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Sony unveils its new online strategy: realistic avatars, custom spaces and enough user input to choke a horse

Nintendo's Miis? Oversimplified stick figures. Microsoft's Achievement Points? Too abstract. Sony's finally unveiled its real online strategy, a free service called Home, and it's set to blow its competitors out of the water. Officially revealed during the Sony keynote speech at the 2007 Game Developers Conference, Home is a beautifully detailed network of public lobbies and private spaces that invites players to create a realistic avatar and interact with other players online. And also to fill their private apartments with a bunch of Sony-branded stuff, but we'll get to that shortly.

Our introduction to Home was with a huge, park-like public lobby called the Central Lounge, complete with giant Sony banners flapping in the wind. It's here that most players will start out, apparently, milling around, chatting and looking at whatever dynamic ads Sony decides to put on the shimmery banners when they aren't playing games. "Playing games" in this case isn't limited to "regular" PS3 games, as you'll be able to wander into public game rooms, casually pick up a cue or ball and jump into a quick round of pool or bowling. You'll even be able to walk up to arcade machines and play them, all without actually exiting the virtual Home world.

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Mikel Reparaz
Mikel Reparaz
After graduating from college in 2000 with a BA in journalism, I worked for five years as a copy editor, page designer and videogame-review columnist at a couple of mid-sized newspapers you've never heard of. My column eventually got me a freelancing gig with GMR magazine, which folded a few months later. I was hired on full-time by GamesRadar in late 2005, and have since been paid actual money to write silly articles about lovable blobs.