It was recently announced that Activision would be securing a spot in Sony’s Playstation Home virtual world for their Guitar Hero franchise.

The feature is entitled Backstage With Guitar Hero and will include an easily recognizable set, pictured above. Apparently it will include a mini game called Rock God which includes game play similar to that of Simon, or any other memorization game.

Backstage With Guitar Hero will hit the Playstation Home service tomorrow.

Read (Kotaku)

Sony has recently revealed a list of 24 companies that will be issued a license to create content for their online Home service.

Now, Home is generally accepted as a failure, or a work in progress depending how you look at it. However, according to this list, Sony seems to really be rallying up the troops to garner interest in the service.

Some big names that will recieve a license include EA, Capcom, Sega and Ubisoft but theres no telling if these companies will actually create content for the service and if so, when.

Hit the read link for the full list of all 24 companies.

• Acquire
• Activision
• AQ Interactive
• Atlus
• Capcom
• D3 Publisher
• Disney Interactive
• EA
• Game Republic
• Genki
• Gungho
• Hudson
• Irem
• Koei
• Konami
• Namco Bandai
• Nippon Ichi
• Paon
• Q Entertainment
• Sega
• SNK Playmore
• Spike
• Tecmo
• Ubisoft

Does anyone care about Home anymore? Well if you do then check out the recently released 1.10 patch notes below.

I wonder how far Sony is going to take home before they consider it a failure. Then again, with Sony really looking to make a killing in 2009, perhaps Home will take off and prove all of us wrong. I guess only time will tell at this point.

We are constantly tweaking and enhancing various game elements to improve your experience in PlayStation Home. Updates in 1.10 include:

* The speed of the initial log-on process has been improved and a progress bar has been added to provide you with more information about what is happening.
* Items that you have already purchased will now be loaded when you first log-in, reducing the loading time when you enter stores in the Mall.
* Other players’ avatars will now load faster when you enter a space.
* The names of Home reward items will now be shown when you obtain them.
* Download priorities have been changed so that certain graphics and images (like thumbnail images and World Map chips) will download more quickly.
* The inventory system (that stores Home Reward items) has been reworked and made more robust. We have also implemented additional safeguards to help ensure that you cannot inadvertently lose any of your items.
* The Chat log window will now always be displayed on top of any other on-screen graphics, except when zoomed in to a video or poster. When zoomed in, the chat window will no longer display.
* The size of the text box has been improved on message boards in Clubhouses.
* The option to “Block voice chat” has been changed to “Block chat,” which will allow you to block both voice chat and text chat at the same time. Players blocked with this feature will not be automatically added to the block list on your Friends list.

Continued after the break.

* The game camera will now go into attract mode once you have been idle for more than 3 minutes.
* The “Resign sub leader” command has been removed from the Menu Pad. Club leaders will now have to downgrade sub leaders if they wish.
* We have further improved the UI for a variety of systems including Game Launching, Clubhouses and the Store.
* We have made several memory optimizations to improve client stability.
* We have made graphical improvements to particle systems and water effects.

Bug fixes

* Furniture in Personal Spaces will no longer occasionally vanish when you leave lights or lamps turned on.
* Single-seat chairs and sofas can no longer be occupied by more than one person at a time.
* You can now turn lighting objects on/off in your Personal Space.
* Furniture layout issues in Clubhouses have been resolved.
* The “Refresh Club Menus” option in the Menu Pad should now work as intended.
* Dates will now be displayed on Clubhouse bulletin board messages.
* A fix has been applied to the Home Safe Screen reporting process.
* Your screen will no longer freeze if you leave a game session with the game disc ejected.
* Item names and prices will now display correctly in the Mall.
* Wallpapers will now be displayed properly when you invite friends to your Harbour Studio.
* You will no longer be able to make a phone call to players who have deactivated voice chat.
* You should now be able to use two-seater sofas properly.

Like any other Home games you will be able to unlock items for your avatar which should be really fun to do in a game like that racing game here. If you happen to be close to CES 2009 go take a look. It’s currently the only game of the three that EA has made available.

The EA Sports Complex will be launched at the end of March and it will grow more in the future. EA will bring interactivity between EA Sports Complex and EA’s Sportsworld in the future. Players will be able to interact and EA will be using Home for various timed events. Anxious to get EA Sports Complex?

via kotaku

Playstation Home was met with less than steller reviews, receiving pretty much negative feedback from the entire community. But that doesn’t stop Sony from pumping out new content.

Having recenty updated their blog to announce that the talked-about Redbull space is officially going live this week, complete with air races, palm trees, and energy drinks.

That’s not all they announced though, Sony also stated that if you preorder Killzone 2 through Amazon you will recieve an appropraitely themed shirt, for free. Oh yeah, they also threw some Resident Evil: Degeneration shirts in there.

Read (Sony)

Now here’s the surprise of the century, it was recently brought to the public that Home items are selling, really good.

Wait, what? The service that got bad marks across the board has people purchasing virtual content with real money? Yup, that is if Susan Panico, Sr. DIrector of the Playstation Network over at Sony, is to be believed who was quoted to have said “Virtual goods are selling like hotcakes in Sony’s new PS3-based virtual world ‘Home.”

She even went on to say that virtual item sales within Home sold better their first day than downloadable movies did in their first week. Geeze, who woulda thought?

Read (Alley Insider)

While I haven’t personally tested out Playstation’s new Home service, word has it, it’s not all that great. But I mean really, what did we expect? It’s basically a clone of Second Life is it not? And is that really that fun?

I mean sure it’s cool and all to be able to virtually be in the same room as your friends before you play a game together, but did the hype deliver? Attack of the Show’s Kevin Pereira and Olivia Munn don’t seem to think so, according to the above video. Neither did Ripten, stating that, after walking around in the virtual world, it’s straight up boring.

Sure, you can make claims of Microsoft fanboyism, but Home wouldn’t be under such scrutiny if it hadn’t been touted as the “Xbox Live Killer” or something similar. I mean, when Halo 3 got released there were tons of disappointed fans, but I think Home was in development a bit longer than Halo 3 (read: forever). So what do you think, PS3 owners, is Home all it’s cracked up to be?

A poster called StreetskaterFU says he knows how to hack the servers in order to download, upload and delete files. It seems that some people have followed the directions in order to change movie posters and trailers locally. Check out the video above. But kids, don’t do this at home! Any official news from Sony?

via PS3hax

Other than a few minor changes, Clubs have been introduced to Home in this release. Clubs allows players to create a meeting area for up to 32 players and while its free to beta testers, word has it it will be a paid service when it goes public, bummer.

Now Sony, how long do we have to wait until us non-beta testers can get our hands on the service? Days? Months? Years? Ever?

Yes Playstation Home really does still exist, and yes invite codes are actually going out, and yes, a real beta is coming.

If you still have any interest left in Home, you’ll be happy to hear that Sony is handing out invite codes to a closed beta of version 1.0 in the November issue of Qore, so you better get your hands on a copy.

Any of course, there is no set release date for Playstation Home, maybe sometime this century?

The official Playstation Blog announced today that at the end of this month the closed beta will once again open its doors, allowing a select number of members who apply to try it out. How do you apply you ask? Well, when a Home theme becomes available in the Playstation Store download it and thats it, you applied.

Applying in Europe, on the other hand, won’t be so easy. SCEE will be hand picking those who were most active on PSN for a chance at trying out Home. What does that mean? Don’t ask me.