farbot.com

Whenever PlayStation Home comes up during the Aeropause Podcasts Joe voices an opinion held by several people, or least they used to before Microsoft said they were making 3D avatars too, which is: Who asked for this, and what's the point? It's a valid question, really, especially for hardcore gamers who just want their matchmaking to be fast, efficient, and feature-rich. It's a logical guess that 3D environments and avatars aren't going to streamline things in that regard, but a new MTV Multiplayer Blog interview with the director of Home finally cut to the chase about the point of PlayStation Home. In a nutshell, it's to meet other gamers.

Sure you can find gamers you've played against recently in a special spot on the XMB, and now with in-game XMB you can actually send friend requests from inside a game, but if you just want to go to a virtual hangout, perhaps some of the themed places they say are in the works, you can run into and chat with gamers with similar interests and ideas.

As someone whose only gaming friend in the same state as me is over an hour away by car I can appreciate this kind of chat room, but it will only work if there is relatively wide adoption by publishers to offer a variety of areas that basically become glorified chat rooms to launch games from. We'll have to see what happens when it launches.

Seen on the MTV Multiplayer Blog.

From Aeropause.