It's been a long time since I last visited Home, and as before it just left me disappointed and frustrated.

No, I'm not talking about my family.  I'm talking about Playstation Home.  I was there when the private beta keys went out, and stuck around for a while after it went public.  Eventually the pointlessness of it motivated me to wipe it from the system in favor of... well... anything else.

Sony has had a long time now to see how people use Home.  Enough time to see people don't necessarily desire three dimensional chat rooms in which they can slowly spell out words using the dual shock controller and on screen keyboard.  Enough time to see that the most popular spaces (back then) were the interactive and informative spaces.  During my first spell of wandering (since that's all you could really do) I noticed most people hung out in the theatre where they could watch game trailers and behind the scenes type videos, and places where you could play some kind of game or listen to different music.

At this point I'd like to mention that most enjoyment I had was seeing how many couches I could pile up in my virtual summer home.

Just as I was ready to bid Home goodbye, Sony seemed to start "getting it".  They had just added a new area for some kind of multiplayer hover tank game in the desert, and Red Bull sponsored a stunt plane obstacle course game.  That was almost two years ago, so I was keen to see what changes have since materialized.

One of the first things I noticed was the navigation style has changed.  They used to toss a bunch of "tiles" on the screen, grouped by theme, and you would be able to simply highlight the place you wanted and then go there.  Now it's a dumbed down XMB interface with confusing (and in my opinion useless) categories.  "New and Recommended" contains a subset of places that have been recently added and/or are noteworthy.  "Featured Games" contains a subset of places that are game related and noteworthy.  "My Home" contains "My Favourites" which contains a subset of places that you happen to have marked as your favourite.  "Shop" contains places that are exclusively built for micro-payments.  So far none of these contains a whole set for you to peruse, yet overlap on many occasions.  That leaves "Explore" which you'd think fills that gap.  It might, but the order is so nonsensical that you can't be sure.  It starts with listing a few definitive places, like Central Plaza and The Mall, but then goes into "Recently Updated" and "Recently Visited" subgroups.  Following those in the list appears to be everything else, in a roughly alphabetical order (although how "Irem Seaside of Memories", "Gathering Place for Cave Explorers", and "Konami Penthouse" are in alphabetical order mystifies me).

There are a lot of new places to visit in Playstation Home.  I will grant that.  But sadly there's still not much to do.  The interactive areas I found either require micro-payments (eg. Buy fifty tickets for a buck at the midway) or just load up a game you have to have already bought and installed (eg. Namco arcade).  The rest are just eye candy store fronts for even more frivolous spending (eg. clothes for your avatar).

If you spend any time in Home you will notice it is very clearly designed for restrictive enjoyment.  What do I mean by that?  I mean that while you are pretty much free to roam wherever, all you can do is look around and chat.  When you do find something approaching fun, you'll discover you probably have to pay for it.  And that is when you realize the whole thing is just an advertising space.

I decided to revisit my couch mountain, as it continues to be the most enjoyable part of the experience that won't cost me real world money.  Of course, the experience wouldn't be complete without Home locking up the Playstation in the midst of loading the area.  I guess the mildly amusing Sofa Hill was too much freeform fun for Home to handle.