Playstation Home launching Oct. 24?

Just back from a demo of Playstation Home with Jack Buser, director of the service for Sony Computer Entertainment America.

As most of you probably know, Home is the "Second Life" 3-D world Sony is developing to help its members socialize, discover new content and services, and, of course, trump Microsoft's currently superior online gaming platform Xbox Live.

Sony hasn't announced a launch date for Home, which is in private beta. Buser would only say it will be this fall. But then as we were checking out the new space in "Home" devoted to Sony's game "Uncharted" we noticed that the code to get in one of the locked doors is "1024." And Buser added that the number comes from the front of the apartment buildings where Home users have their "personal space." "But who knows what it means?" he added (I'm paraphrasing).

Gee, what could the number 1024 mean in an online service that doesn't have a launch date beyond "fall?" Let's think really hard about this one...

As someone who's not in the beta (I don't have a retail PS3 and just got my debug unit a few weeks ago literally) I hadn't seen much of Home before and I'd say I was pretty impressed. It certainly looks better than any virtual worlds on PCs that I have seen and it appears to be very easy to navigate. There's a fair amount of stuff to do, from playing casual games to watching trailers to getting in dance contests, all of which are centered on the idea of making and maintaining social connections. That's something that isn't really possible on Xbox Live (unless your idea of making friends is trading variations on the N-word while playing "Halo 3").

Of course, I and many other gamers mostly use XBL and PSN to play with friends we already know. Do we really want to spend the time poking around a virtual world and meeting new people? I don't right now, but maybe I will when it's easy and fun. That's the open question about Home, I suppose.

I also personally liked the fact that the avatars are realistic looking humans, rather than cartoonish caricatures like on the Wii and, it appears, the soon-to-launch update for Xbox Live. Buser said you can deck out your avatar in costumes from your favorite games, which seems like a good way to express yourself but not look like a kids' cartoon character. (Personally I want the ability to dress like the prince from Katamari and roll up other users into a giant ball, but I doubt that will be possible.)

If Home takes off at all, the possibilities for traditional entertainment companies seem substantial. Xbox gamer are already spending money just to get some jpgs of "South Park" or "Family Guy" characters to use for backgrounds and their gamer pic. Imagine how much more excited they would get to deck out a whole virtual apartment in "South Park" gear or dress their avatar like Kenny. Not to mention the possibility to show trailers for upcoming movies, set up a "space" with all sorts of information about the "Dark Knight" DVD release, etc. etc. And of course you could even pay to download and watch a movie in Home with a bunch of virtual friends. In the battle to give Hollywood a platform to deliver content and advertising to the elusive gamer aud, Sony may be getting a leg up.

Update: Joystiq reports from the Tokyo Game Show that Sony indicated Home will go into public beta (rather than the private beta it is currently in) "later this month" in Japan. And presumably the same here in other territories. Which could be what the 1024 means (public beta launch on Oct. 24) instead of a full blown debut.