According to Dan Hill, Sony's European Home Business Manager, "PlayStation Home is fast becoming the meeting place of choice between users and developers."

For developers, Hill explains, Home helps to drive interest in games by offering an interactive, hands-on experience built around the game itself. "A game space in PlayStation Home ought to be a core element of every studio's marketing strategy for new titles."

While Sony clocks in ten million registered Home users, new game spaces for Ratchet and Clank: A Crack In Time and Uncharted 2 have opened up virtual spaces in Home.

Public beta testing for Home began in late 2008.

The only thing that's free is a personal space, and that's only free until January 14, after which it'll cost ¥600. Everything else, from chairs to rugs to outfits (there are 20 items in total) will cost you, prices ranging from ¥100 (USD$1.10) for the Chocobo that goes inside Sazh's wig (available in early January) and running to ¥600 (USD$6.60) for full costumes.

The game launches today, featuring a new game space accessible through a teleporter in the Plaza. If any of you regular Home users were wondering what that tank in the Plaza was, here's your answer. Home Director Jack Buser and several members of Sodium's development team from Outso were on-hand to give journalists a little taste of what is now out there for all you Home users to enjoy.

Buser's hinted before at his intentions for Home to become a gaming platform as opposed to a virtual world tacked onto a gaming platform. He's used the words "mini-MMOs" to describe what he envisions the spaces within Home becoming. We've seen the beginnings of it in places like the Uncharted Nepal space (also developed by Outso) and now we're getting the first bite of Buser's ultimate vision for Home.

Sodium can best be described as a Facebook game. No, seriously – any of you who've played Mafia Wars or any of the "freemium" games where microtransactions drive gameplay will know exactly what they're getting into when they discover that only the first five out of 50 levels of Sodium are free. Sodium features a futuristic sci-fi setting where players pilot tanks to shoot up other tanks in an arena setting. There are other quests, too, such as stomping neon colored scorpions or a drinking game called Desert Quench – you'll have to check with the cyborg non-playable character Vicky to get them. Some quests are isolated experiences where you blow up NPC tanks; others are social games where you work cooperatively with other players to, say, squash a certain number of scorpions. Also, the developer said there were tower defense missions and proper boss fights at the end of each level.

Within Sodium, there are also social spaces that look a lot like the rest of Home – or any tavern in a fantasy MMO role-playing game. There's a big stage for where the developers plan to have live music events, a bar where you can buy virtual drinks in funky shaped glasses and even a VIP section where only tank pilots can go. (And tank pilots are always going to be people who paid for the game – the dudes with special colors on the sleeve of their jumpsuits to denote rank.) The whole setting looked like a cross between Burning Man (which turned out to be a major inspiration for the developer) and Dune. As in David Lynch's take on it with a lot of neon.

What makes this interesting from a gamer's perspective is that it's freemium gameplay on a major console. There are smaller, 3D games that have existed before Sodium on PC – like this game Korean shooter I used to play in college – but I'm hard pressed to come up with anything like Sodium on Xbox Live that functioned purely on microtransactions.

From a purely intellectual perspective, I find Sodium interesting because of what it will do to Home. I've talked before about how Home isn't as static as Xbox Live because when you go in, everything is instantly changeable. But if you've got a network of people who only log into Home to play these games – and their appearance changes in the game based on how much they've played or how much they've paid for – will it make Home more static?

Static or not, Home is definitely still growing. Buser was proud to announce that since the last time I spoke to him in November, Home has shot up from 8,000 8,000,000 users to 10,000 10,000,000 and the number of virtual items has doubled to something like 2,000. Home celebrated its first birthday just last Friday.

ETA: Sorry! I misheard Buser — thanks for the catch, Mathew.

And now for a Sodium trailer:

Sodium Two is already in the works for sometime early-ish next year.

P.S. Also, Monty Python and the Holy Grail costumes are on Home today. Send me pics!

Besides avatars of FFXIII characters, Lightning, Snow and Sazh, there are also items like FFXIII monsters. Available for free until January 14, 2010.

While Sony is saying this is a Dead Space 2 miner outfit, it does look very much like the Dead Space 1 duds.

Twitter / Dead Space: Own a PlayStation 3? Like ... [Twitter]

But first, ACII! Later this week, you'll be able to dress your lifeless avatar in some equally lifeless Ezio costumes. I don't know what it is about Home's inhabitants, but they always just look so...limp. Maybe it's the lighting, makes them all look a bit like balloons, or something out of a late-90s Pixar movie.

Moving onto next week, things get a little better, as Sony fill Home's central plaza with turkeys. And you have to catch them. It's like catching chickens in Zelda, then, only with multiplayer dry-humping thrown in as a bonus.

Since we're expecting an announcement from Square Enix on the FFXIII front this Friday anyway—and expecting a North American release date—that's not a surprise. What would be a surprise is if Home is the only place to see this video. That's not Square Enix's style.

After all the announcement of Final Fantasy XIII's presence in Home is wedged between details on Fullmetal Alchemist episode screenings and a sneak peek of Steven Seagal's Lawman reality show, also taking up screen real estate in Sony's virtual hang space.

But if you find yourself in one of Home's 10-screen theaters this Friday, don't be surprised if Lightning strikes.

This Week in PlayStation Home: Assassin's Creed, Final Fantasy XIII, Fullmetal Alchemist and A&E's Lawman [PlayStation.blog]

In an effort to promote the release of X-Men Origins: Wolverine, this year's best mutant action-comedy, on Blu-ray and DVD, Twentieth Century Fox and Sony Computer Entertainment Europe are giving away free adamantium upgrades to Home users. And they're giving away a free animated shirt. They call it a vest in Europe, which sounds much nicer than "wife-beater."

How does one get these lovely prizes?

Well, all one needs to do is visit the old Threads Store in Home, presumably after visiting the Home Theatre to watch a preview of the Blu-ray release. Oh, did I type "theatre"? Yes, I did, because this is apparently limited to a European release. Sorry if that sends you into a beserker rage.

Here's another pic of the Wolverine goods in action, illustrating just why Hugh Jackman spends so much time working out for this role.

Version 1.3 of Home, as previously detailed, will add universal game launching from within the service. No need to stop doing the Running Man just to start up a Resistance 2 fragfest, as any title can be launched from Home as of tomorrow.

Of course, there's more to it than that, including new items, emotes and clothing categories. Plus, Home residents will be able to preview wearable items and furniture in real time. And soon you'll be able to eat shrink cakes and take pictures with an in-Home camera! Truly, we have finally jacked into the Matrix.

PlayStation Home v1.3 Coming Thursday + New Central Plaza, Neptune Suite and More! [PlayStation.blog]

As we liveblogged, sometime this "fall", Home will be upgraded to v1.3, and with that upgrade a host of changes will be made to the social service. Chief amongst those will be the ability for people to launch any PlayStation 3 game from within the program (currently only a few titles support this).

Those games that already support the feature - like Street Fighter IV, Resistance 2, MotorStorm, and Far Cry 2 - will have additional "launching" capabilities, like jump-in multiplayer.

Other features being added as part of the update include the ability to preview store items, an in-Home camera for happy snaps and more emoticons for you to use while dry-humping the only female avatar in the plaza.

PlayStation Home v1.3 Coming This September [PlayStation]

Anyone purchasing the game on PS3 will be given a free unlock for PlayStation Home, giving them the option of decking out their apartment to look like the Batcave. And not Dark Knight's "office space" batcave, either, a proper, dingy batcave.

The game's out on PS3 on August 25, with the batcave unlockable as quickly as you can get your copy home and download it.

The good news? They're free via Home's Threads Store and also include outfits for Duke and The Baroness. Make it snappy, wannabe Joes, as these are available to Home residents for a limited time.

Of course, that's not the only G.I. Joe advertising you'll see, as the Home Theater will add "an exclusive video welcome from stars Sienna Miller and Rachel Nichols as well as a trailer introduction from director Stephen Sommers." Sundry clips and mini-games will also satisfy your G.I. Joe cravings. Images of those costumes are after this.

The Movie Theater update brings with it ten screens, a new lobby and the ability to unlock rewards in some screening rooms. Playstation Community Manager CydoniaX also says that the coming months will also bring the "future possibility" of full-length TV shows or movies to the virtual space.

The Burn Zombie Burn space includes a crypt, videos from the game and a zombie-infested mini-game.

MotorStorm content will be hitting Home soon too, with the ability to launch a game of Motor Storm Pacific Rift from inside home and a new space that features piles of beat-up cars.

Finally, on Friday Home will launch a Fat Princess Quest for Cake event. There will be eight pieces of cake locked away in cages inside the Home space. To get to them you have to search the area for clues. Once you feed all eight pieces to the princess, you get a reward.

The Curtain Rises on the 10-Screen Movie Theater in PlayStation Home, MotorStorm Game Launching Crashes In, and Fat Princess Needs Cake! [Playstation Blog]

Turns out that sometimes they do.

While efforts like Sony's Folding@Home project, which uses the collective processing power of unplayed Playstation 3's to research and better understand disease, have been around for years, it wasn't until recently that console games have started playing around with this idea of collective gaming.

Earlier this month, Battlefield 1943 stormed onto the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360. In the first-person shooter, gamers go online to fight it out in World War II's Pacific. While the game's premise of World War II battle offered little unique to the genre, there was a twist.

The game shipped with an area locked away from players' reach. To get to this hidden map, gamers had to collectively kill one another 43 million times. Once the kill count was reached, the map and new game mode becomes available to everyone, for free.

It took just five days on the Xbox 360.

"We were tracking all global kills per a console," said DICE's Gordon Van Dyke, the game's producer. "Every time a kill was made the server would report it."

Van Dyke used an Excel spread sheet and his knowledge of such games to track how long he thought it would take. He came up with three weeks, not five days.

Van Dyke thinks that the Playstation 3 version of the new map, which has to be unlocked separately, will likely hit early next week.

By all accounts the experiment, dubbed a community challenge, was a success. A success not just in terms of tracking the popularity of their game, but in helping to define and build a community among those gamers.

"I'm a big advocate of the community," he said. "I think (ideas like this) could blur the definition of massively multiplayer online games in particular areas, and build up that community relationship In games like this."

And the success of this communal achievement has Van Dyke, at least, thinking about including these sort of group efforts in future games.

"I will be working on (upcoming shooter) Bad Company 2, so it's definitely something we would consider in that game," he said. "But we are not going to shove it into something else because it was successful for 1943, we want to use it diligently."

Battlefield isn't the only, or the first console game to tap into communal efforts.

The Playstaton 3's Noby Noby Boy, released earlier this year, tracked all players' efforts in the game, reporting them to a database. The worldwide points were then used to unlock new areas in the game for everyone. It took players months to unlock just two of the game's extra levels.

Eric Lempel, director of Playstation Network operations and strategic planning, says these sorts of community-driven efforts and rewards are the natural evolution of this generation of consoles. An evolution anchored in online play and masses of gamers.

Lempel points to the PS3's virtual world of Home as an example of how community and building community has become an increasingly important part of console gaming.

"One of the biggest goals for us is bringing the community together," he said. "Bringing another level of entertainment to the community."

Home was recently host to a form of alternative reality game, something that wasn't fully explained to gamers, but expected them to figure out the clues, the mystery, themselves. By the time the game wrapped up this month, 3.2 million people had visited it and it had 460,000 players.

While the creators of games will likely always be the driving force behind gaming, they're quickly becoming not the only ones with an important impact on what they make.

Giving a gamer control of the environment in which they play, allowing them to unlock secrets, explore spaces, create new ideas, will inevitably change the nature of this form of entertainment. Perhaps eventually turning the concept of the artist and the audience on its head.

Well Played is a weekly news and opinion column about the big stories of the week in the gaming industry and its bigger impact on things to come. Feel free to join in the discussion.

To be released to help promote the upcoming Katamari Tribute (or Katamari Forever as it's known here), Japanese users will soon be able to pick up a Katamari t-shirt and adorable little shoulder...parrot...conscience...guy. They'll be available on July 23, with no word as yet on whether you'll be able to pick them up in the US or European branches.

Also released today: this new trailer. With sock puppets, kittens and dung beetles.

Yes, as part of the series' 30th anniversary celebrations, from July 11 a digital representation of the big guy will tower over the plaza of the Japanese version of Home. Sadly, like the actual statue (which is only up for another month or so), this is also a limited offer, as he's only going to be there until July 23.

http://www.inside-games.jp/news/363/36304.html

"How appealing would each of the following potential features be if a new public space was created that was dedicated to the PlayStation brand?"

That's the main question, and Sony then breaks things down into smaller, bit-sized polling that covers everything from PlayStation dev video interviews to trailers of upcoming games to the history of PlayStation.

Feel free to answer in the comments below. Or not. YOU DECIDE.

Registered Users: According to Edward, Home now has "7 million inhabitants", of which 3 million hail from Europe, and those "inhabitants" have downloaded 6 million "virtual items" between them.

Sounds good! Problem is, like Second Life (and, to be fair, most online titles), Sony don't count active users, they only count registered users. So if you logged into Home, walked around for 30 mins, hated it and never came back, you're still counted as an "inhabitant".

Which isn't the most useful statistic. For a better idea of how many people are actually using Home, we can look to some advertising figures...

Advertising Details: Edward revealed for the first time some details on the advertising within Home, in particular the success of two of the more prominent examples to be found so far within the service: the Red Bull air race, and the promotion for the Watchmen movie.

Edward says that the Red Bull game has logged 873,136 unique users, while the Watchmen promo tallied 812,544 unique users. With those two attractions being so prominent, and with those two numbers being so close, it looks like Home's active, regular users may well be closer to those figures than the "7 million" figure quoted.

Strange they don't quote that number. After all, if they could boast that Home had 1 million active users (which if it doesn't already have, they must be close), wouldn't that look, well, better?

Demographics: Finally, Edward says that Home's userbase skews mostly towards the "core" gamer, with the finding that a whopping 80% of Home's users are 18-35 year-old males.

So, next time someone presses you for Home stats, you'll have something to offer!

Sony's Edward Talks PlayStation Home As It Hits 7 Million Users [Gamasutra]

Apparently it's a dance-off between humans and hamsters. Presumably with lots of grinding. And with a Stay Puft Marshmallow Man somehow involved. It's all a little hard to come to terms with, but at 8PM PST this Saturday night, if you find yourself spending the night in, you may as well check it out, let me know if you see a breakdancing Marshmallow Man.

Sony: Home needs more stuff like this. You've spent years of manpower and millions of dollars building the thing, you may as well have a little fun with it.

Hamster vs Human Dance-Off for Control of PlayStation Home [PlayStation]

The SOCOM-themed space, dubbed the SOCOM Tactical Operations Center, not only gives fans of the tactical military shooter series special things to sit on and mill about, it also offers a snazzy Telestrator tool for planning in-game strategies and leaderboards that update in real-time.

And while the Ghostbusters personal space is something you'll have to pay for, it's an enviable environment nonetheless. A full recreation of the Ghostbusters firehouse, it includes firepoles, a virtual ECTO-1 and all manner of recreated movie props. Yes, now you can relive the infamous "Last of the Petty Cash" Chinese take out scene in Home. I'd recommend watching the trailer at the PlayStation.blog.

But wait, there's more! New stuff for the EA Sports complex, inFAMOUS outfits and other stuff that you'll have to head over to the PlayStation.blog to read about.

Coming to PlayStation Home: New SOCOM Space, Ghostbusters Apartment, EA SPORTS Complex Update + More! [PlayStation.blog]