Home is the social network-like hub that Sony is promoting as one of the most exciting features to be launched for the PlayStation 3 this fall. The idea is to offer players a way to quickly present their identity as gamers and as persons, with Home storing all their Trophies and with Home itself completely customizable.

The problem is that it has hit some issues in development and it has been repeatedly pushed back. Sony is now saying that, with the addition of Trophy support in the firmware update 2.41, Home is also on the home stretch and a closed beta is initiated to see the reaction of users and to iron out the last few bugs.

According to Sony, the PlayStation Store now hosts a special Home theme which can be downloaded by those interested in the beta. By simply getting that theme, you are basically sending Sony an application, with the data from your PlayStation Network account, requesting to join the Home beta test community. Of course, not all the applications will be accepted by the people at Sony, mainly because there are only limited open spots. Demographic and socioeconomic characteristics will be used to make sure that a varied selection of users makes it into the beta.

It seems that it helps if you are active in the PlayStation Network and in the PlayStation Store. Those that are chosen as part of the closed beta for Home will be notified by mail.

Sony did not say whether it also plans an open beta phase for Home, but it just might be that they will prefer to keep the closed beta going for a while longer and afterwards just release the product to reduce the period of wait for the users of the PlayStation 3.