Both PlayStation Home Users Thankful for Spring Update

Sony will step up its project to incubate all humankind into PlayStation Home – its world of eerie avatars, advertisements and awkward silences – later in the spring, when it releases a massive update to the service, which may even extend to allowing users to have fun.

Version 1.5 of Home will allow developers to create real-time multiplayer games playable within the cold, lifeless rooms of the service. Sort of like those warm, joyous rooms that used to litter seaside resorts the world over, arcades, used to let you.

Sony claim the update will introduce “fast-action” first person shooters and driving games to complement the 230 games already available within home, as well as improving the graphics and physics of the engine – so perhaps it won’t quite feel so lifeless any more.

That’s what Jack Buser, director of Home, is hoping anyway, claiming Home is “evolving from a social network into a world class gaming platform”.

Buser also took the opportunity to throw out some questionable figures on the apparent popularity of the service. According to Buser, Home has been downloaded 19 million times – although that figure is based on how many people have opened it up at least once. Tellingly, Buser isn’t so forthcoming about how many people continue to use the service after that first pop, a secret figure only available to developers who sign a non-disclosure agreement (and possibly sacrifice the first-born child of every member of staff).