03.07.2007 GDC 07: OFFICIAL PLAYSTATION HOME NEWS

Fucking finally. HERE is the news that we've been waiting for - not the official PlayStation Home announcement, I'm talking about some genuinely good Sony PS3 news. And don't say that you've known it all along, no one had a friggin clue this was coming until last week. That being said, Sony has managed to come through and deliver an enormous PS3 feature that is both a service and a free game all in one. It's an outright clone of what Nintendo and Microsoft has done with their consoles, but that still doesn't reduce the PlayStation Home from its revolutionary status. Sony has managed to combine the Wii's Mii avatar system with Xbox 360's achievements system in one large virtual world. The video above touches on the features that you can see below in the picture gallery, and it all looks as good as I had hoped. PS3 has officially stolen he sow at GDC. No bullshit or banter, here's how it works. 

Many PS3 owners will sum it all up as gay for how closely it resembles Second Life, but the benefits far outweigh its downfalls. You get to create a detailed 3D avatar character and explore the virtual Sony world with other PS3 users. The possibilities might be endless, but Sony's already achieved most of them. You can talk with others with a USB keyboard or even in voice chat. You can buy, watch, and even play video games through PlayStation Home (PSH), and Sony isn't limiting it to just video games thankfully. There's simple stuff like bowling and pool tables, and even bold inclusions like entire movie theaters. Instead of downloading movies, will we actually be able to watch movies that are out in theaters from the comfort of our own homes via the PSH? If this doesn't get you excited then you're the biggest Nintendo fanboy in the world, because I doubt this will be topped as the biggest news of the year.

There's a lot of intricacies involved too. Each player will supposedly get their own apartment room space, and get to shop for furniture to customize their homes. Animal Crossing and Sims fans will go nuts. Sony has a lot more planned for your rooms too, instead of just playing PS3 games with others, you can invite your friends over to your PSH home, access your virtual PS3, and start up a game with them from the beginning - not need to have them connect to the game once you've set it all up.

The achievements system might even work out better than the 360 setup. PS3's calling their achievements "trophies" and Sony is even being more generous than Microsoft to score some bonus fans with gamers. Many games will give you trophies just for buying the game. It'll probably be as simple as a virtual poster for your room, but that's still a nice incentive to make us forget how expensive games are these days. There's also a Hall of Fame section for the elite gamers and their trophies, but not many details on that have been announced yet - Sony revealed enough to keep us wanting more for months.

This might be the virtual world I've been waiting to see for years - the graphics look good, the online population will be large and varied, and there's entertainment everywhere. You can see countless big screens placed on every corner to show off new movie and game trailers, and you know Sony won't hesitate to whore out advertising to Coca Cola with their current financial situation. We're in for an online user utopia like never before, and I can't wait to see more. The only bad news I can report out of all of this is that we're going to have to wait until the Fall of 2007 before we get to take advantage of these features. I'm sure Microsoft and Nintendo will do some scrambling in that amount of time, but it doesn't matter. Sony has finally hit a home run and it's not with some shitty Mii character, I'm impressed. Thank you Sony. And thank you to 1UP for the pictures and 1P Start for the video.