PlayStation Home Beta Preview

By: James Yu - Posted on October 2, 2008

The bubble machine isn't working.

Well, it is working--the little green basket is pumping out bubbles at a furious pace--but it isn't producing the desired effect. We're with Jack Buser, director of Sony's upcoming PlayStation Home, and we're sitting in a conference room watching his avatar trying to start up a dance party in Sony's virtual world.

We have everything in place. We switched the jukebox to a catchy tune and dropped the all-important bubble machine to let people know that we're serious about dancing. Jack pulls up a list of dance moves on his virtual PSP menu and his avatar busts out with the robot before chaining the moves into a clap. We stay for a while but move on when it looks like nobody is coming to join us.

It's still fairly early in the afternoon, so it's understandable that people aren't quite ready to head to the dance floor just yet. A small cluster of seven to eight bubble machines left over from a prior gathering over in a nearby pavilion probably also reduced the beckoning power of Jack's lone bubble maker.

The jukebox area is part of the central plaza, a wide-open outdoor space that connects all of the virtual world's areas. The plaza's concrete and glass buildings, as well as the green landscapes, are a big upgrade over the indoor halls we've seen in past Home demos. Smart landscaping and architectural work helps divide the plaza into smaller areas to give players cozy places to congregate. One area might have brick or elaborate stonework underfoot, while a neighboring area has concrete. Several video screens border the edges of the plaza; the largest one had a Star Wars: The Force Unleashed trailer running in a loop.

Jack ran his avatar over to a group of people chatting with each other nearby. Apparently, one Sony insider just got home from work where he had the arduous task of playing LittleBIGPlanet all day long.

Players can talk to each other using text and voice chat. Text will appear as chat bubbles above the avatar's head. Each new text entry will create a new chat bubble, bumping up older chat bubbles. The chat progression design makes it easy to follow the conversation if you arrive late.

We didn't hear anyone using voice chat, but we asked Jack how Home handles voice communication. Will it be a global, voice-of-god type of thing, which would be both terrible and awesome? Or will it be based on relative location to the speaker? Jack explained that all conversations, voice and text, are proximity-based. Only people nearby will be able to hear each other or see each other's chat bubbles. You'll see a group of people off in the distance, but you won't be able to see or hear what they're talking about until you walk closer to the group.

During our chat discussion, Jack took the opportunity to show off Sony's new wireless Bluetooth keypad for the PlayStation 3. The attachment sits snugly on the controller and provides a full mini-keypad to speed up the text-input process. The camera angles in the official press images for the accessory didn't show whether or not the keypad obstructed the shoulder buttons. Sony isn't the kind of company that would let a product design gaffe like that make it through to production, but we took a peek at the combo just to make sure. Sure enough, the keypad is thin enough to provide full access to all of the buttons on top of the controller.

The keypad should ship sometime this November, and, judging by how long it takes people to type out messages to each other with the gamepad alone, it looks like it'll be a must-have upgrade for hardcore Home users.

Before we left the group, Jack demonstrated how a player can set up a game server and find players to join from within Home. He pulled up his virtual PSP and configured a Warhawk server on the spot. A gamepad icon then appeared above his avatar's head to let people nearby know that he was seeking more players. At that point, other players avatars can walk up to him and join the game.

The entrances for the movie theater, mall, game space, and private apartment areas sit along the periphery of the central plaza. Each entrance has an elaborate facade representative of each particular area. The movie theater has a marquee and a line of posters out front just like a real theater. The games area has a slick purple-glass front, as well as a large sign advertising bowling, billiards, and arcade games.

We stepped inside the door to the game area. After a short load screen, we found our avatar standing next to a couple of billiards tables and looking over at a row of bowling lanes. Jack explained that the game area gives players another way to socialize and get to know each other before taking the relationship to the next level (adding each other to the friends list). The arcade, billiards, and bowling games have basic analog stick and action button controls. We walked past the billiards tables and entered the arcade area where we fired up a game of Evac, a Choplifter-style video game.

The Home movie theater is more of a proof of concept at this point. Past demos showed a multiplex with several different screens and a multilevel lobby, but the current theater only has a single screen. Jack explained that the real benefit of the theater is the social viewing experience where people can get together and chat while watching the latest trailer or other video content.

We went over to the apartments to check out Jack's pad after we finished up in the theater. If Jack's apartment is an accurate example, it looks like everyone in Home will start off with an oceanside penthouse apartment, complete with balcony overlooking a harbor. We asked Jack if players can walk around on the docks outside. He told me that the docks aren't open, but he mused that it would be pretty cool to have a party on that large yacht off in the distance.

The apartment functions as a clubhouse for your personal avatar. You'll be able to invite friends over to check out your place, but your apartment goes with you if you log out of Home. Players will be able to furnish their apartments with tables, chairs, sofas, and random decorative objects. Jack pulled up his virtual PSP and started adding furniture to the apartment. The PSP holds a virtual inventory of everything you've acquired in Home, so you won't deal with any Animal Crossing storage space problems if you're a virtual item pack rat. You can lift and rotate items before dropping them into place. If you drop them from a height, gravity and physics might cause the objects to shift around a bit before they come to rest. Jack pulled up a toy robot and dropped it on a table where it promptly bounced and fell over on its side.

When we were done decorating, we headed over to the mall for the next part of our PlayStation Home tour. Instead of leaving the apartment and walking across the central plaza to the mall entrance, we used Home's built-in map shortcut to change locations instantly. Everyone in Home will be able to jump from location to location using the menu system if they want to skip running across the map and incurring several load screens along the way.

Inside the mall, we saw several shops specializing in clothing, furniture, and random items. We also ran past a real estate storefront--for when you're ready to make a run at John McCain's property count. Many items will be free, but there will also be premium content available for purchase. The mall has plenty of space for socializing with an open central area on the first level and--Jack's favorite spot in Home--a small court on the second level with tables set up for chess.

Entering a store brings up a menu of items available for purchase. New items will appear in the stores regularly to keep people coming back. The first "Stuff" store we entered brought up an empty window stating that it didn't have anything new in stock (yeah, we hate it when that happens at the mall), but we were able to pick up a new pair of red sneakers from a clothing store downstairs.

Jack loaded up the avatar customization page to put on the new shoes. The page places the avatar in the traditional player customization wardrobe scene. The menu options let you swap out clothing, such as tops and bottoms, as well as accessories, such as headgear, glasses, or jewelry.

The customization menu is the same tool that you use to build your avatar's physical features, so you can change your face, height, weight, and even gender while you try on a new jacket. You can also create and save several avatars on your Home account. You build your avatar starting from a selection of premade avatars, or you can build one from scratch. If you go with one of the premade avatars, you can still go in and adjust the physical features to your liking. The tool provides several options for each physical attribute. The face, for example, might have several face-shape options, but you'll also have slider bars for each selection that you can adjust to create a composite face made from all of the choices.

Jack took us to a special not-yet-released area for our final stop in our Home beta tour: a tropical cantina built around the PlayStation 3 hit Uncharted: Drake's Fortune. The bar features the same jungle theme as the game, and the design includes several special touches, including several recognizable artifacts from Uncharted, as well as a Pitfall-style arcade game. Jack imagines that players will be able to gather in the cantina to talk about the game and perhaps trade tips on how to handle puzzles or enemy encounters. Uncharted developers may also visit the cantina from time to time, and the bar itself has its own secrets: a few locked doors that dedicated fans will have to figure out how to open.

We're likely going to see a number of themed areas built around popular games in Home. When games are available on multiple gaming platforms, Sony has to find a way to get people to pick up the PS3 version. Best of luck to the design team tasked with building a LittleBIGPlanet-worthy area in Home.

Don't expect Home to remain the same over time. Sony plans to continually update its virtual world in response to players' needs. Jack explains that Home is about adding a service to the game-playing experience. It's about "extending and expanding the game experience on the PlayStation 3 and building a social platform for gamers." The ultimate goal of Home is to add value to the PS3 gaming experience; to give people a reason to choose the PlayStation 3 platform over the Xbox 360.

PlayStation Home is on its way to living up to the press demos we've seen over the past year. We didn't see any signs of a trophy room, but the avatar interactions, private apartments, plaza, movie theater, and mall are all there. Home is currently in invite-only beta testing, but it's on track for release this year. Jack tells us that the official launch may come as early as this autumn.