Ever since November 2008, PlayStation Home, the PlayStation 3’s social gaming network, has been growing and evolving. Through weekly updates, the service has greatly expanded, offering a wide variety of personal spaces to choose from. Today we’re going to take a look at one of the more innovative personal spaces to date, the Hollywood Hills House.
Hot on the heels of what was arguably the best update to hit PlayStation Home since its inception, comes the Hollywood Hills Villa. This sprawling two-story luxury pad certainly stands out from the crowd, as it’s the first personal space in Home to really offer expanded multimedia capabilities. Upon entering, users will notice that the actual house is quite large, with plenty of room for customization. There’s even a large pool in the backyard with an accompanying bubbling jacuzzi, both can have sitting areas. All this is set to what appears to be a sprawling view of the Los Angeles city skyline.
But the best is yet to come. On the first floor of the villa you’ll find a couch with a remote control, or as Home likes to call it, a “media pad”. When users select the remote, they then have the ability to to a initiate a working big-screen TV which rises from a hidden compartment in the floor. This home theater system enables users to view movie trailers, videos from sites like Crackle, original PlayStation content like Pulse and The Tester, as well as regularly added classic TV shows and movies. Upon checking out the amount of programming currently available, our favorite was by far The Three Stooges shorts which were included, there’s even some ancient footage from the Dana Carvey Show which showcases a much younger Stephen Colbert. There’s an additional personal movie theater located on the lower floor of the building, though only one screen can be used at a time.
The Hollywood Hills personal space is by far one of the most enticing spaces available in PlayStation Home and will cost you $4.99. Mammoth has done a good job of finally bringing entertainment options to Home’s personal spaces, and, despite console media steaming remaining what could only be described as a distant memory, we now have new media options to experience with our pals in our personal spaces, aside from just chatting and running around, which is certainly nice. If you’re someone who typically only observes Home from a distance, as usual, take time to consider your purchase beforehand. However if you’re a Home fanatic like many others out there, you’ll have very little reason to pass this space up. This is one pretty big step for the social application, and lets just pray that it’s another stepping stone towards full console media streaming in Home.
