BD's PlayStation Home Thread

[loki]

for all the PS3 owners amongst us, here is the official "PlayStation Home" Thread.

What is it

Well in it's basic form, it is Sony's answer to Xbox Live. Hot on the heels of the launch of the new live experience from Microsoft, Sony have gone with a public Beta with 100,000's of registration keys becoming available each week, Sony are expecting a full launch by the end of the year

PlayStation Home (also marketed and referred to simply as Home) is a community-based service for the PlayStation Network which has been in development since early 2005. Home allows users to create an avatar for their PlayStation 3 console. This avatar will get their own virtual apartment space (called a "HomeSpace"), which can then be adorned with items users can receive in several different ways.

The current version of Home is v1.01 and was released to "Closed Beta" testers on November 21, 2008. The "Open Beta" will be available for download to the general public in December 2008. In a Q&A session with IGN, published on their website on November 25, 2008, Sony Computer Entertainment America Director of Hardware Marketing John Koller described the release of Home as "imminent" and that he expects the public launch to take place before the end of 2008

I will update this thread later with some more techincal details on what Home is capable of.

I got an email last night with a Beta Key and got it all installed, not had any chance to check it out yet. Before getting the beta key I was intrigued to find out how this would compare to Microsoft's offering. The consistent message I have come across is that the Avatar creation appears to be swinging the way of Sony above Microsoft. Albeit I suspect this is very subjective.

Upto now who has been in on the Beta ? Whats your thoughts on it and how does it compare to the existing PSN experience and that of Xbox and PC gaming.