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!

"We have developed a forum for developers to come in and develop 3D social games," Buser told Kotaku during a Sony Playstation 3 showcase in New York. The goal is to spawn the development in Home of what Buser calls "mini-MMOs."

PlayStation Home has primarily been shaped as a social space up until now, enabling online-connected PS3 users to interact with each other in virtual movie theaters, courtyards, malls, houses and game-themed spaces. Users in Home chat together, dance together and flirt together — any quick visit to Home will verify that that last activity is quite popular.

Some of the spaces in Home have allowed PS3 users to play. There is a hedge maze in one space, a poker table in another. Ratchet & Clank's Home space includes a scavenger hunt and shooting game (pictured above); Uncharted 2's has a multiplayer modification of Risk. Those latter spaces, Buser said, are hints of where this could be going.

You would go to Home not just to hang out, but to play 3D "casual" games.

Buser had no mini-MMOs quite ready to announce yet, but was confident that the gaming expansion of Home is underway. The service turns one year old tomorrow, but Buser was cagey about how, if at all, that anniversary would be celebrated. Time, if not to launch mini-MMOs, to drop the "beta" tag from the project's status? Not something he could talk about now, he said.

Yes, it's not a Christmas tree. It's a festive tree, because everyone has different festive celebrations at the end of the yeah, and singling out one is wrong. *eyes his headline* Oh well. Either way, there's a decorated tree, and PlayStation Home online community specialist Locust_Star urges home-goers to work together to solve its riddles over the course of the month in order to reveal some surprising developments.

This week also brings a beachfront personal space with a MotorStorm: Pacific Rift theme, and a miner costume in the store to celebrate the recent announcement of Dead Space 2.

Hudson brings the insanely popular casual game Diner Dash to the PlayStation Network this week, and there's a scavenger hunt taking place in Home on Friday, December 11th, in which players can piece together codes for free downloads of the game.

Check out the link below for more details on this week's PlayStation Home festivities, and have a happy and safe generic holiday.

Holiday Celebrations Come to PlayStation Home + MotorStorm, Dead Space 2, and Diner Dash [PlayStation Blog]

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]

If you join a Modern Warfare 2 multiplayer game via Home between 2100-0100 ET (1800-2200 PT) tonight, you'll be in the running to win one of these Soap MacTavish statues crafted by Kotobukiya, first unveiled in September (and bundled with "Veteran Edition" copies of the game).

Looks great, and everyone loves Soap. Smart thinking, Sony.

There's some trickery involved in joining a game that'll be eligible to win one of 10 of these statues, so hit the link below for the full details. And if you can't be bothered with Home? The statues are available separately for $80 at your favourite comic store and/or online retailer.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Launch Event in PlayStation Home [PlayStation]

From CydoniaX:

Allow me to put your minds at ease about this recent press. The coverage of what Pete Edwards said at the London Games Conference was not only a misquote, it was a misreprentation of what he actually said.

Edwards was saying that monetizing Home was not as big a priority as building a great platform, with a compelling environment and a strong community. Home is still a top priority for Sony and will continue to release quality content and provide a positive experience to our users.

And yes, we will continue working on fixing bugs, login problems, and other user issues.

Additionally, Michael French, the editor-in-chief of Develop Magazine, which hosted the event in question, tweeted to Stephen Totilo this afternoon that Edwards was in fact misquoted: "Edwards was definitely misquoted at our event. His point was that Home is a community platform first, and 'a business' second"

So this should all make Sony's position on Home crystal clear. It's not dead, it's not going away, it's still a priority and it continues to have the full support of the company.

PlayStation.com Forums [via VG247]

This is from Jack Buser, director of PlayStation Home in the U.S. in response to my query about Sony Computer Entertainment of America's take on the comment from the Sony exec in Europe who was quoted as saying Home was "not a priority":

Hi Stephen,

Thanks so much for following up on this. You guys & gals at Kotaku are great for exactly this reason.

I can assure you that Home is absolutely a priority for the PlayStation 3, PSN, and SCEA. As the Kotaku team have covered in depth, there continues to be massive and rapid growth of Home across the board.

It hasn't even been a year since we launched, and already we have over 50 public and private spaces to visit, over 1000 rewards and virtual items, and have hosted more than 200 events and parties in SCEA alone. We've had friendships founded, marriages performed, disabilities overcome, community rallies for important causes like Breast Cancer Awareness and 911 remembrance; as well as the less serious moments like Horror Bowling tournaments, epic battles between Hamsters and Humans, zombie revolutions, and tons of celebrity and developer appearances. Literally thousands of important and memorable personal events occur in Home every day, making this a platform an important milestone in the evolution of gaming, and unlike anything else the world has ever seen.

To illustrate how fast we are growing, in the last month, we've launched spaces for Uncharted 2, Ratchet and Clank, Street Fighter 4, Motorstorm Tekken, Pixel Junk, the Neptune's Suite, an updated Central Plaza, as well as the 1.3 client, making universal game launching a reality. Needless to say, the SCEA Home team is made up of a very passionate group of developers and community managers, and we never rest. Home's growth and success is a huge priority for us from a business standpoint, a platform standpoint, a community standpoint, as well as a personal standpoint. Everyone on the team is a heavy user of Home, and we love and use it ourselves nearly every day!

Oh, and tonight, be sure to check out our huge "Undead Yourself" party, as there will be a massive zombie revolution in Home that you won't want to miss! Check it out here: www.undeadyourself.com

Stephen, thank you again for following up on this and giving us a chance to set the record straight. It really illustrates the quality of Kotaku reporting, and is the reason why I personally read your site every day. Oh, and I love the Kotaku talk radio podcast as well. Keep it up!

Best,

Jack & the SCEA Home team

Hey, it's not easy to butter me up, but when you compliment our podcast... that does the trick.

"It's been a long road," Pete Edwards said, according to Edge Online. " We've proved there is a market out there and we've got a lot of people that spend a lot of time in [Home]. It's not a priority right now but there is a business model there."

Edge Online noted that Edwards himself said European users spent an average of 56 minutes in Home per session. So it's not like Sony's shelving or shutting down Home; he's just saying that investing further in its business model is not part of the strategy right now. Still, publicly deprioritizing PlayStation Home speaks loudly enough about how Sony feels about this project a year later.

PlayStation Home Not A Business Priority [Edge Online via Game Stooge]

The Uncharted 2 home space, which we've discussed previously, is set inside a Nepalese village, where players can hunt for an ancient Ganesh mask, participate in a torch race, or play the Fortunate Thieves card battle game, which can be seen in the video on the official PlayStation Blog. It's probably one of the most enticing reasons I've seen to download a PlayStation Home space.

In addition to the Uncharted 2 space, Tekken 6 and Street Fighter IV will also be getting themed spaces in tomorrow's update, with 25 alternate Street Fighter IV costumes released in the PlayStation Home mall to commemorate the occasion.

All of that, plus a new Penthouse personal space and tons of new fake things to buy, coming to PlayStation Home tomorrow. Now who's excited?

UNCHARTED 2: Among Thieves Hits PlayStation Home + Tekken 6 & Street Fighter IV Spaces [PlayStation Blog]

October is National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and EA is using PlayStation Home to spread the word. Now through November 11th, the publisher will be selling pink and black football jerseys through the PlayStation Home EA Sports Complex, with the $2 cost going directly to Brees Dream Foundation, a charity established by New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees in support of breast cancer awareness. The stylish shirts feature a pink number 9 with the name Brees on the back. I fully expect to see a whole hell of a lot of these being worn over the course of the next month.

I'll be buying one myself, and wearing it proudly on those occasions I make it into Home. My older sister is still recovering from her battle with breast cancer last year, with complications from her reconstructive surgery landing her in the hospital more than once over the past several months. While I will never tell her to her face, I love her dearly and plan on fully supporting the kind of causes that helped ensure she stay with us for a long time coming.

I stumbled across the PixelJunk space by accident this morning, while checking out PlayStation Home on my PS3 for the first time in many months. Later, I chatted with Cuthbert about the space and some of the early success Q has had with it.

Click the thumbnails to see more and get more explanation about what I learned today. (Note that most of the images were taken off of my TV using a still camera. Apologies for the poor quality and for the creepiness of my mushroom-hatted guy.)

The PixelJunk space was launched a couple of weeks ago in Japan and here in the U.S. just a few days ago. It's set up as a museum for the company's line of downloadable PS3 games; PixelJunk Racers, PixelJunk Monsters, and PixelJunk Eden. This is the lobby, where I found people dancing and flirting, the two cliche actions of any Home community.

See that video screen? It runs a trailer for the upcoming PixelJunk Shooter. Cuthbert said it runs off a Q-Games server and was getting accessed 10s of thousands of times in the space's first few days of release in Japan. That's the closest he has to attendance figures so far.

Right at the entrance is a store where shirts are being sold for 49 cents. PixelJunk Monsters headphones are sold for men; slippers for women. "In Japan only we have sold 1000s of virtual goods in just the first week," Cuthbert told me.

Cuthbert said this is the most popular t-shirt in the space.

Though he said this one is popular is well. Given the constant flirting and sex-talk I see whenever I'm in Home, I'd say Q-Games knows what it's doing with these shirts.

Walking into each area of the space cues music from the related game. This is the PixelJunk Eden area.

This is the PixelJunk Monsters area.

This is more from the Monsters section, with Racer in the background. Cuthbert hopes that his team can iterate on the space and make it more active and interactive. For example, he'd like the fire tower here to occasionally shoot flame.

More Racers.

And the rest of the items on the store. The PixelJunk Home space is free for users in Japan and North America to access online through their PS3s.

Far from being concerned by the fact that not all PlayStation 3 owners make use of Home, Buser was excited that so many people have even tried it at all. "We came so close to setting a concurrency record," he gushed. "The media is not groking how amazing the usage level is [on Home.]"

For those of you who don't know much about computer science or Robert Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land, what Buser is going on about has to do with the potential that Home has to interact with other software — the PlayStation Network, Twitter, you name it. For example, the Home team recently rolled out an update that enables game launching of all PS3 titles from directly within Home. Also, they've developed connections between the PSN, the PSP Go and Home that have the ability to talk to each other.

So while Buser declined to announce any plans to somehow integrate the PSP Go directly into Home, he very enthusiastically said that the potential is there.

Potential, he said, is what drives Home's expansion. The potential is there for developers to build spaces that connect with the fans. The potential is there for fans to demand things from developers. To that end, says Buser, if you want to see something in Home… ask for it.

Right now there are over 50 spaces in Home, public and private. There are 1000 virtual items to be bought or earned and the service has hosted over 200 community events where you can win real things like collectors editions of video games. All it takes to enjoy any of that is a PSN account and maybe a little tolerance for updates and evolving content distribution systems. Home is still technically in open beta, after all.

I for one would like to see a Valkyria Chronicles space and a Tales of Vesperia space. I also want some soft of transmogrifier that will turn my realistic-looking avatar into something more appropriately anime for those spaces. That was the one thing I didn't like about the Ratchet & Clank space — it didn't look like you belonged there because you weren't cartoon-y enough.

Also, I really wish they'd open up the building editor to users instead of just developers. If I could build a palace that was just mine, I might form a stronger attachment to my virtual identity in Home than I do from walking around a cookie-cutter-made living space that every other user could easily have. But that's just me.

What do you want to see in Home?

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.

For the upcoming launches of Ratchet & Clank: A Crack In Time and Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, PlayStation Home is launching two new virtual spaces and creating a new apartment for Home users to enjoy.

The Ratchet & Clank space was built with several casual mini-games like find-the-sheep and actually has music that sounds like something out of one of the games. There's a firing range game as well that changes what kind of enemies you're shooting at depending on if you're playing the Past, Present or Future range. Sadly, the apartment isn't Ratchet's apartment from the games – but it does have three levels and a massive view of space from the basement.

Oh, also, you get a Ratchet costume complete with ears, a tail and a Clank backpack.

The Uncharted 2 space is Nepal, complete with prayer flags, breathtaking temples in the background and a massive interactive board game in the middle of the town square. It seems a lot bigger than the Ratchet & Clank space – but perhaps that's because there's open sky instead of a robot factory.

The space has several casual mini games like the sheep-hunting one in the Ratchet & Clank space – but the board game really impressed me. It's called "Fortunate Thieves" and its oriented around changing terrain spaces with treasure hidden on certain tiles. Players choose what terrain map they want to play on (mountainous, desert, etc.) and each get cards that somehow change the terrain (e.g. an earthquake card). This allows them to stall other players out or open up other parts of the map to move to during the movement phase on the hunt for treasure.

Like with everything else in Home, there's always a reward to be had for getting really good at the games built into these specific spaces – so be sure to check them out whenever they go live (usually right around a game's release).

And sadly we didn't get any Nepal screens, so here's a parting Ratchet shot:

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]

The Batcave is a special treat for PlayStation 3 owners who pick up Batman: Arkham Asylum, first announced and shown off earlier this month. It looks lovely, but once again I must stress how much Bruce Wayne would frown on using his secret headquarters to impress ladies who might be men.

Killzone 2 plays a big part in tomorrow's PlayStation Home update, with the launch of the Visari Throne Room bringing with it a ton of new Killzone 2 items you can use to make you feel more at home in Home. Along with the influx of Killzone 2 merchandise comes the Post-Apocalyptic Apartment, guaranteed to make your high-tech virtual presence look more like a total dump. The update includes more than 70 post-apocalicious items dedicated to this new apartment alone. You can almost taste the radiation poisoning.

For those of you preferring to spend your time in PlayStation Home as a transient, there'll also be animated city t-shirts to help show off your civic pride, and animated glow sticks to help show off your love for animated glow sticks.

It's a veritable cornucopia of worthless virtual items you can spend money on! I'd point and laugh, but I frequent Second Life and have no room to talk.

Over 100 New Pieces of Content Releasing This Thursday in PlayStation Home [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]