PlayStation Home makes Wired's annual vaporware list

Open to the public but still in beta—and hence, "fair game" for the vaporware list—Home takes a deserved beating for its missed deadlines, promised but pulled features, and overall lack of anything fun to do.

Indeed, Wired calls PlayStation Home (announced way back in early 2007, and now finally in open beta) "woefully incomplete," noting that video sharing (such as the ability to watch rented movies or Blu-rays with other Home denizens) has yet to materialize, voice chat has been disabled in the main public areas, and Home users in one country can't chat with those in another (although I've bumped into Homers who claim to be from across the pond).

Even worse, writes Wired, is that "there simply isn't much to do"—and after a few weeks of milling around Home, I can attest to that.

Sure, there's online gaming in the arcade/bowling alley (similar to the bowling alley in "Grand Theft Auto 4," except less fun), the movie theater (which keeps playing the same trailer over and over), the weak "Saucer Pop" game in the Central Plaza (which looks depressingly like an office park), and shopping for random avatar items in the Mall (uh, no thanks).

But other than those modest diversions, Home—at least in its current incarnation—is a crashing bore. (And as Ars Technica notes, chatting with the unruly mob in Home's public spaces can be a depressing experience; no wonder Sony yanked the Voice Chat feature so quickly.)

Which begs the question: What has Sony's Home team been doing for the last two years? Sony execs say that engineers spent much of their time on behind-the-scenes coding, which will pay off once third-party developers start cranking out their own Home spaces. Well, maybe so, but the first two custom gaming spaces—for Uncharted and Far Cry 2—aren't all that exciting, either.

Meanwhile, there are nine other items on Wired's Vaporware 2008 list; I won't spoil them for you, but I'm not giving much away by noting that a certain muscle-bound, cigar-chomping video game character makes the list … again.

Correction: The headline of my original blog post states that Home "topped" Wired's 2008 vaporware list; however, it was number 10 (the entries were listed in ascending order). That doesn't make Wired's criticisms—or mine—any less damning, but still, I stand corrected.

Related:
Vaporware 2008: Crushing Disappointments, False Promises and Plain Old BS [Wired]