I recieved an invitation to join the PlayStation Home Beta the day before Thanksgiving. I've played around with it a little, and I have to say, I'm very disappointed.

First of all, there is absolutely no purpose for the Beta version. When a Beta version of something is released, it means it's not a finished version, and is only open for the purpose of testing. However, the problem with the PlayStation Home Beta is that there's nothing to test. There's about 10 pieces of clothing to put on our characters (can't even change the color of them or anything), and about 5 pieces of furniture to customize our homes with (can also change the wallpapar - about 10 different generic designs to choose from).

So, after realising niether of those things were customizable during the Beta, I assumed we'd be testing the different locations and features available in Home. Well, there's only a few places open during the Beta (you have to download each of them, and you're stuck roaming around your tiny apartment, with nothing to do, until they're done downloading):

Movie theater: In the movie theater, there is a big movie screen in the front, with a bunch of seats in front of it - just like a normal movie theater, except a lot less seats, and only one movie room. While in the movie theater, you can walk around freely, and chat with other users. I'm not sure what the "movie" is about, since it took nearly an hour just to load around 10% of the video (everything in Home loads extremely slowly!), so I just decided to move on to another area.

The mall: This is a very pointless thing to include in the Beta! None of the stores have anything available for purchase, and if you try to enter any of them, that's what it will tell you. So, really, all you can do here is walk around and chat with people.

Bowling: You've probably seen this place in some of the demo videos from Sony (I think they showed it at E3). There's about 7-10 lanes for bowling, in the center, and about 5 arcade machines on either side of them. Around the back wall, near the entrance, there's also a few TVs on the walls, but, again, they took way too long to load even a small part of the video, so I have no idea what plays on them. I had to wait about 10-15 minutes for the arcade machines to load after entering this place, then I decided to try a game. I selected the option to play one, and it brought up a loading screen. After waiting a few minutes, I decided to just move on once again (by the way, the games avaiable were: Ice Breaker and Echochrome).

Central Plaza: This area isn't too special. It's really just an area that connects all of the other palces together (if you don't want to wait for this are to load, then walk to another area, and wait for that to load, you can save some time by just pausing the game, selecting 'locations', and choosing where you want to go). It's a medium-sized open area, surrounded, on one side, by all the buildings you can enter, and, on the other side, a bunch of scenerey. I'm guessing this area will change after the Beat, to allow you to go to more places. There's also a machine that plays music, and some users like to dance around it (you can choose from a small list of emotes, gestures, and dances by tapping the R1 button, or say a small list of common phrases by tapping L1).

Your home: It's a tiny apartment, with a few pieces of furniture already in it. There's only about 4-5 different pieces of furniture in your house to begin with (chairs, sofas, table, and lights), and there's only like 2 other things you can add (I think they were a cabinet and a footrest, which can't even be used).

So, to recap:

- There's really nothing to test here. All you can do, really, is go bowling, walk around, and chat with other people.

- Everything (objects, pictures, videos, etc.) takes an extremely long time to load, and is very annoying.

- There's very little customization, and it's very hard to make a character that looks half-way decent.

- There is absolutely no point in this Beta! If they're really so close to having Home finished, why can't they give us something to test? If they aren't going to give us something to test, then why have the Beta at all?!

So far, my opinion is: 2/10 - horrible service, not worth the wait.