Talk Playstation 3 News

It took a while, but finally after years of development and testing, Sony has taken the second last step to releasing Home to the public.

As you might have read last week, SCEE announced that they would release the patch notes of Home 1.0 to the current Closed beta testers, this would start the final run towards the Open Beta of Home. Continuing in this process is sending out the invites in two or three batches to increase the amount of testers. Followed a few weeks after this would be the Open beta where everybody can download it (presumable from the Playstation Store).

But there is more. On the official Closed Beta Test Website they announced some major changes in the 1.0 version. These include the relocation of the Home logo on the XMB, it will fall under the Playstation Network category from now on.
Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore will be using once space (read server) instead of seperate ‘worlds’. A Home Café will open up and Sony already has some events planned.

The most important change is the disappearance of the virtual PSP which was used to handle your settings to arranging matches. This will be replaced by a Menu Pad.

Check after the break for the remaining changes
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TedTheDog , Home Community Manger on the official EU Playstation forums, let the community know that in the coming weeks Home version 1.0 (Normally the version format that gets released to the public) will be released on the the Closed Beta community to further test it.
The Patch Notes of 1.0 will be published in the Closed beta forum section so the tester know what they can expect and help plan testing.

After Home 1.0 has been released onto the Closed Beta community, a few days after that invites will be send out to expand the user base in the Closed Beta. The invites won’t go out in one full blow but will be gradually send out over a period of time. And for the first time they will invite non-English speaking tester. Those are English, French, Italian, German and Spanish.

Once the invites have been send out the SCEE Home forums will become the Home beta test forums. A date for the Open Beta of Home will then be announced after that. And like Open Beta says, it’s available to everybody (on a PS3) form that day.

One important thing TedTheDog said was

Home Beta is a service that will grow from the foundation of v1.0 over the coming months and years so thinking of it as a start rather than a finish will help you understand where its going and what its all about.

So like Gmail, HOME will continue to evolve.

Source

Over at PS3Fanboy they let their readers know that SCEE has released (the first round of) invites to the closed beta of Home. Over the next few hours and days new members should be allowed in.
People already in the beta are reminded to (re-)download the code for the new expanded beta.

Make sure to check you spam folders, trash folders (if you deleted a lot of mail during the past few hours without checking) .

North America members should receive the code soon as well.

This is how the email of your invitation will look like:

Dear, xxxxxx xxxxxx

PlayStation®Home is a 3D, interactive, evolving service, exclusive to PLAYSTATION®3. It’s free to download and easy to use. Home is the place to be if you want to deepen your gaming experience – the place where you can meet, chat, plan, and launch games together. Also, you can fully customise your avatar, decorate your own Home apartment, play mini-games, watch videos, take part in events, and much more – it’s all part of the Home experience.

We’ve chosen to offer access to Home to a select number of PLAYSTATION®3 owners, and as a valued member of PLAYSTATION®Network, you have been selected to be amongst the first to try this exciting new service.

To take part, and play an important role in helping us evolve and grow the service over the coming months, please redeem your unique promotional code below using your PLAYSTATION®3 and join us in Home.

How to redeem your Promotional code and access Home

To redeem the code connect to PLAYSTATION®Network, select [Account Management], then select [Transaction Management], click on [Redeem PLAYSTATION Network Card or Promotion Code] and enter your unique code:

Home will download to [Games]. Install the software and the Home icon will appear in [Games]. Click this icon to enter Home!

Note: Promotional codes can only be used once and only the PSN Online ID we sent this email to will be able to connect to Home.

Please remember that Home is currently in a restricted testing phase, which means that we’ll be constantly adding new features and content, and testing the service, over the coming months. As part of your participation, we’ll also occasionally ask you about your experiences, and gather feedback, so we can continually improve the service.

Also please understand that this is a closed and confidential beta and your participation is subject to our Terms of Use which will be presented to you the first time you connect to Home. Please keep all discussion of your experiences within Home confidential and limit them to our private Home Beta Forum.

If you are an existing user of our forums you will find the forum in the Private section within the next few days. Please note this process is subject to network availability so delays may be experienced. If you have not logged into our forums before you will need to do so using your PSN account and then visit one public forum. This will establish your PSN account on the forums. Please allow up to 72 hours from this point for us to give your account permission to visit the private forum. We will not write to you again; just visit the forums a few days later.

Welcome to PlayStation®Home.

Yours,
Dan Hill
Home Service Manager Sony Computer Entertainment Europe

For those who have been accepted into the beta, enjoy your time inside and make sure you help develop this into a great feature for the Playstation.

Source

An visual of the Home Theme

The last window of opportunity to get into the Home beta before it gets the Open tag is by downloading the Playstation Home theme from the US Playstation Store. This will add you to a list of potential people to be selected to enter the expended Closed Beta

At the end of August the closed beta will (finally) be expanded with an uncertain amount of new people. They will be using a variety of criteria including activity on the PLAYSTATION Network to determine eligibility for the Beta community. Existing beta testers have automatically qualified to be part of the expanded beta.

For the European user SCEE will contact them directly to select them on the same criteria (which is you PSN activity)

Source