On March 31, 2015, a piece of PlayStation history died. PlayStation Home, the strange graphical chat client that had been running for about seven years, was ending on that day. I had almost forgotten about it until someone had mentioned it to me. Despite me publishing this on April Fools Day, I can assure this is a genuine post of remembering one of the more infamous moments during Sony’s floundering period of the PlayStation 3.
There might be some of you who read about this little thing somewhere on Wikipedia, or even when some YouTubers mention it as a gag for laughs. For those who never experienced it, PlayStation Home was a graphical chat client that was meant to be used as a social hub. It was like Second Life but more PG and with less phallic objects.
PlayStation Home was announced by then-Sony executive Phil Harrison, complete with this silly, fake-looking trailer:
(Video courtesy of IGN.)
Naturally most of us laughed it off and mocked it incessantly. Webcomics, gaming sites, among other places were lambasting the idea, even more so when it was released to the public for everyone to try. For its entire lifespan, Home was more of a punching bag than it was a legitimate thing people cared for.
When I got my PS3 around 2008, I actually tried the system during its closed beta. In spite of the internet dogpile, I decided to hop in and give it a try. As the years followed, there was always that moment of “Oh right, Home is still a thing,” and I’d pop back in to give it a look to see what’s happening. Usually this moment happened when a big event had a space in PlayStation Home, like during E3 events. For instance, back in 2013 I actually did a video of me roaming around Home’s E3 Studio, which was quite the interesting experience despite how goofy it all was.