Sony finally released the long-awaited PlayStation Home virtual world for the PS3 yesterday, and this morning we at Obsessable were finally able to get past all the multiple errors that Sony suffered during the first day and actually give the service a whirl. What we found was that the service is definitely still in beta and lacks anything truly magical, as of yet, to make it the success that all of Sony's pre-release talk about the service has painted it to be. Similar to virtual world Second Life, Playstation Home lets you create your own avatar, a virtual representation of you in the 3-D world living on the PS3, and you can interact and chat with others and with your surroundings. Unfortunately, at this early stage of the product, there's not much more than chatting to be done, as the vast majority of content presented is some form of advertisement for other things you can buy for your PS3, and the few bits of interactive games that could be fun often suffer from the same problems real life games have: you can't play because someone else already is. Because of this, a good percentage of the PlayStation Home experience, currently involves waiting.

 

When you first log in to PlayStation Home you get to design your own avatar. This character creation screen is similar to the character creation screens that you may have encountered before in programs like Second Life, The Sims, and even when building a Mii for your Nintendo Wii. Unlike those other services, the options, especially in terms of clothing, are extremely limited at this point. Most likely this is because Sony has created a virtual mall in this world where you can go shopping and buy more clothing and accessories for your avatar. After creating your character you are deposited in your little apartment where you can walk around, sit in chairs, and look out from your balcony to a scenic view of the ocean.

As soon as you grow bored with your no frills apartment, you'll go to venture out into the "real world" of the Central Plaza. At this point, despite having already downloaded PlayStation Home, you will be warned that you have not yet downloaded the files necessary for the Central Plaza and you'll have to click and wait for the area to load. There's also an option where you could download the area in the background and go back into the apartment to sit down and stand up some more, but since there's nothing there, this seems rather pointless. What's annoying about this is that nearly every new area and game that currently lives on PlayStation Home requires you to download it, so the initial experience is filled with quite a bit of clicking and waiting to load. Sony would have been better served by pre-downloading all the default files for you, or at least offering that as an option when initially installing the software.

Once we finally managed to enter Central Plaza, we paused for a moment to familiarize ourselves with all the controls (pictured below). Having used Second Life before, we were disappointed to not find a flying feature.

While walking around you'll see other avatars standing around with a small device that looks like a PSP in their hands. This is actually the menu pictured above and it's the same way that your avatar looks whenever you access these controls.

We noticed two things immediately upon entering the public area. First, it was extremely gorgeous. The detail of the PlayStation Home experience on the PS3 far surpasses the blocky visual experience offered by Second Life. Second, we noticed that, just like in real life and Second Life, there were ads everywhere. Currently the most advertised items in world are the movie Twilight and the Sony PS3 Wireless Keypad, which no doubt Sony believes will now sell like hot cakes given that they've created a virtual chat world. One of the cooler things about this world is that you can chat with people either by texting in messages that pop up as cartoon balloons above your head as well as in the public chat log, and you can also use a Bluetooth headset to just plain talk to people nearby. Walking through the world we overheard several people chattering as we walked past them.

There's a Listen@Home area where you can gather around and vote on what song will play next, listen to music, and even bust a move if you so choose.

As with the majority of online virtual realities there are far more male avatars than female avatars, and groups of male avatars tend to run up to female avatars who are dancing, say clumsily "Hi. How are you?," and then when no response is given, they just join in the dance, as was the case in the scene below.

One of the coolest mini games in PlayStation Home currently is Saucer Pop. To play you simply walk up to the little water pond in the middle of Central Plaza and hit X when the screen says Saucer Pop. Then you choose to play and to your surprise, you won't have to wait for a download. Basically, the game involves flying your saucer in the 3-D space, avoiding floating moving mines / bombs, while also getting bonus items and extra fuel to keep your saucer afloat. If you hit a bomb or stop flying, your saucer explodes in a colorful display of popping light, thus the name of the game.

Surrounding Central Plaza are several other areas you can access, and which you will again have to download. There is a combination bowling alley and arcade complete with a few arcade games and pool tables, but just like real life bowling alleys and arcade games, you cannot play unless there is an open slot. During our quick tour of the area we got to play a dumbed-down version of EchoChrome that lacked all the moving the board coolness of the game for the PS3 and PSP, and another game called Carriage Return, which was a simple game where you match 3 train carriages in each of the two columns to make them disappear and to prevent either of the two columns from filling up.

 

 

 

The Mall area, just like any other mall is all about selling you things with the one exception of playable games of chess, again, if you could only find an open table. Most of the stores were low on content, though none of it was free, and one of the stores, although appearing to be open gave us a "This store is currently unavailable" error message when we tried to access it.

 

 

 

Unlike most malls, you can also buy real estate in the Mall.

 

We were looking forward to the Movie Theater, thinking that it might actually have some good content and be an interesting viewing experience. Unfortunately, there was a long wait for the video to download. Once it did download it plays at the front of the theater with the lights up and with everyone's chat balloons popping up in the way. There is no way from a seated position looking at the screen for you to easily access the full screen view. We had to walk up to the front of the theater, look up at the screen, and then select fullscreen, which needless to say is a very counter-intuitive and unrealistic movie going experience. Once the video started, we found it to be far from the high HD quality of movie previews that we have already been able to freely download from the Sony PlayStation Store in the default PS3 interface. Also, the content was again all previews of Twilight and a music video from the movie. In short, the theater experience was again more advertisements.

Ultimately, we found much about PlayStation Home to be pretty, but disappointing. There is a clubhouse feature where you can purchase your own club to be proprietor of for $4.99, which might be interesting for a while until Sony starts charging a monthly fee for the right to run a clubhouse come March 2009. Right now the entire experience feels too much like a prettier version of Second Life with Sony hiding behind every plant and building trying to sell you something and not giving you enough free things to freely enjoy the experience. We walked up to the door pictured below with the nice apartment building pictured beyond, but the door is locked. Until Sony starts unlocking some of these doors and working on making the experience fun rather than potentially profitable, we're not optimistic of the success of the PlayStation Home platform once it leaves beta.