GDC: Harrison brings PlayStation Home

The Sony GDC Keynote is still in progress - you can read our Live Text of the ongoing event at our sister site, Eurogamer.net.

Sony's worldwide studios president Phil Harrison has taken the stage at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco to unveil PlayStation Home - a new online service for the PS3 which will give players a 3D avatar and a hugely customisable virtual space to fill with content as they wish.

The new service, which has been rumoured in the media for some time, is due to launch later on this year and will be a free download for all PS3 owners.

Combining successful elements of other online services including Microsoft's Xbox Live and Linden Labs' Second Life, PlayStation Home will allow users to build and customise an avatar, and then build a virtual apartment filled with their own content - ranging from their photographs and movies to special trophies and items unlocked by reaching certain achievements in PS3 games.

Users will be able to visit one another in their virtual spaces, with chat enabled through text, audio, video, and avatar animations - while publishers, developers and others will be able to set up large public spaces which anyone can visit.

With the focus still firmly on user-generated content, Harrison is also set to announce new details of Singstar PS3 - which will allow users to download content from the network in the form of songs and videos, and upload it back up to the network in the form of recordings of their performances, which can be rated by other users or entered into competitions.

Another game drawing on the user content model is LittleBigPlanet, the new title from British developer Media Molecule, which Harrison is set to show off for the first time today.

The game allows players to build their own games and puzzles using a simple control system to move around objects, and an advanced physics system which allows them to behave realistically. Rather than simply using pre-made objects, however, the game also allows users to introduce their own content - photographs, for example - to the worlds they create.

Those games can then be shared online with other PlayStation Network users, where rankings will show the most popular games, and users will be able to rate and review the games they have played.

Also demonstrating Sony's newfound commitment to online gaming is Warhawk - one of the earliest PS3 titles to be announced, which was rumoured to have been cancelled last year but has now been reworked as an online-only game. Harrison will also show off new footage of Killzone, which Sony controversially showed pre-rendered footage of at E3 a few years ago.