I have never used the Home service network on my
PlayStation 3, but from what I've learned, I'm really not missing much. However, with
apparently 23 million people using the service to date, it's not surprising
that Sony continues to support the thing.
Coming to Home this fall is a giant update including a complete remodeling and
redesign of the main hub of the interactive social feature and a much larger
focus on games. Four new districts will be added, all themed around specific
game genres. The other new big feature is a teleportation system that
will make moving people's digital avatars around much easier and faster.
Sony intends to not simply remodel the main hub for the ease of use alone, but they also intend to make partaking in the new shift towards more gaming centric elements
easier. A quest system will be included in making Home itself much
more of a game, including simple solo quests and long branching path chained
quests, similar to how MMOs are typically structured.
Completing these quests will directly affect elements of your Home experience
but Sony has yet to detail exactly what that will be. To further extend
the new quest feature, users themselves will be able to make their own and have
others experience them as well.
The new districts will include Action, Sportswalk, Adventure and Pier Park, each with
their own look and style. Who knows, someday maybe my morbid curiosity
will get the better of me and I will finally see what the big deal is with
Home, because years after launch I've still yet to understand why anyone would
want to do all the MMO stuff without the actual MMO gameplay.