Sony made a big splash at the Game Developers Conference with its roadmap for the PlayStation 3, which includes plans to offer a highly customizable avatar that makes the Wii's Miis look like sad caricatures. A forthcoming free add-on called the PlayStation Home allows gamers to interact with fellow gamers, and not just by marching around the screen. You can build an elaborate apartment, chat with friends, and even play mini-games including pool, bowling, and arcade machines. The promotional footage is quite enticing, but it will require more widespread adoption of the PS3 than we've seen so far to be successful. Hindering that adoption (or, perhaps, your inspiration to buy a PS3 now rather than wait for the inevitable price drop) is word that the PS2 chip will soon be dropped to reduce Sony's short-term losses on the hardware. Backward compatibility will still be offered via software, but only about 1200 PS2 games are supported so far - four times what the Xbox 360 delivers to date, but only a fraction of the system's total titles. And we've all seen how long it can take to get more, and the risk of this strategy being abandoned is high (Microsoft is already backing off its commitment). If you have a PS3 and want to try for the PlayStation Home closed beta, keep an eye on homebetatrial.com. If not, well, we all know Sony puts on a slick demo - let's see what they deliver...
