Sony Computer Entertainment (SCE) today announced that its highly anticipated PlayStation Home Beta service for PlayStation 3 (PS3) will become available for all PS3 users around the world on December 11, 2008. Following the successful completion of the closed beta service, PlayStation Home's open beta service will continue to evolve with new features and functionality. PlayStation Home is a ground-breaking 3D social gaming community available on PS3 that allows users to interact, communicate and share gaming experiences. By leveraging the power of PS3, PlayStation Home delivers overwhelming visual graphics and rich gaming social experiences only possible on the PS3 platform. Within PlayStation Home, users can create and customize their own unique avatars and explore virtual community in real time where they can communicate freely through text or voice chat. PlayStation Home users will not only be able to enjoy variety of entertainment content such as mini-games, videos and special events along with their friends, but will also be able to create their own community by using the Club feature to create clubs with other PlayStation Home users who share the same interests. PlayStation Home, available as a free download starting December 11, will launch directly from the PlayStation Home icon on the PlayStation Network column of XMB (XrossMediaBar) on PS3. Users will be able to experience basic features and services of PlayStation Home, free of charge. PlayStation Home will allow open interaction among users, business partners and SCE, and will evolve with additional features including dedicated game spaces, special events and exclusive themed items, to further enrich the entertainment experience on the PS3 platform. "PlayStation Home is truly a promising network community service on the PlayStation platform, made possible with the powerful combination of PS3's overwhelming computational power and PlayStation Network that covers many countries around the globe," said Kazuo Hirai, President and Group CEO, SCE. "We are committed to providing PS3 users with exciting gaming experiences with PlayStation Home and together with our partners and users, expand the new world of interactive entertainment as we move forward." Read the full article