March has been a crazy month for Sony and the Playstation 3, and by “crazy” I mean “good.” It all started March 1st with the announcement that Sony and Immersion had settled their court issues and were working together to bring force feedback back to Sony’s platform. Then GDC started and the floodgates really opened. It’s amazing how quickly people can get excited over something they wouldn’t hesitate to trash just a week ago. Of course, there are still people who’ll hate Sony and the PS3 no matter what, but overall there’s been a very distinct and noticeable turnaround.

Game 3.0
It’s a new name for a simple concept PC gamers are very familiar with. It’s basically a combination of software and hardware that allows for community, communication, and user-created content. Like Web 2.0, it’s an idea meant to empower users and, if LittleBigPlanet is any indication, it looks like it’ll definitely be making an impact later on this year and early next year (the best user-created content will be shipping with the retail game in ‘08). PC gamers are have been accustomed to this sort of thing since the early days of Doom modding, but not in such an easy-to-use, accessible package. I’m all for giving more control to users and this really excites me. It’ll be interesting to see how other developers apply this philosophy to their titles over time. Can’t imagine certain games being able to pull it off though. How would something like God of War 3 implement user-created content? Well, I guess that’s for them to work out, after all.

Home

Home was the big news out of GDC though. It combines the best parts of Microsoft’s Live and Nintendo Mii concepts and improves on them in every way. Instead of simplistic, cartoony Miis you’ll get detailed, realistic avatars full of customization options, a lot like EA’s Game Face feature seen in a lot of their sports titles. On top of that, you’ll also be able to select from different clothing styles - some built-in, some given as part of a game, others bought through microtransactions - to truly personalize your online counterpart. You’ll also get your own private apartment-like space that you’ll be able to customize with your own wallpaper, furniture, and content from your hard drive (my, my, aren’t standard hard drives handy?) Alongside all of the personalized stuff, you’ll also be able to communicate with your friends, form groups, play little mini-games like bowling or billiards, and, most importantly, be able to launch games straight from Home. So, for example, you could have a bunch of your buddies hanging out in your space and have the sudden urge to play Motorstorm. Not a problem. Everyone would just pop in their disc, hit a button, and there you go, you’re playing online with your friends. It’s all very convenient, very social, and very powerful. It’s not perfect though. Two things stood out that bothered me during Phil Harrison’s presentation. The first was the loading, seemed a bit too frequent for my liking. Secondly was the very stiff character animations. Home is still in beta and won’t launch until the Fall so hopefully those issues will get fixed. And yes, those were the only two problems I had with it, everything else was solid. And this is just scratching the surface of what you could do (for an in-depth FAQ, check out this thread over at NeoGAF).

It’s hard to imagine that at first I thought Home was going to be nothing more than an empty room you decorate with trophies. I’m glad I was wrong, it’s so much more than that.