With Sony touting this as the next big thing in gaming and social networking, this Closed Beta experience delivers some of the flash and flavor but too little to get excited as yet.

Ever since the Playstation 3 came out in 2006, Sony's been all up in our face about Playstation Home - the killer app that game industry insiders are speculating will blur the lines between gaming and social networking.

So when the offer came up to be a Home Closed Beta Tester, this reviewer jumped, nay, pounced at the chance.

A couple of short downloads later, I was in, mucking around, deciding what I was going to look like to millions of other PS3 gamers.


Playstation Home

In terms of avatar creation, it's pretty decent in the customization process. Although it's not as detailed as something like The Sims, you can control quite a bit; from the height and weight to the extent by which the cheeks of your avatar puff out or sink in. Heck, you can even create eyes that are big on one side and small on the other. Of course, those not so inclined can just select from a list of pre-made avatars.

After I was satisfied with the way I looked, I saved my appearance and found myself in my Home away from home. Divided into different spaces, the Beta gives testers the Harbor Studio as their home space; a simply designed one room apartment overlooking a harbor complete with boats and seafront buildings.

Stepping out into the balcony brings the sounds of seagulls and lapping waves to your ears. Stepping back in, the sound fades away and for the first time, I realize that there's nothing in my apartment.

But no worries, hitting the Start button instantly brought out my virtual PSP, which allowed me to buy stuff to fill up the apartment like sofas, tables, chairs and lamps.

Aside from that, the PSP also allows you to do virtually everything else; from jumping straight to favorite locations, to seeing who's online, to setting up games and inviting friends to play - it's your own personal GPS to navigating the intricacies of Home.

So now I had a home (and furniture) - where does the gaming come in? Enter the Home Square.


Playstation Home

The Home Square is the center of everything. From the Theatre where you view trailers (and possibly movies?) to the Marketplace which sells everything from shoes to summer houses, everywhere is just a short walk away. But with a "favorite locations" menu on your virtual PSP, who needs walking?

Of course, you have to visit the locations first by foot before you can download their coordinates.

So, a short walk down by the seaside from the Home Square and voila, I was in the Game Space. I quickly found out that this was where most people seemed to hang out and where I found most of the other Closed Beta testers, some of which had earned the opportunity by shopping at the Playstation Store.

In this Game space, there were dart boards where you can play darts, pool tables if you want to shoot a couple and even a bowling alley for you to knock some pins around. While the games aren't sophisticated (most often requiring only minimum thumbstick and single button operation), this reviewer found the bowling surprisingly entertaining. Darts and Pool, however, were less appealing.

On the other side of the Game Space, you can find the arcade machines. These offered Namco classics such as Galaga and Dig Dug and even a scaled-down arcade version of the recent Playstation Store offering, Echochrome. Everything was fine and dandy but pretty soon, I was getting bored of the same old places offering the same old things.

I wanted some company and there just weren't enough people around to interact with.

Also, the fact that using a controller didn't enable you to type words fast enough when communicating was another downer (I'd advise investing in a cheap USB keyboard, for all potential Home users.)

Social networking, after all, is about meeting people, making friends (or enemies) and interaction. Take the people out of the equation and all you have is a great concert in a beautiful location with an audience of 6.

But hey, it is a Closed Beta after all.

What this experience of Playstation Home does give you though, is a solid promise of things to come.

After the initial downloads, loading times are minimal, movement is smooth, graphics are on par with Second Life and there's very little lag in terms of content delivery. Now all they need is to pump in more content, open the gates and let the people in.

While social networking is not top of my agenda (as my dusty Facebook account can attest to), I do think that this app will make the PS3 stronger as a console and give Xbox Live a good run for its money.

Of course, it isn't fully featured yet and many things are subject to change but if Sony can work out what kinds of content to deliver and how to utilize the spaces as best they can, Playstation Home might just be the scale-tipper in this drawn out round of console wars, leading us into the convergent, connected world of next-gen gaming.

Read all 0 reviews...   Your rating & comments: ------- 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1