- Playstation Home - So this is a service which is free to all Playstation 3 owners. It's pretty much a Mii and Second Life Killer, and an XBOX Live... uhh... hurter... It takes the whole virtual you part of Mii and it makes it better, allowing your character to obtain clothing and other accessories from points earned from achievements in games. There will also be game related items that can only be unlocked by doing a certain achievement in a certain game. This is really cool and I can't wait for this to come out. Also, you get your own little room, where you can also buy certain objects to place in the room. This is where people will really see what you've been playing, because there are a lot more game related objects, so if all you play is Resistance, your room will be all Resistance. There is also a lobby where you can talk to friends via voice chat, you can play games in an arcade with a friend, and you can invite them to your room. When in your room, you can share pictures, movies, and music currently stored on your PS3, which is pretty cool. The really cool thing is how this will stay free. There will be ads, but the banner ads will be real banners, and any real advertisements will be game related and will stream in the rooms, but you can walk by it if you want or you can sit there and watch. Finally, there will be a hall of fame, where you can take friends and show them all of your trophies and brag and all that. I'm sure that there will be more content added as the service launches in fall of 2007. There will be a beta in April and I will try to get on that bandwagon to report on how this feels.
- LittleBigPlanet - This is going to be a free game released by a third party, but exclusively "helped along" by Sony. The reason that this is free is because there are no levels that come with the game. When I heard that, I thought to myself, "Ugh... Microtransactions..." But this isn't the case here. You make your own levels. That's right, you make the levels. You can then invite up to three people into your game to play it out. I expect that there will be a marketplace where you can buy pre-made levels by the company and download user created content. This is one of those thing I would truly call next gen. The title is supposed to hit the Playstation Network in 2008.
There were many other things, but these were the two HUGE things that I wanted to talk about, so this will definitely make my purchase of the PS3 come March 23rd a WHOLE lot sweeter. It just makes me want that day to come all the faster. BIG ham sandwich to Phil Harrison for giving us something a lot better than stupid remarks.