PlayStation Home gets off to a rocky start

After months of anticipation, Sony finally pulled the trigger Thursday on the open beta of Home, its virtual 3D meeting space for PS3 gamers. The bad news? Actually getting into Home is still a tricky proposition.

The Home beta went live in the afternoon on the East Coast, and for hours, I tried, and tried … and tried to log in, only to be greeted by a variety of arcane server errors. Of course, I wasn't the only one—here's a huge thread on the official PlayStation Home forum, complete with error reports (the pithy "/HUBPS3_SVML/account/SP_Login_Submit.jsp" seems to be a favorite).

I finally managed to get into home after 9pm EST last night … only to be kicked out again about an hour later. As for Friday morning, well, no dice—first I got a server error, and then Home froze just as I was about to enter the Central Plaza.

In any case, it's not the most auspicious start for Home, a long-delayed project that's launching months after the whole Second Life craze began fizzling out.

So, what's going on? This post on the EU PlayStation board from a Home "Community Manager" explains quite a bit—it's a catalog of technical problems, plus word that the PlayStation Network went down at some point Thursday, which "set us back a while."

Anyway, if you do manage to log in, you'll notice a few changes from the closed beta: a redesigned (if not radically different) Central Plaza, new spaces for "Uncharted" and "Far Cry 2," and a few open stores in the Mall, complete with microtransactions for clothing and furniture in your virtual apartment. (Disappointingly, the Home stores don't look like the virtual 3D stores in games like "Grand Theft Auto 4"; instead, you just get the typical PlayStation Store interface. Talk about a missed opportunity.)

OK, PS3 gamers, sound off—have you managed to log into Home yet? What do you think so far? Will you be back? Suggestions for changes?