Home? What’s that? Oh – it was that online virtual world thingumy that everyone got so excited about for all of three months. But then Sony confessed that it really wasn’t even close to finished and everyone went away and found better things to be interested in.

Well, it might be time to start listening up again. Sony Computer Entertainment Europe's John Venables and Ron Festejo have been speaking at Imagina 08 and have revealed that Home has undergone some pretty gigantic changes since it was first aired in 2006. Those changes are by-and-large cosmetic, but have made a lot of difference to individual player spaces, and to the style and design of more communal locations. It was largely due to feedback from the beta testers that these changes were made.

The quality and quantity of player housing has seen a big overhaul. There are expected to be eight or nine different apartments at launch. Later, premium places, that you’ll have to pay actual money for will become available. At the moment all of these are built based on real locales, but Festejo revealed that there was the possibility of less realistic living spaces, such as a room in the clouds (yawn), may be created at a later date. That sounds like something that sorely needs a bit of community feedback to really get right – but it’ll be better once we’ve all had a chance to try Home and get to grips with it.

Although it does sound like Sony made a wise decision when picking a delay to the Home launch rather than rushing in and hoping for the best, I still wonder how it can really stand up in the long term. The novelty of wandering round a virtual space, playing pool and bowling, checking out the cinema and arcade games will be great, but only for a couple of days. Once you’ve seen and done it all, it might rapidly turn into quite a clunky way of organising multiplayer games. Proper in-game to friends lists and messaging could even have just as an affective impact on the PS3 community.

On the other hand, it’s as much up to us the community to keep it interesting inside Home, and I hope there’s going to be some interesting shenanigans as players learn to push the boundaries of the online world. If, however, Sony decides to rule it with an iron fist as previously hinted at though, it could leave Home as a very static, barren playing experience.

Home is expected to be launching in Spring 2008.

Source
GamesIndustry.biz

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