PS3 Fanboy

Sony and Electronic Arts have just announced a partnership to provide the EA SPORTS Complex within PS3's PlayStation Home community. In this exclusive game space, gamers will be able to play new EA SPORTS multiplayer games, view leaderboards and interact with other fans while watching trailers and content from EA SPORTS games.

"We're proud to support the PlayStation Home Beta with a very robust offering from EA SPORTS," said Peter Moore, president of EA SPORTS. "As part of our continued commitment to the connected experience and the digitization of our business, the EA SPORTS Complex is a rich new online environment that presents a compelling and immersive social gaming experience for the global sports audience."

EA also announced plans to introduce other EA brands to PlayStation Home in the future. This announcement, in conjunction with today's Red Bull space, shows that Home is rapidly becoming a much more engaging experience than what it was at launch.

Update: Video trailer, after the break.

PlayStation Home has been patched (yet again!), this time restoring voice chat. Update 1.05, available now, adds voice chat to personal spaces and clubhouses. This means you foul-mouthed pirates can chat with each other in the privacy of your own virtual-homes. However, expect public spaces to be as quiet as Sunday mass.

[Thanks, heavenssniper!]

While the original date for moving into Home was "autumn 2008," it looks like the digital living space isn't ready to occupy just yet. Home community manager "TedtheDog" tagged the service with a "this year" release frame, responding to posters in the official European PlayStation forums.

Ted said Home v1.0 is currently in "internal testing and will hit the closed beta in the coming weeks." This means, freshly-invited Qore readers will probably get a taste of v1.0. "1.0 is a major milestone on our journey but it is not the destination," continued Ted. The closed beta will continue into early November and sometime later an open beta will occur. Hopefully Sony can roll out Home before Christmas; otherwise, a lot of PlayStation fans will have to deal without shelter during the cold winter -- a very cold winter.

[Via CVG]

It's Friday night, and if you don't mind us saying so, you're looking rather snazzy: spiked hair, blue jeans, black hoodie, and brand new sneakers. Your cell phone rings. You pick it up, greet your friend, and tell him that you'll be there in a few and to meet up by the pool table in the back corner. You disconnect and slip your phone into a jacket pocket, but instead of grabbing your keys and heading out the door, you hop into your favorite chair, grab your DualShock controller and power up the PS3.

A couple of button presses and analog stick flicks later finds you in the local Game Space of PlayStation Home. An avatar waves as he notices you approaching the pool table. "What's up?" appears above his head. "Not much, Jeff. Where are the others?" you reply, just as the rest of your gang -- Mike from across the country in Ohio, and Andrew who's currently teaching in Japan -- run over to the table. Greetings and the prerequisite smack talk are exchanged before you finally pick up a stick, challenge Jeff to a game, and catch up with Andrew as Jeff breaks -- quite poorly, too.

The camaraderie between gamers, the ability to meet up with friends for some evening fun despite all of you being dozens, hundreds, or thousands of miles apart... that, according to SCEA's Jack Buser, is what PlayStation Home is all about. With hundreds of free and purchasable customization options, meeting areas, and activities, Home promises to be both a social network where people can hang, and a way to exponentially expand your PS3 gaming experience. We recently met up with Home director Jack Buser and received a guided tour of Home's more notable features. Join us, won't you?

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It's been a while since we've heard about PlayStation Home. This new video goes through all the things you can do in the online community. For example, you can play a game of chess with an online stranger. You can customize your character, your apartment. You can walk through Game Spaces for various titles, like Warhawk. For those of you not in the beta right now, this is a rare opportunity to see everything that's happening in Home right now.

[Via NeoGAF]

With the release of the new Home beta, we now have a much clearer idea of how these region restrictions, that we discovered at E3, are being implemented. It seems that the client reacts to your console's native region, locking you out of any Home servers that don't match it. That means that if you're a UK gamer who imported from the US, you'll be spending all of your time with Americans inside Home. If you imported from Japan ... well, you can guess where that's headed.

What we find bizarre is that it's such a strict lock-out, and that you're not given any degree of choice in the matter. It seems so weird that anyone can access any region's PSN Store, but not the online social networking hub. We can only assume that similar restrictions as on the store will be made for purchasing within Home. That is to say, if you're a UK credit card owner you won't be able to spend anything in the US Home without some jiggery pokery.

Obviously, this all makes sense to Sony. Home is meant to be a big income generator for them; mostly through advertising. They want the most appropriate eyes to see these adverts in order to maximise the "click through" rate. There's no point advertising Mountain Dew to a UK citizen, for example. But console-specific region locking is not the answer. At the very least, set up an IP location check or, god forbid, give people a choice.

You're going to have to wait a little bit longer for Home. Sony's much-discussed online service debuted at GDC over a year ago, but it's still been restricted to a number of closed beta participants. According to a new press release by both SCEA and SCEE, the closed beta testing will continue through Summer, with an open beta finally available in the Fall.

"We understand that we are asking PS3 and prospective PS3 users to wait a bit longer, but we have come to the conclusion that we need more time to refine the service to ensure a more focused gaming entertainment experience than what it is today," said Kazuo Hirai, President and Group CEO, Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. "Our overarching objective is to provide users with new gaming experiences that are available only on PLAYSTATION Home. Spending more time on the development and on the Closed Beta testing reaffirms our commitment to bringing a quality service, maintaining the PlayStation tradition."

It appears that more people will be invited into the closed beta. However, this recent delay of Home is continuing a disturbing trend of promises that are delivered late or not at all, such as in-game XMB and game invites -- these features are far more valuable than an online world to walk through. We're sure everyone will echo the same sentiment: it's been taking Sony much too long to deliver on these promises. Stay tuned for any new developments regarding the Home beta.

Scott Steinberg seems to be in a PR overhaul lately, popping up in several interviews. This latest installment has what some would call a challenge to the competition, but we won't focus on that flamebait comment. He talks about how Sony hasn't had a big keynote speech this year yet -- he feels the Blu-ray victory is good enough for now. We're personally expecting a big one at E3. He hints also that movie and music download services may be coming soon -- perhaps also to be covered at our expected E3 speech?

Big name titles, he says, will keep momentum going for the PS3 this year, but he also mentions the possibility of more downloadable PS-One and PS2 games on the PlayStation Store. Steinberg says there are "on-going sessions" to get more third-party titles up on the store, so who knows, before the end of the year we might have a much more impressive library than we do now. Maybe it'll almost rival the insane selection available on the Japanese store.

Speaking of games, there's no open Home beta now because Sony has set the bar so very high, they don't want any more people to see it until it meets their standards to get into the public eye. We'd like to see more PS-One and PS2 games on the store, and an open beta for Home would be nice. We'll see what happens this year!