I sometimes forget that Playstation Home, Sony’s proposed Frankenstein Monster that blends Xbox Live-like online service with an American Apparel-ad-meets-Second Life 3D space, even exists. Following its debut at GDC 2007, I was intrigued by the idea, but in the intervening eighteen months, Home has yet to materialize in any meaningful way. A closed beta trial of the service launched way back in April 2007, preceding a tentative launch later that fall, and that beta has since been extended half a dozen times. Home’s actual launch is out there, somewhere in the unknowable vaporware-future, and thankfully so. According to any and all hands-on reports from beta testers, Home is a ghost town, empty but for a scant few trendy avatars wandering the eerie Logan’s Run-style wasteland, hunting for an awkwardly animated dance party that may never happen.
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