’ve been down on Home, but I just don’t understand the lasting appeal of this social community.  The only reason I would ever want to use Home would be to meet new people to play with, but I really don’t want to fill my friends list up with strangers.  I see why some gamers would want to meet new people to game with, but that aspect doesn’t seem appealing to me.  Home is a free download, so if this sounds interesting, then it won’t hurt to download it and give it a go.  Sony has high hopes for this community but it’s going to have to create some interesting concepts to keep gamers coming back.