Playstation Home - A True Virtual World?
I’m sure many of you are familiar with the new online experience(vaporware) , Playstation Home, scheduled to be released sometime this year. If not, here is a snippit from wikipedia:
“Home (known more practically as PlayStation Home) is a community-based service for the PlayStation Network which has been in development since early 2005. Home allows users to create an avatar for their PlayStation 3 console. This avatar will get their own apartment, which can be adorned by items players can receive in several achievements. In the future the service will also expand, allowing players to have more sorts of clothing, as well as hold pets.[citation needed] When it is available, Home will be launched via its own category in the XMB between the “Game” and “Network” category. This service will be free of charge. Sony is aiming for the initial download to be under 500MB. Home was announced at the Game Developers Conference on March 7, 2007[1] with a scheduled global public release for Fall 2007 (sometime during September or October).[2] During the TGS 2007, Home was announced to be delayed until Spring 2008, though home will still have an earlier “open beta” release.”
Also…
“In the world outside of the player house, players can meet and chat with other community-members. This will create a Second Life-like experience, where one can invite their friends, hang out and communicate via voice chat, or normal text chat, listen to music, play a game or exchange content. People who enter each other’s “homes” can stream the host’s music and videos from their HDD. Videos are viewed via virtual Sony TVs, such as the BRAVIA. As well, pictures can be viewed via a virtual picture frame.
Every user has a private apartment space that they can modify and change over time. The basic apartment is free and will offer users lots of options for customization and personalization. In the future, Sony will provide tools that will enable users to have an even greater ability to create their own Home spaces and content.”
This sounds very similar to Second Life except users won’t have the ability to create anything. They will be able to create items like clothes etc.
It looks like this game will finally introduce console gamers to an online world (Final Fantasy doesn’t really count..). Sony will be creating a more polished version of Second Life with millions of dollars behind the development.
If you are looking to cash in or cause chaos, Sony will be banning users by ip address and PS3. You could probably get around this with a proxy and mac address spoofer for the ps3.
“Users will be able to make money in Home by using an auction service that will be implemented which will allow users to sell their Home assets and user-created content to other users.”
I wonder if Sony will allow online porn theaters…