Home open beta to begin tomorrow
All PS3 owners invited.
Sony will open PlayStation Home to the world tomorrow as the open beta finally gets into gear.
The game client will be free. Once downloaded, a Home icon will pop up in the PlayStation Network column of the XMB. While the service will be free there will be some paid-for content, such as extra clothes and accessories.
Europeans will be able to explore a Far Cry 2-themed environment, and Sony hopes to make areas for Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, Warhawk, Motorstorm and SOCOM available soon.
In the future, there will be partnerships with and themes from companies such as EA, SEGA, Eidos and Midway.
Fashion label Diesel will offer up some trendy togs, while furniture designer Ligne Roset has all sorts of upholstery collections to make your house stand out from the crowd.
Red Bull is hosting a virtual flying challenge where you get to be the pilot. This will take place on the Red Bull Island.
More importantly, Paramount Studios, Eurogamer TV and Hexus TV will be showing their wares in the Home Theatre. That means Johnny Minkley will be offered alongside trailers and interviews for films such as Watchmen, which actually looks quite good. Johnny Minkley also looks good, of course.
If only Big Phil Harrison were here to smash the bottle on the hull. At least Kaz Hirai had something to say, specifically: "PlayStation Home is truly a promising network community service on the PlayStation platform, made possible with the powerful combination of PS3's overwhelming computational power and PlayStation Network that covers many countries around the globe." Phew.
Oh, there's more: "We are committed to providing PS3 users with exciting gaming experiences with PlayStation Home and together with our partners and users, expand the new world of interactive entertainment as we move forward."