PlayStation Home, what you need to know and how does it compare to Second Life

Posted on December 15, 2008
Filed Under Sony Playstation 3 | 2 Comments

PlayStation Home, what you need to know and how does it compare to Second Life

PlayStation HomePlayStation Home is a "virtual" social network service for the PlayStation Network.  What I mean by virtual is: Each user has their own virtual living space in a different 3D world, called "Home Space", which can then be adorned with items users can receive in several ways.  Home is similar to another famous virtual world platform developed by Linden Lab named Second Life.  Second Life is a 3D virtual world for PC where users can socialize and connect by using voice and text chat.

Second Life has been around for a little more than 5 years already, and they have quite successes in the virtual world community.  SL is awesome on the PC and its virtual world is pretty massive.  It has its own virtual currency, the Linden dollar (L$).  Its function is like real money, can be used to buy or trade virtual goods, land and services with other users.  Virtual good selection is very broad, and covers almost anything you can think of in the virtual world.  Virtual Land is a valuable and scarce commodity and can be bought, sold or rented just like in real world.  There have been news on SL users making enormous dollars by renting and selling their lands to other users.

PlayStation Home is free and just released on December 11, 2008 under the guise of "beta" to the PSN community(meaning it's still not a final product), still buggy, but it will improve overtime.  As in this current release, PSN users can not create anything in Home compare to SL, you can only buy them.  Some of the items and clothing will be both free and premium depending on the piece, and playing certain games unlocks more bonuses.  Users can change stuff like avatar clothing  and facial characteristics based on what Sony provides in the selection, you can create millions of potential combinations.  We all know this is just a beta release.  Features like dressing up your avatar, creating an apartment and buying and selling stuffs and etc will be improved in later release.

There are also casual games like chess, bowling, arcade machines, theatre, and pool tables available in Home to kill your time, and I beleive more will be coming.  Walking around Home world is not always smooth process for PlayStation users as it shows.  Each time you walk into a buidling, it takes time to load.  Just like when you are playing games.

Chatting to other people is easy as you can either use the built-in keyboard screen or use your keyboard.  I would suggest using keyboard if you have one, everyone can type faster on a keyboard but not on the screen by using the controller.  Voice chat is also available for user with a Bluetooth headset if you are just lazy about typing.

Obviously there is much more to do in Second Life compare to Home.  But the possibilities with Sony Home are near endless with its high quality graphics and features.  It is definetly more superior than Second Life.   Watch the PlayStation Home and Second Life Demos below to compare:

You can also let me know if you want me to add more things about PlayStation Home or Second Life that I didn't cover in here.

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Comments

2 Responses to “PlayStation Home, what you need to know and how does it compare to Second Life”

  1. JimB on December 17th, 2008 2:18 am

    Good article…
    I couldn’t log in the first time I try it, kept getting errors. Beta is still beta…buggy

  2. FunBrain on August 26th, 2009 1:17 am

    am not sure if this game will take off, looks kinda bare…

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