Main Home Spaces get Revamp

While you might already be aware that PlayStation Home is currently hosting a virtual E3, you may not have realised that the Home Square and Shopping Mall spaces just got a huge revamp. Gone is the arcade-feel of the Shopping Mall, and we now see a light and airy space. The Home Square looks totally different, while retaining almost everything it had before.

The Home Square has changed dramatically, set in the same harbour area as your Harbour Studio Apartment. There’s a range of new games to inetreact with here, including ‘Shooting Hoops’, a basketball game, ‘Tug of War’, and ‘Polling Booth’.

The last asks you to select an answer from four, and the water fountains beside it change in height as the general consensus of people vote for their favourite. It’s a nice feature that encourages community involvement, and I can imagine the questions will change on a regular basis.

The last game stands in the middle of the space, ‘Supa-Fun Robo-Goalie Time!!’. This game requires you to buy footballs to kick into a goal with real money. 20 balls costs £0.79 and 50 balls costs £1.59.

This area seems a little under-crowded, whilst the Polling Booth seems to be where everyone hangs out. The Shopping Mall, Theatre and Bowling Alley are all still present and roughly in the same places before.

The Shopping Mall is now totally outside all on one, ground floor. To one side is the beautiful harbour that maintains the feel of the Harbour Studio Apartment, and now Home Square. Without the annoying elevator music as before, the sound of the water makes the scene much more calm.

The main video ad also provides quiet music for those browsing through surrounding stores. The “Stuff” shop now finally has something in it: Dice. For £0.79 you can have a wrongly-named object (should be ‘die’, ‘dice’ is plural.) to… well, the explanation doesn’t really explain anything. “A huge dice for all to see. Play your own game with this massive dice.”

Because of the new outside area, the whole space is much more orange rather than grey and this area now feels more peaceful to chill out in rather than the look-at-the-advertising-and-buy-everything feel of the previous Shopping Mall.