PlayStation 3 Home rumored to combine Achievements and Miis @ Gaming Target

Written by John Scalzo on March 02, 2007

News: Also, Immersion and Sony have ended their patent fight.

Yesterday afternoon, popular game blog Kotaku reported on a rumor that Sony would unveil something called "PlayStation Home" at the Game Developer's Conference next week.

PlayStation Home is said to be some kind of hybrid between the Xbox 360's Acheievements and the Wii's Mii system in that PS3 players will create an avatar and a room for their avatar. This room can then be filled with "items with which to adorn the room that are specific to the game (achievements)." The rumor goes on to say that PlayStation Home would be a requirement for all future PS3 games.

While this is all well and good, the aftermath of this rumor is what has pushed it into the realm of "very likely". Sony responded to Kotaku by pulling all of their support from the site, barring Kotaku writers from any meetings with Sony at GDC and demanding they return their debug PS3.

This caused the blogosphere to ask the question "Would Sony do this if PlayStation Home was a fake?"

While we were digesting that nugget, someone at the NeoGAF forums found a listing for PlayStation Home in the United States Patent and Trademark Office, the details of which can be found here.

After reading that listing, it certainly sounds very similar to what the earlier rumor described.

It looks like GDC 2007 will be very interesting, especially on the heels of the announcement that Immersion has ended its lawsuit against Sony and they "have entered into a new business agreement to explore the inclusion of Immersion technology in PlayStation format products."

Yes, very interesting indeed.

source: Kotaku