PlayStation Home Message Board older than one year ago

The impending holiday weekend is the perfect time to log into PlayStation Home and play Sodium 2 – the adrenaline-soaked futuristic racer that is taking the world of PlayStation Home by storm. From July 1st through the 4th, our friends over at Lockwood Publishing are offering double XP to all players. Additionally, PSU and Lockwood have teamed up for a special contest where players can enter to win a Sodium 2 gift pack, including naming rights for a special S2 livery skin. More details can be found HERE.

This Thursday, June 30th, the PlayStation Home Mall receives yet another enormous update. This week you can choose from a wide array of content – from Sodium 2: Project Velocity furniture to our new line of animated weapons. Check out this video for a quick look at some of this week’s featured content.

In other news, Lockwood expands their Cucumber line this week with their new “Dolly’s Diner” furniture items. The items are true must-haves for all you retro-minded players out there – check ‘em out!

Those of you who visit the Central Plaza over the holiday weekend will receive limited-edition Canada Day and Independence Day rewards. Protip: Avoid gas stations when rocking this explosive headwear….

Also, don’t forget to play the AXE Excite game, now available in Central Plaza. Beat the game to receive a free surprise courtesy of AXE Excite (so good even angels will fall)!

Aurora fans rejoice! nDreams’ mysterious game space is receiving its first major update this week. The following is included in Aurora v1.1:

• The nDreams Collect-O-Rama loyalty cone. Complete all 12 tasks and win a mega pack containing 7 unique items including two bodyguard companions and the enormous Flying Donut of Death!
• More rewards for OrbRunner.
• The Auroralite Hoodie – the ultimate accessory for experienced OrbRunner players to help you level up!
• Fixes that make your Aurora experience much more stable and smooth.
• Daily XP bonuses – extra XP for visiting multiple days in a row!
• A teaser for a new game in Aurora 1.2 and other nDreams content (see if you can find it).

Last but certainly not least, The PlayStation Home Community Theater receives yet another massive update this week. Join us this Thursday, June 30th as the one and only HipHopGamer takes a look at Activision’s upcoming action game, Prototype 2. Next up, PSXExtreme returns with their second episode, focusing on one of the year’s most highly-anticipated games – UNCHARTED 3! Finally, HomeCast Rewind returns with another video focused on current events in the ever-evolving world of PlayStation Home.

See you in Home!

PlayStation Home was supposed to something for everyone. It didn't catch, but it for some, it was everything they were looking for.

In case you'd forgotten, PlayStation Home still exists. And, yes, it's still in Beta.

Sony's ambitious virtual world may not have become the all-inclusive revelation proposed by Phil Harrison back in 2007, but it's still kicking. The service recently received its biggest backend update yet (version 1.5), and it's making money for Sony.

You might not love about Home, but plenty of others do. And they truly do care.

I've been endlessly fascinated by Home. I published a series at G4 called "My Life in Home," where I hopped back in and tried to figure out the appeal, even if that appeal was lost on me. I researched those stories in January 2010, when I hadn't booted up Home since December 2008. Since then, Home has remained just a skipped over icon since then, finally changing last week.

Much has evolved in Home. It's faster, with plenty more places to go. I can't knock Sony's virtual E3 booth, either, even if it's pretty hokey. But that's coming from someone who's been attending E3 for over a decade. For someone who's never been, I'd imagine it's pretty neat. There's still an obnoxious amount of loading in Home, but some of that's been remedied by a new interface that appears before you actually launch into Home, allowing you to queue downloads for new rooms.

Much about Home hasn't changed, though. The art style is still...well, let's call it questionable. There are more items to mask your sort of real-looking face, but the general look of Home has remained. It's still a glorified chat room that just happens to have other things to do. Then again, I know plenty of people who treat World of Warcraft the same way. It's not inherently a bad thing.

I spent an hour on the phone last week with Sony's director of Home, Jack Buser, but you'll read that conversation tomorrow. Today, I'd like to introduce two people: Jason Sorensen, editor of HomeStation Magazine, and Tammy McDonald, CEO of a content creation company who pays the majority of its roughly 20 employee salaries by producing items, worlds and games for Home.

Each represents pillars of Home's success. They have little to do with whether you (or me) like it.

Sodium 2 is one of the "big budget" games launched in Home, with multipalyer and decent visuals.

Where Everybody Knows Your Name (And PSN ID)

Sorensen is an editor, not unlike me. He just writes for a very different audience: Home users.

"Home is indeed a very misconstrued entity," said 31-year-old Sorensen, who goes by NorseGamer. "It has the interface of a video game and it's populated by video gamers who are used to the handholding of a video game, but it's not a video game, and the fan publication that I run is devoted to examining Home from a sociological perspective, rather than a gaming perspective."

Sex, gender and avatar politics are some of the most common topics amongst Home users.

A quick glance at the headlines for HomeStation Magazine prove out his point.

"Yes, Sex Sells — But At What Price?" is an examination of the sexualized expansion of clothing in Home.

"Home Athletes: Club VIP (Very Important Pixels)," highlighting a group within Home featuring purple and gold jacket-laden members, jackets that can only be earned by beating a certain number of Home-exclusive games. The latter was written by Burbie52, a 59-year-old member of Home and founder of the Grey Gamers, a group catering to Home's oldest crowd.

New issues of HomeStation Magazine are uploaded roughly once per month, but the website updates daily. If you want direct insight into the diversity of the Home community, here you go.

"There are some genuinely fascinating human stories in Home," said Sorensen. "People who meet in virtual reality, fall in love, relocate, marry and start new lives together. Quadriplegics who can walk. Deaf people who can communicate without any social stigma. Agoraphobics who can travel. Schizophrenics who need not worry about being shunned."

When I last checked in with Home, the experience reminded me of the a/s/l era of an Internet dominated by America Online. That was fine in my teenage years, but not something I'd like to return to. Then, I thought about my own Internet habits. I'm a frequent visitor of the NeoGAF message boards. And that's it. Outside of interacting with Giant Bomb's users, it's the only place I'd call my virtual home. Sometimes I don't care for it, but it's always one thing: familiar.

That's when I started to understand part of the appeal of Home. It's just a community that happens to exist on a game platform. The games part means much less than the people in it, their shared appreciation for games simply being the connection that brought them together.

"In real life, none of us would probably ever interact with each other," said Sorensen. "Yet we all find purpose, validation, relief or enjoyment in Home, and we work together as friends and colleagues."

If you wanted a slice of E3, Home had trailers--and even live streamed the press conference.

Imagine what it's like when your favorite place on the Internet disappears. While it was a bummer that Mortal Kombat multiplayer didn't work during the PlayStation Network outage, it also meant the Home community suddenly found themselves without its primary means of communication.

"One thing that happened to every Home fansite is that visitor traffic numbers went up considerably," explained Sorensen. "The beating heart of Home isn't its gaming experiences--and it never will be. The true strength of Home, and where its long-term revenue generation opportunities are, lie in its ability to provide a social environment for people to interact and express themselves. The core community is quite resilient, and took to various fan websites to maintain those connections."

Sorensen's prediction that Home isn't about games is noteworthy, given Home's director told me there would be even more games coming to Home in the future, filling out the service. It reminds me of my original critique of Sony's approach to home during the series of articles at G4, where it seemed Sony's desire to court everyone basically ignored those who already got it.

HomeStation Magazine isn't the only dedicated magazine or community for Home users, but it does appear to be the most well-written. It probably helps the authors mostly skew older.

Home, like other virtual services, gives people a place to be someone else, perhaps the person they'd like to be, rather than the person they are in the real-world. That's not the case for everyone, but viewed from that perspective, Home's attraction could be extremely attractive.

"Thoreau once famously wrote that most people lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them," said Sorensen. "This is why social networking websites and virtual realities are so inherently addictive: because they give people a sense of significance and at the same time allow for tremendous creative expression and control over one's own self-portrayal."

For some people, that world is Second Life or something else. For these people, it's Home.

Where There's Virtual Smoke and Virtual Fire, There's Real Money

Heavy Water wasn't called Heavy Water originally--it was Vision Scape Interactive in 1997. The company was a jack of all trades for-hire developer, working on over 100 different titles. Everything changed four years ago, when Electronic Arts approached Heavy Water about creating the EA Sports Complex space for Home. Heavy Water decided to take a gamble.

EA Sports Complex was one of the first publisher-specific spaces to appear in Home.

"Home was not up at the time and there were quite a few unknowns in the process," said Heavy Water CEO Tammy McDonald, "but my husband, Matt McDonald [CCO and president], saw Home as an opportunity to create a hybrid of content that spoke to our strengths and we could take advantage of our ability to use old-school development techniques to optimize content and tools."

EA Sports Complex launched in spring 2009, formally announced at CES the same year, sporting what you'd expect from a publisher-branded space in Home: trailers, mini-games, leaderboards. It was also a place for fans to hang out.

Right now, Heavy Water is one of the largest contributors of content for the Home platform, with much of its business now defined by Home. McDonald couldn't share specifics on what kind of money it's making off Home ("We make enough money to do what we love, and we love working in Home) or how profit sharing works with Sony ("We work within a variety of models Sony, some is work fore hire and others include a royalty share), but it's clear Home is working out for it.

The company was employing more than 120 people in the San Diego area at one point, but that's down to about 20. The difference seems to be the impact outsourcing's had on the industry.

"We have an art team in India that we have been working with since 2033," explained McDonald, "so we can have as many as 100 additional artists/animators or as few as five, just depends on what our needs are at the time. It all comes down to planning."

Heavy Water most recently launched the second line in its "Heavy Ink" series, featuring tribal tattoos and full body looks modeled after classic pin-up girls aimed at "female fans of Home."

Such such success, for the foreseeable future, Heavy Water doesn't expect to leave Home.

"Home is our core focus and our pipeline is set up around creating content, games and interactive experiences in Home," said McDonald. "Creating games for other platforms that do not have an obvious connection to what we are doing would be a distraction at this point."

Log on to PlayStation Home for a virtual E3 2011 Sony booth!

This Thursday, June 23rd, Konami brings their wildly popular hip-hop karaoke title, Def Jam Rapstar, into the world of PlayStation Home. The Def Jam Rapstar Sound Studio is a new personal space styled after a state-of-the-art recording studio and befitting a world-class hip-hop artist. Pick yours up from the Estates store in the PlayStation Home Mall tomorrow.

Ahoy me mateys! Lockwood’s Fool Throttle brand expands this week with four of the scurviest seadogs ever to walk the plank. Choose from the Corsair Cordial and Captain Capricious or the Buccaneer Bubbly and Shipmate Shindig costumes. And if you are looking for new companions then grab Barnacle and Picaroon – Barnacle is a tough old crab happy to give lazy crew members a nip and Picaroon is a wily little monkey who’s pretty handy with a sword too! All these items (and more) arrive this week from the Sodium store in the PlayStation Home Mall.

This week LOOT brings you the fiercest, deadliest (and oh-so-cutest) companions ever to release in PlayStation Home. The Lootosaurus is available in six different colors (brown, blue, green, red, orange and purple) or one fire-breathing genetic mutation, The Dragosaur. Pick yours up this Thursday from the LOOT store in the PlayStation Home Mall.

Who says beautiful girls aren’t down to earth? Look for falling angels in Central Plaza this Thursday to play a game and get a free surprise courtesy of AXE Excite (so good even angels will fall)!

The PlayStation Home Community Theater receives yet another massive update this week. Join us this Thursday, June 23rd as PS Talent presents their second episode of the Spotlight, which focuses on some of the brightest stars of the PlayStation Home community. Afterwards, LittleBigPodcast delivers a new episode of their crowd-favorite video cast, which showcases the finalists from their most recent contest. Finally, the Platinum’d crew airs the third installment of their original, live action comedy series about the trials and tribulations for one player trying to up his Trophy count.

See you in Home!

We like to make fun of PlayStation Home, but it turns out if you put cool stuff there, people will log in. VentureBeat reports over 500,000 people showed up for the festivities, which included interviews and gameplay demonstrations of what was on offer, plus a live stream of Sony's press conference and a virtual recreation of its booth area. Sony did a similar thing last year and pulled in 250,000.

If for some reason you weren't able to make it into Home, get caught up on our admittedly less interactive Sony coverage from the show: the keynote, the booth and E3 overall.

This Thursday, June 16th, Sodium 2: Project Velocity, the long-awaited successor to the massively popular futuristic tank combat game, Sodium One, will arrive in the ever-evolving world of PlayStation Home. With Sodium 2, veteran PlayStation Home game developers Lockwood Publishing expand on every area of with heavily customizable jet racers, supersonic speeds and a pounding soundtrack. This highly-energy racer is free to play and can be found under the “New and Recommended” tab in the PlayStation Home Navigator when it releases tomorrow. Check it out!

The PlayStation Home Mall receives a massive update this Thursday. Watch a quick look at this week’s featured virtual items below in the Virtual Item Showcase Vol. 12!

Fan favorites Mass Media return this week with their new Brimstone Dancers – Lilith, Layla, and Brigette. Sure to turn up the heat at your next Home party, these entertainers come as both active items and companions and are available this Thursday from the PlayStation Home Mall.

In other news, CodeGlue releases a collection of stylish dresses and footwear for the ladies this week while Eidos drops Hitman Agent 47 costumes and nDreams unleashes their Big Bash line – an essential bundle for throwing a roof-raising party in your personal space: it includes working smoke machines, lights, and more.

In addition, nDreams’ Aurora is receiving its first major update this week. The following is included in v1.1:

• The nDreams Collect-O-Rama loyalty cone. Complete all 12 tasks and win a mega pack containing seven unique items including two bodyguard companions and the enormous Flying Donut of Death!
• More rewards for OrbRunner.
• The Auroralite Hoody, the ultimate accessory for to help experienced OrbRunner players level up!
• Fixes that make your Aurora experience much more stable and smooth.
• Daily XP bonuses give you extra XP for visiting multiple days in a row!
• A teaser for a new game in Aurora 1.2 and other nDreams content (see if you can find it).

The new Ford Showroom opens this Thursday, June 16th. Get behind the wheel of a Ford vehicle, play some mini-games to score reward items and check out SYNC, the in-car connectivity system that allows you to make hands-free calls and control your music with simple voice commands!

Also, a quick reminder that the Sprint promotion is still going in PlayStation Home. Keep an eye out for Sprint posters that are posted in-world. Find all three and get cool gear for your avatar – just text the poster codes to 99158 and walk away with exclusive Sprint sneakers for your avatar.

The PlayStation Home Community Theater receives a huge update this week with the launch of our newest partner PSXExtreme – an online community laser-focused on PlayStation games. Join us this Thursday, June 16th for the premiere of their first episode in the PlayStation Home Community Theater. Afterwards, be sure to catch episode 2 of Platinum’d – a PlayStation Home exclusive short format series that focuses on the love of PlayStation games and the trials and tribulations for one player that is just trying to up his Trophy count. Finally, our friends over at SOCAST return with their second episode, where the FPS gamer meme “Juggernaut” makes a visit.

Last, but certainly not least: When you log in to PlayStation Home this Thursday you will be prompted to download our latest client update – v1.5.1. This update addresses some recently reported bugs and also includes optimizations that will improve the speed with which you can view items in the Wardrobe and Furniture browsers. Please note that if you are upgrading from any version of Home prior to 1.41 (i.e. more than 2 patches ago) then you will need to wait for the orange “hard drive activity” light to stop flashing on your PS3 before commencing the process of applying the 1.51 patch.

See you in Home!

PlayStation Home has dedicated fanbase that goes online, buys virtual times, dances and socializes, but it'd definitely not something everyone plays. I'm telling you to change that -- at least for a day -- because Home's currently packing a demo for Scribble Shooter, and this 2D shoot'em up is one of my favorite games of E3 2011...

So you couldn’t make it out to the Los Angeles Convention Center for the 2011 E3 Expo? No worries; we have you covered. Simply log into PlayStation Home today to get your fix in our virtual E3 booth, where you can check out the newest PlayStation games, watch live footage from the show floor, and get your hands on a ton of collectible content – all for free and all from the comfort of your PS3!

Start your journey by getting an up-close look at the PS Vita and then proceed throughout the space to view trailers and collect rewards from some of the top PlayStation titles, including Twisted Metal, Ratchet and Clank: All 4 One, Papo + Yo, Resistance 3, and more! Collect all rewards to gain access to the special VIP area play the first level of Scribble Shooter – an upcoming top-down, shoot ‘em up game exclusive to PlayStation Home. As an added bonus, our friends over at Heavy Water have created a package for all VIPs that includes an array of limited edition virtual items.

In our special E3 Theater, you’ll find streaming video of live game demonstrations courtesy of the PlayStation.Blog team – so even if you couldn’t make it to the show you can still get a front row seat to all the action!

So what are you waiting for? Don’t miss another moment of the game industry’s biggest event – log into PlayStation Home now and join us in the virtual E3 booth!

#bonanza Sony's online virtual community PlayStation Home has its own little version of the "Welcome Back" package, which has seen PS3 owners get some free games. Only, in Home, you don't get games. You get stuff. More »

As part of PlayStation Network’s ‘Welcome Back’ Program, PlayStation Home will be offering an enormous package to all players as a way of saying “thank you” to our community for your ongoing support. Today we will begin rolling out the first phase of this customer appreciation program, which will include 100 items, two personal spaces, and an exclusive game available for all users to download for 30 days. Here’s what we will be giving you (and when):

100 virtual items: The 100 virtual items package will be available starting today from the Central Plaza kiosk. This huge package includes popular clothing and furniture items and has been made possible thanks to our publishing partners – including Lockwood Publishing, Heavy Water, Codeglue, Konami, Mass Media, Digital Leisure, LOOT, and Hellfire Games.

Two personal spaces: The Dragon’s Lair and the Mansion Garage – a medieval abode based upon Digital Leisure’s classic game and a luxurious, premium personal space never before released to the PlayStation Home community – will be available to all players today from the Central Plaza kiosk.

Ooblag’s Alien Casino: This is an exclusive game that will be published later this month and will be available via the PlayStation Home Navigator. Enter this interstellar casino and try your hand at Ooblag, a multiplayer game of craps…with a twist. Winners will be rewarded by being transformed into extraterrestrial high rollers while losers will be punished severely by Raaksu, the casino’s ruthless Pit Boss. As an added bonus, players that access the Ooblag Alien Casino space will be rewarded an active item version of the Ooblag game that can be played in their personal spaces.

See you in Home!

As part of PlayStation Network’s ‘Welcome Back’ Program, PlayStation Home will be offering an enormous package to all players as a way of saying “thank you” to our community for your ongoing support. Today we will begin rolling out the first phase of this customer appreciation program, which will include 100 free items, two personal spaces, and an exclusive game available for all users to download for 30 days. Here’s what we will be giving you (and when):

100 virtual items: The 100 free virtual items package will be available starting today from the Central Plaza kiosk. This huge package includes popular clothing and furniture items and has been made possible thanks to our 3rd Party partners – including Lockwood Publishing, Heavy Water, Codeglue, Konami, Mass Media, Digital Leisure, LOOT, and Hellfire Games.

Two personal spaces: The Dragon’s Lair and the Mansion Garage – a medieval abode based upon Digital Leisure’s classic game and a luxurious, premium personal space never before released to the PlayStation Home community – will be available to all players today from the Central Plaza kiosk.

Ooblag’s Alien Casino: This is an exclusive game that will be published later this month and will be available via the PlayStation Home Navigator. Enter this interstellar casino and try your hand at Ooblag, a multiplayer game of craps…with a twist. Winners will be rewarded by being transformed into extraterrestrial high rollers while losers will be punished severely by Raaksu, the casino’s ruthless Pit Boss. As an added bonus, players that access the Ooblag Alien Casino space will be rewarded an active item version of the Ooblag game that can be played in their personal spaces.

See you in Home!

Got any plans for Monday night? Sony's announced that it will stream its five hour E3 press conference straight from the very real, very solid Los Angeles to the ephemeral metaverse of PlayStation Home. Normally, we'd judge anyone who spends five hours inside of PlayStation Home, but we'll make an exception for this. The keynote kicks off on June 6 at 5pm PT.

In addition to the press conference, Sony will also recreate its E3 booth set-up in Home. Starting Tuesday, June 7 at 12pm PT, users can take a virtual tour of Sony's re-creation and unlock exclusive Home content in the process. Also, the PlayStation Blog guys will be streaming live from the show floor at random intervals, offering up game demos and interviews for virtual patrons.

We'll be honest ... we're a little jealous. We'll be there, dragging ourselves through the aromatic halls of E3 to bring you all the hot scoops ... but instead of F5-ing our internet site, you'll be kicking it in Home. We quit. Hit the jump for the full press release.

#e32011 Would you prefer to experience the magic of Sony's E3 2011 press conference from the comfort of your PlayStation 3? Of course you would, just like you'd prefer that announcement-filled keynote speech to have dozens of people doing the cabbage patch. More »

With the E3 Expo just around the corner, the PlayStation Home team is happy to announce that you’ll be able to be part of the convention excitement — right from your PS3!

For the first time ever, PlayStation Home will host a live public video stream of the Sony E3 press conference on Monday, June 6 at 5pm Pacific Time in a special screening room. You can watch SCEA President and CEO Jack Tretton reveal all of the big E3 announcements and watch never-before-seen footage of tons of upcoming PS3 and NGP titles.

We’re also happy to confirm that the PlayStation Home E3 Virtual Booth is making a triumphant return! The virtual booth was visited by a lot of people last year (five times more people than physically attended E3 2010!), making it huge success for us and hopefully for you as well. If you visited the booth last year, you’ll remember that we enabled you to explore a virtual recreation of PlayStation’s E3 booth. Expect the same this year, with a few new surprises — including a 3D-rendered NGP to inspect from every angle.

Images taken from the E3 2010 virtual PlayStation booth; check back next Tuesday to see what’s awaiting you for 2011!

Be sure to visit the E3 Booth in Home at the start of the show on Tuesday, June 7 at 12pm Pacific Time and earn exclusive virtual items as you visit the different areas in the virtual E3 booth. Once you unlock all the virtual items, you’ll be able to check out Home content in the VIP area and play the first level of Scribble Shooter – an upcoming top-down, shoot-em up game featuring hand-drawn enemies that is being designed to look as if you’re playing on a notepad — as well as a Heavy Water package with active virtual items. Why spend money on a plane ticket to LA when you can attend E3 right from your PS3?

Additionally, the PlayStation.Blog team will be streaming live game demonstrations straight from the show floor into PlayStation Home, so you won’t miss a single beat of all the excitement of E3. They’ll be scouring the show for any exciting new titles to show off, and you can watch it all within PlayStation Home. LIVE!

We hope you come visit. See you, virtually, at E3!

While North America and Europe have had partially restored PlayStation Network connectivity for a (relatively) solid couple of weeks now, Asian PS3 owners have been sitting idly by, waiting for news of some kind of restoration plan. Now that news is here, and it's mostly good... I think.

Here is a picture of Weekly Toro Station I included because it has cats.

Similar to how things relaunched in other territories, several Asian countries, including Japan and Taiwan, will be able to connect to PSN starting tomorrow. Players will be able to play games online, sign in to change login/password info, and, thank the heavens, access to PlayStation Home.

The only territories still sitting on the sidelines will be Korea and Hong Kong, which Sony promises will be restored "as soon as ready."

Also like the rest of the world, Asian countries will be forced to wait a little longer for the PlayStation Store to pop back up, but when it does, they'll have their own unique set of "Welcome Back" freebies to choose from. Asian players will be able to download two of the following PS3 titles:

• The Last Guy
• LocoRoco Cocoreccho!
• echochrome
• WipEout HD
• Hustler King

PSP owners can download two of the following titles as well:

• Yuhshanokuseninamaikida or2 PSP® the Best (What Did I Do to Deserve This, My Lord!? 2)
• Everybody’s Stress Buster
• PATAPON2 PSP® the Best
• LittleBigPlanet Portable
• LocoRoco -Midnight Carnival-

Customers will additionally receive 30 free days of PlayStation Plus, some free selected movie rentals, a month-long free membership to Weekly Toro Station, and their own "special personal space" in Home, which will be detailed later.

No word yet on the restoration of the PlayStation Store, but Sony does have more maintenance scheduled for next week. Just a reminder that next week marks the May 31st deadline that various people have alternately said was and wasn't Sony's official cut-off for getting all PSN services restored. I'm not holding my breath, but is anyone out there banking on everything being back at full capacity by next week?

#ps3 The PlayStation 3's digital hang out space, PlayStation Home, will soon be home to better actual video games, thanks to the platform's next big update. Version 1.5 of Home brings promised features like real-time multiplayer, improved physics and better visuals. What else? More »

Deck out your PlayStation Home avatar and home with these epic virtual items.

Achieve a speed you never thought possible in PlayStation Home's Sodium 2!

Which of these pin-up girls will you choose?

Are you sitting down? Please, take your time. All set? Great! Earlier this week, leaked shots showing up on FourPlayerCoOp depicted a brand new, kinda futuristic Central Plaza in Home. Relax! Breathe! We're not 100 percent sure whether the shots are conceptual or final, though they look awfully real to us (aside from that woman's impossibly tiny skirt).

Either way, we'll see soon enough as PlayStation's Home update 1.5 will arrive this spring. Or at least those of you who are still using Home will. We won't. Because we aren't.

[Image credit: FourPlayerCoOp]

#rumor With PlayStation Home gearing up for a transformation from virtual world to viable gaming platform, concept art images depicting the new look for Sony's PlayStation 3 service have surfaced. Let's take a look! More »

PlayStation Home’s action-packed espionage game, Conspiracy, will be updated this week with new games, rewards, and virtual items. Visit the Conspiracy space on Thursday, March 10th for the following updates:

• The training mission has been updated to include three separate tutorial raids. Earn the INC t-shirt reward for finishing Tutorial #1; earn the Briefcase reward for finishing Tutorial #3.
• The All-Access Pass reward has been updated to a full-body suit version of the Robots from the Conspiracy raids.
• Players will now spawn in the chosen Corporation Base after a raid has been completed, making exchange of “The Goods” much easier.
• Faster load times.
• Arcade cabinets including the three hacking mini-games from Conspiracy are available for purchase as Active Items for your personal spaces.
• Three new Conspiracy companions for sale – WisperWyre, Reus, and a gold Conspiracy Robot.
• Special St. Patrick’s Day virtual items – including the Leprechaun Disguise Kit.

The PlayStation Home Mall receives an update this week with our expanded line of Spring Break clothing items for the girls and the guys while nDreams’ offers you a chance to dress like a PlayStation Home kingpin with their new line of vintage ‘30s Mobsters clothing items (included are the timeless pinstripe suit, a pair of classic Spectator shoes, and the all-important Fedora hat). Pick these items up this Thursday from the Threads store.

In other news, Lockwood Publishing is releasing new kitten companion items this week. Adopt a pet this Thursday from the Sodium store – you can choose from Tabby and White, Orange Tabby, or Seal Point Siamese cat that will accompany you all throughout PlayStation Home!

The mega-popular Community Theater receives a huge update this week. Visit the PlayStation Home Theater this Thursday to watch the following PlayStation Home-exclusive videocasts:

• Urgent Fury – this episode focuses on Call of Duty: Black Ops, hit developer Infinity Ward, and LittleBigPlanet 2.
• HipHopGamer – includes a look inside Manhattan’s PlayStation Lounge and features the recently-released MLB 11: The Show.
• LittleBigPodcast – complete with a strategy guide for earning LittleBigPlanet 2’s elusive “Ace of Spades” trophy!
• Replay With Doc – this episode includes a special guest host, Shane Bell from Urgent Fury, interviewing gamer girl Raychul Moore.

Finally, be sure to come out to the Gamer’s Lounge next Tuesday for a special Fight Night Champion event. Test your skills in online bouts against the game’s producers, who will be on-hand to field your challenge. Expect a lot of inside information, great boxing talk and a whole lot of beatdowns! Want to know who played the role of the jailhouse bareknuckle brawler in Champion Mode? How about the best way to avoid the jab when your opponent has a longer reach? Want to join an EA SPORTS producer’s online gym? Then hit the Gamer’s Lounge on March 15th at 5:00pm PST (8:00pm EST). In the spirit of fairness we’ll even give you a link to the Full Spectrum Control tutorial so there are no excuses come Tuesday night…

See you in Home!

This Thursday, March 3rd, PlayStation Home welcomes the second expansion to the Home Mansion. This week, everyone will be able to get their hands on the Second Floor with Game Room. Like the previous parts of the Mansion, it comes complete with its own gift machine, ready to hook up your friends with a handful of glittering gold items. Unique to this floor, it comes with its own pool table and dart game.

Landing the same week as PixelJunk Shooters 2 on PSN, PixelJunk is bringing new content to Home related to sister titles, PixelJunk Monsters and PixelJunk Racers. Included are a variety of fun racecar suits for men and trackside attire for the ladies, and to decorate your pad Monster-style, there are more than twenty furniture items, including cute miniature trees and various miniature characters from the game. Head to the PixelJunk Home space tomorrow to check it all out.

From our own collections, this week we bring several wild outfits. Whether you’re into Mech, Battlesuits, or Desert-style camo, you’re bound to want these.

Lockwood is introducing a new brand line. Figment is about being able to stride confidently into any party, room or restaurant knowing you look great. But most of all, Figment is about imagination and the ability to combine separates in ways you hadn’t considered before to produce even more incredible looks and outfits. You may find Figment in the Mall, starting tomorrow.

And last but not least, the Home Community Theater is being updated this Thursday with a couple new videos. First up is HipHopGamer’s newest video, where he enthusiastically reviews Killzone 3. If you stick around for the whole episode, you’ll be granted some blinged-out swag that represent the way only HipHopGamer could before. Next up, Gamer Indepth’s own Doc brings his latest episode where he and Sami interview Luge on her experiences at the record breaking LittleBigPlanet Guinness Book of World Records event in New York City.

See you in Home!

Sony boasts a huge userbase, but who are these players?

A suite of new features for version 1.5.

The first of Sony's GDC 2011 announcements isn't a new piece of hardware or a major sequel, but rather a new version of its virtual world, PlayStation Home. Version 1.5 of the core Home client, due this spring, is the most significant since the service's launch in terms of new technology.

Specifically, Sony is making new features available to developers looking to make games that run within Home. The most significant improvements involve low-lag realtime multiplayer gaming, paving the way for first-person shooters, racing games and other fast-action genres within Home. To (literally) drive this home, Sony showed off an early glimspe of Sodium Two: Project Velocity from Lockwood Publishing, which unlike its arena-shooter predecessor is a Wipeout HD style racing game.

We'll be getting our hands on Sodium Two later this week on the show floor, but we're already impressed with its fast, super-smooth framerate -- the result of new graphics engine capabilities. Its gameplay should provide a sense of the improved physics client Home 1.5 will offer. We have a sneaking suspiscion it will play a lot like Wipeout, but you never know.

Today, at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, we lifted the veil on PlayStation Home’s version 1.5, which will be coming to your PS3s in early spring. The update will introduce a suite of new technology with tools that will enhance your experience with real-time multiplayer, improved physics, as well as more realistic graphics and animations. PlayStation Home v1.5 was developed with one singular goal in mind: high-quality games. Developers will utilize the improved network mechanics to bolster the multiplayer experience with the fastest action available. With the revamped physics engine, developers will carry more control over physics elements, graphics, rendering and animations, which will translate to more realistic and more intricate game experiences.

This update is significantly different from what you, the PlayStation Home community, have come to expect from past core client updates. While versions 1.3 and 1.4 brought user-facing features like Voice Chat, Cross Game Invites, Navigation Improvements, In-Store Previews, New Item Types (such as Active Items and Companions), Optimized Load Times and Universal Game Launching, PlayStation Home v1.5 is packed with tools and features that will enable developers to expand the types of games possible on the platform – from first-person shooters with real-time, peer-to-peer multiplayer to kart racers and more. These new developer tools also allow for richer graphics and an overall improvement to frame-rate, which is something on top of everyone’s wish list.

The proof, as they say, is in the pudding – which is why we want to take this opportunity to show you how PlayStation Home v1.5 will impact your in-world experience. Behold SodiumTwo, the follow up to Lockwood Publishing’s massively successful tank combat game, Sodium One. The game, which is scheduled for release in conjunction with the 1.5 update, takes advantage of v1.5 and features heavily customizable jets squaring off in fast action multiplayer races at supersonic speeds. Check it out!

Home users! Be sure to step out of your promotional wastelands and secret subscriber enclaves today, for the sake of history. Space shuttle Discovery is taking off for the last time today at 4:50PM ET, and you can watch the whole thing from the confines of the PS3's virtual world.

However, there is a catch. You can't just watch from your own room in Home or the Central Plaza or wherever -- you can only view the launch from the Loot Sunset Yacht, a "premium personal space" available for purchase (previously known as the "Amaterasu Yacht"). Of course, this makes the event sound a bit less "historic" and more like "paying Sony for the privilege of watching your avatar watch the shuttle launch, instead of just watching it yourself on your whole TV screen for free."

#playstationhome The final launch of the Space Shuttle Discovery is scheduled for tomorrow, and PlayStation space exploration fans can tune in directly from Sony's console-embedded virtual world, provided they know someone with a digital yacht. More »

This Thursday, February 24th PlayStation Home and LOOT will be hosting a very special live event. Beginning at 1:50 pm Pacific Time (4:50 pm Eastern) a live stream of the final liftoff of Space Shuttle Discovery will be broadcast on the new NASA TV Channel of the LOOT Sunset Yacht (formerly known as the Amaterasu), a premium personal space available from the LOOT store in the PlayStation Home Mall. Be a part of history and watch as the last Discovery launch becomes the first live-streaming event featured in PlayStation Home!

You’ll notice when you visit the Sunset Yacht that this mega-popular personal space has received more than just a name change and an updated program guide on the built-in TV. Beginning this Thursday, February 24th, the Sunset Yacht will live up to its new name by offering owners the ability to set the time of the day while cruising the high seas—a first for PlayStation Home!

Digital Leisure is bringing even more fun Space Ace items come this Thursday, February 24th – including male and female clothing items and furniture that will delight all fans of this classic game.

The PlayStation Home Mall receives an update this week with new furniture, clothing, and active items – including new several animated pieces of jewelry, and gold, platinum and crystal furniture items.

Starting this Thursday, you will be able to purchase one, two, and seven-day rental passes to play all 50 levels of the hit SodiumOne Salt Shooter Game. If you have not taken the chance to test your skills, here is the perfect opportunity.

To celebrate this new way to play, Lockwood Publishing will be doubling the amount of Gold, Silver and Silicon available in game for all valid rental ticket and Sodium Pilot Outfit holders for the next seven days! More resources mean even more Sodium Credits to use at the VICKIE shop.

The Home Community Theater is being updated this Thursday with the first full episode of the exclusive LittleBigPodcast series. In episode 1, hosts Austin and Daniel interview John Beech from Media Molecule (the amazing LBP2 level designer) as well as the mysterious “Laptop Guy.” See you there!

Just a reminder that many of the Home Community Volunteer veterans are still offering tours of the Mansion’s Second Floor with Game Room personal space. If you have not checked it out yet, feel free to send one of them a PM and check it out! For more information, check the first post in this thread in the official PlayStation Home Community forums: http://community.us.playstation.com/thread/3407972