Sony has updated Home again, this time bringing in many new features, including the marketplace, along with a brand new interface.
The Marketplace area is set up to look like a mall. There is a clothing store, with different items based on if your avatar is male or female. Another store offers furniture to decorate your home. Speaking of your home though, there is also a store that sells new property, with a Summer Home being available, allowing you to have two Home areas at a time (it is unclear how many more will be supported, as only two are available right now). The items are available for "purchase," but are all free, so I'm not too sure how Sony plans on offering it. There is one store that is yet to be opened, so Im not too sure what it will be...
Available in both the Summer Home and the standard Home, is an outdoor patio area. More room is always appreciated, and it gives a nice view.
A lot of people are wondering about streaming music and video, and its not in this build as far as I can tell. but there is a new "Appliances" tab, with a picture of a TV, so a logical assumption would be that its coming soon.
Also new to this beta is an Inventory, where you will be able to carry items around with you. The only item available now is a Bubble Machine, which does exactly what you would think it would. It should be quite clear in some of the videos below.
The [Meeting Area] is basically the same as the last build, with the obvious difference being access to the mall. One building is still inaccessible. The theater and game rooms are the same as well, nothing recognizably new to see.
The interface itself has taken some time for me to get use to. There are the same options as were available before, but I actually prefer the old interface, it was just cleaner, and responded quicker. Jewelry is available to your character, though again, there is very little to be had. Some of the old clothing and furniture options are gone, but there are new ones to replace some of the (useless) old ones. The lights works now!
It was pointed out to me by Dot50Cal of the-horror.com that the models have a slightly different look then they had before. The difference is subtle, but is obvious if its been pointed out. The lighting and detail makes the models look less cartoon-like. He also pointed out that picture frames can have custom pictures now, which is pretty sweet.
The newest build brings a lot of issues though. The game crashes quite a bit, either freezing, or totally exiting. I do get lots of connection drops, but Id wager on that being an issue with my school's wireless being absolute crap. There are some strange glitches too, from couches flying through walls, to the main menu being absolutely unrecognizable, all of which can be seen in the glitch video below.
Speaking of videos, you'll find 3 different ones below. The first features character creation and moving furniture. The second features many of the areas, including the new marketplace. And lastly, there is the glitch video, which has 3 different clips together, so be sure to watch it all! All of these videos will be available in HD by the end of the week, the 3 videos of around 35 minutes are almost 2 gigs how they are compressed now. Youtube videos should be up briefly as well. Enjoy!
