This review is coming from a person who has used Home since closed beta from August 2008 to current day, extensively almost every day since. Home is a very hard platform to review to its beta nature, but based on the many days, weeks and months of continuous use, I feel its time to have my take, be it very short in terms of experience.

Playstation Home has been one of the most hyped and looked forward to application to have ever graced the Playstation in my opinion. Its caused a lot of controversy, both in the media and gaming community in terms of its many delays and promises.

Starting way back when I received my closed beta email, luck was on my side. Could not believe my eyes as I sat on my computer checking my emails at 11pm on a Sunday night. First launch into the game and was greeted by open spaces, and a lot of excited people, and strangely my first bug which was absolutely no sound. Very first person I met I had tonnes in common with, scarily so. Using the animations for the first time was hilarious, since open beta arrived a lot were changed and removed.

Was interesting as I commented on some ones 'avatar' creation by its means of ugliness, with only the community manager only feet away without me knowing. My ignorance for being in a virtual world became suddenly apparent. Have to be careful in Home, moderators are present at most times, not in large quantities, but are there whenever a report is selected via the select button, as they come to the rescue, that’s at least my understanding.

Moving swiftly from the closed beta and into open beta, this is where things for me became problematic with the amount of constant abuse from users. Closed beta was a lot of fun, private in a way, use of headsets in public spaces was fantastic, having mixes of music and talking was intense at times, but was all fun. Having met a group of people since closed beta and now having gotten to know them all to varying extents, this has caused some what an addiction. Prior to Home it was very difficult to find gamers to identify with, especially as the private message system is so chore like. And as it seems now, having met so many great personalities in Home, playing videogames online with people who you have common interests with is great fun and makes online play more worthy, rather with complete randoms.

During closed beta compared to open beta, there has been certain amounts of content updates, not as much as I was expecting. For example, the main areas, The Shopping Center, Home Square, Bowling area, Theatre are still mainly present in their previous states, bar added new features such as the Helicopter Hit game in Home Square and other content such as regular screen/trailer changes. However some of the newer spaces are fantastic, Red Bull being a personal favorite as I had been 1st on the world leaderboards for a considerable time (until beaten, now currently second) giving users a motivation to interact with the environment in new ways whilst remaining a social platform. Strangely coming 1st in a platform whereby masses of people can see your PSN name leads to many spam messages, mostly in niceness, some in complete hate which I find funny to read. Having your name mentioned on the welcome news screen also has its flaws, depends how you view it, I found it rewarding giving advice to strangers fom all over the world, however dealing with this is the users choice.

Other spaces of note, The Far Cry space, currently a worthless area, infact most areas in Home are places to talk without much to do in them at the moment. However I find talking to people the most rewarding thing, learning about people, how they interact, how I interact. Its interesting to see people run around trying to ‘pull’ avatars, approaching female avatars who are male in real life and friend requesting them based on their avatar. Makes no sense, but this indicates the current state of young society, a lot of users are still under the 16+ age restriction of Home.

New areas just released are the Xi phenomenon. A build up of Home PDA messages written in obscure coding and random maintenance hints. Its still causing lots of hype, both in Home and real life (large billboards in London for example). Both real life and virtual worlds are blurring according to the famous Jess who’s been the base of driving the Xi experience forward via hype. Its all very interesting stuff, missions to keep people doing things mainly every other day. 20 missions all in all, spread maybe over 3 months in total. Its hard to say where it is leading, but its been successful in its deployment so far.

There has been a lot of debate regarding content differences in the three main regions, Japan, USA and Europe. So much so, there has been a lot of instigation in interactivity between Home devs/mods/managers. This is something that makes Home great in which users can interact with ideas being brought forward via official playstation forums. Europe’s debate seems to lye in the focus of SCEE, and the general feeling is the alienation of users is dividing the regions. Lack of female content causing some hostility amongst the increasing numbers of female users of Home, something which may have been overlooked.

Ive always found Home weird to get used to, and am still finding it weird having ‘silent’ conversation with users. Meaning the text for example is hard to get points across sometimes. Another thing be it bad or good is how time passes when using Home. There have been days, where I have used it for hours and hours on end. Mostly talking absolute rubbish.

Then there is my personal want, which is Home’s main intent as a gaming social network. Which is playing games together with people. Home game launching has been implemented by only a few games, Warhawk and Resident Evil spring to mind. Its there, and it works, its just larger multiplayer games such as Little Big Planet and Killzone 2 are both screaming out for Home launching. It works very well, find some players, ask them to add into the current game set up, then press launch game and should all meet in an online game match. Then when you have finished, it places you direct back into Home whereby you can chat about the headshots and grenaded corpses you have just managed. Clubhouses are a good indication of friends and meet ups, infact its uses are becoming more and more experimental, quiz nights, virtual parties, Ive done them all, and are genuine fun despite some ignorance by none users of Home. Just a bit of harmless fun and an escape from the norm. All I can say really is its different, but is this where virtual and social networks are heading?

Can imagine the huge possibilities Home can bring for the future, Second Life has shown mass gatherings of strangers around the world. Home in my opinion is beyond this, graphically in the sense of a constant as in the Playstations processing power. And its main intent in which it’s a gathering of Playstation fans. My honest opinion, based on the future and current experiences, Home deserves better yes, but in terms of a score, its hard to judge. It’s a beta still after all, meaning constant experimentation and reports of bugs in which enables the experience to get better. Home is what you make of it, basing an opinion based on a couple of hours spent there is merely nowhere enough to base judgement on.