Aug 26, 2011 06:40 GMT  ·  By

Sony's Jack Buser, the director of its PlayStation Home service, has confessed that he views it as the company's answer to the Facebook social network, but customized for PlayStation 3 users and set to be filled with free-to-play online games.

PlayStation Home has been around for quite some time now and, while the social service has had its ups and downs, a major update is being prepared that will turn it into a social gaming experience, with a central hub and various districts specialized in certain genres.

With this major change, and with the array of developers that are more than willing to bring free-to-play games through Home to PS3 owners, the service is looking extremely good, prompting its director to compare it to Facebook.

"One of the cool things about PlayStation Home is that the games on the platform very much, by and large, use the latest and greatest business models that we're learning from the web. Many of the games are free-to-play or 'freemium' where the core game mechanic is free-to-play – you can beat the whole game if you want and never spend a dime, but we will sell weapon upgrades, armor upgrades, enhancements, etc. as a series of micro-transactions. You don't have to, but it makes you better at the game."

"So while a lot of our games are using the free-to-play model, we're actually building game types that are leveraging the power of the PS3 hardware to build FPS titles and online racing games – the kind of games that look and feel like the kind of console games that you've come to expect from PlayStation but leveraging the new business models," he explained to Industry Gamers.

Given the tools that are now being offered to developers by Sony, Buser is confident that a quality experience for the PlayStation 3, with high-definition graphics, 3D support or online multiplayer, can be done with less money than regular, triple-A games, and can reach a big audience, considering there are 22 million Home users out there.

"I'm very biased but I'll let you look under the hood for a minute. In PlayStation Home, you can build a full-on game that looks like a console game – for example, a full-on FPS or racing game – with a team of just 6-10 people and it'll take 6-9 months to complete. Everything's done with scripting using [programming language] Lua... so with a very small team you can create a game that's up and running on PS3 in just six months. And it's monetizing immediately!" Buser said.

The major social gaming transformation of Home is set to take place this fall, with Sony keen on making PlayStation Home even more popular.