14 DAY TRIAL // When someone thinks of a "virtual world," Second Life immediately springs to mind. It is widely popular and talked about in many traditional media outlets. It also sparked debate on a number of issues, from virtual rights of ownership to virtual sexual contact. A team from Sony wants to change all that and PlayStation Home is the breakthrough project that will change virtual words forever.
Creative director of the project, Ron Festejo, believes PlayStation Home is the "best-looking" and most "user-friendly" multiplayer world he has seen. Setting Second Life as a benchmark of a virtual world, he declared: "Personally, looking at other models, a lot of them are too hardcore, a lot of them are garish in the way they look. I think what we've done with Home is have the best-looking multiplayer world - and actually the most user-friendly that I've seen as well." He thinks that part of this is because of the standardization of the PlayStation 3, which enables developers to create visuals and features knowing exactly the hardware on which they'll run and its full capabilities. Festejo has also added that he is not criticizing Second Life, but only pointing out the limitations that it has and that Home will manage to overcome. PlayStation Home will allow every console owner to set up a virtual presence. They will have a fully customizable avatar along with a virtual house. The house will be a virtual residence that allows users to plaster the walls with pictures from their hard drives, listen to their own music and proudly display game trophies they have acquired. All characters will be able to interact and explore the spaces the developers create. Game challenges and other scripted events will also take place within the world of PlayStation Home.
The service is now in beta and undergoing considerable changes, with new updates expected to appear next week. Current release date for PlayStation Home is somewhere in Q2 2008.