PlayStation Home to respawn as social games hub

PlayStation Home to respawn as a social games hub
Sony - making its Home more social

PlayStation Home is set for a massive revamp which will turn the service into a social gaming hub.

The virtual social-networking service was initially launched in 2008. Although it polarises gamers, it has been deemed a success with 23 million registered users for the site.

With the redesign, the focus is set to be on the hardcore gamers who use it most, with group gaming to be at the core of Home.

Sony is also going a little bit meta by offering up a points system for the amount of games you play within Home.

Up level

This game within a game structure is something Home director Jack Buser is hoping with reinvigorate the service.

"This is a giant leap in the evolution of the platform," explained Buser to Venturebeat.

"We are going to 'up level' games as the heart of PlayStation Home. This means that Home itself is going to become a game. The first things you see when you get into Home are games."

PlayStation Home already plays hosts to hundreds of games but the redesign is to make sure that users can get to these games quicker.

Things like logging in will also benefit from this new streamlined approach.

Social gaming has been a massive success on Facebook and Sony will be hoping that some of that success rubs off with its new approach to Home. No doubt the PS3's new price is bound to help.

Via Eurogamer

Marc Chacksfield

Marc Chacksfield is the Editor In Chief, Shortlist.com at DC Thomson. He started out life as a movie writer for numerous (now defunct) magazines and soon found himself online - editing a gaggle of gadget sites, including TechRadar, Digital Camera World and Tom's Guide UK. At Shortlist you'll find him mostly writing about movies and tech, so no change there then.