The PlayStation Home Open Beta is out, and it's simply the best way to taste what Sony has in store for the PS3 over the coming years. Here are the ten things you should know.

1) PlayStation Home is out, but in Open Beta status. If the world of Home feels sparse or buggy, Sony wants you to remember that it's not really out yet, even though it's actually been released to the public. The final version of PlayStation Home with all of the features Sony has teased is promised for next year.

2) It's not a firmware update. So to download PlayStation Home, don't go searching around System Update for the software. The option to download Home is built right in to the XMB under Network. And while the initial download is just 77MB, each area takes another 10-20MB. The system requires that you reserve 3077MB of storage for all of Home.

3) Chatting has mixed results. Talking to others is fairly mediocre in quality but is interestingly proximity-based, just like in real life. So if someone is speaking near you, you hear it, whether you want to or not. (Luckily, I was able to mute the idiot shouting "I'm a venereal disease" over and over.) Also of note, if you have friends in a different territory than you live, they won't be seen in public spaces, but you can invite them to your apartment to "chat."

4) There will be microtransactions, lots of 'em. Diesel is the partner Sony has been most vocal about for the time being, with pieces of their branded clothing available for $1-$2. And if you want to expand beyond your base apartment, a Summer House will be available for $5.

5) There are lots of dudes. Lots of them.

6) Free Games! PS Home features free bowling and billiards along with a few choices in arcade games. Your avatar actually walks up to a particular arcade cabinet before playing games like a Breakout clone or a gimped version of Ecochrome. Interesting in theory, so-so in execution. And only one guy on a machine at a time.

7) Game Spaces will be limited for now, but available in the Open Beta. These are the themed areas for your group to meet before loading a game. The only two spaces accessible at launch will be ‘Far Cry 2‘ and ‘Uncharted.‘ Each also features puzzle-like objects to interact with and strategic objects like maps for strategic pre-planning.

8) Video sharing is not yet available. The Open Beta will be missing one of Home's potentially coolest features, the option to share your media with others to enjoy virtually. Whether it's technical or licensing issues that are holding Sony back on this feature is unknown.

9) The theater works great...for an ad. You can sit down to watch a movie...if there were a movie. For now, you can watch a loop of a preview for Twilight and an accompanying music video. The quality is that of typical flash video, though the video screen does render smoothly into the 3D background.

10) PlayStation Home is not Second Life. You cannot create anything in PlayStation Home. You can only buy it. Sure, you have your apartment to decorate as you see fit and you can choose the clothes your avatar wears, but these options are based upon preselections—preselections that Sony has complete control over. There are five shirts available to men in Home and you can't change the color. If Home were Second Life, not only would there be more shirts, but those shirts would be covered in animated dildos dancing to the beat of a live vocalist.

Home could be a great platform one day, but Sony needs to provide the content to back it up. And right now, anything short of more advertising is lacking. In Home, I feel like a prisoner—my uniform matches all the other inmates as I walk around beside the other inmates endlessly with nothing to do.

http://gizmodo.com/5107634/10-things...aystation-home ...

Nintendo's fended off class-action lawsuits over "defective" Wiimote straps in the past, and if you remember, they also replaced about 3.2 million of the straps (a/k/a "all of them") around the same time too -- way back in December of 2006. Well, the same lawyer's back for round two with a new, nearly identical suit, but this one also alleges that Nintendo knew that the defect existed and was negligent in their failure to report the problem to the Consumer Product Safety Commission. Nintendo's probably not stoked about the news -- but we've got a feeling that the company's record-breaking sales will balm the wounds a little. According to NPD data just released, the company sold 2 million Wiis and 1.56 million DS units in November, an all-time hardware sales record for a month other than December. Yeah, who cares about a few busted up TVs and black eyes in the face of those numbers?

http://www.engadget.com/2008/12/12/n...ver-sales-for/ ...

We heard about a United Keys OLED gaming keyboard quite a awhile back, and we were a little skeptical of its chances of coming to fruition, but here it is, in reality, ready to simplify your life. Well... it's ready to try, anyway. The keyboard features 103 regular old, everyday keys, and boasts nine monochromatic OLED display keys on the left side which can be custom mapped and identified by text or images -- really giving the Optimus Maximus a run for its money, huh? This bad boy is 20.5-inches long and 7.25-inches wide, but the good news is that if you don't want the full keyboard (and who can blame you?), you can order just the keypad of nine OLEDs. They're taking orders now, and apparently shipping within two weeks. The full keyboard is going to run you $259.99, while the OLED keypad is $199.99.

http://www.engadget.com/2008/12/11/u...ing-keyboards/ ...

Benjamin J. Heckendorn returns from a vision quest of Xbox 360 laptop-building and Jasper-hunting to share a new how-to project with Engadget readers. In this episode, he'll describe how to build one of his Guitar Hero foot pedal controllers, which allows those with physical limitations to play their favorite guitar rhythm games using a foot pedal! Read on for the complete how-to.

http://www.engadget.com/2008/12/11/h...al-controller/ ...

Okay, so maybe Android isn't ready for prime time -- we're not here to judge, at least not at the moment -- but Sprint's still fully committed to launching a Google-powered set down the road, as evidenced by Miner's cameo at its developer conference tomorrow. That encouraging sign has been reinforced by new comments from Kevin Packingham, Sprint's veep of products and devices, who gloats that "We can, when the timing's right, pull the trigger." With the G1 out the door, why isn't the "timing" right this very second? According to Packingham, "We've just got to make sure our customers are saying, 'If you had a phone like this, man, I would really be more interested in Sprint because of it. You want to go out with a bang, because you believe that your investment is one that's going to generate a lot of return with customers -- new customers." Isn't "go out with a bang" a bad choice of words for a company that could realistically bite it?

http://www.engadget.com/2008/12/11/s...droid-when-it/ ...

What if we told you the most beautiful phone in the world was a Lenovo? Reactions to that statement are likely going to oscillate between "Lenovo doesn't make cellphones" and "impossible, considering this is the country that gave us the QKfone G998," -- but seriously, have a look. Even if you don't agree that it's one of the most attractive mobile devices you've ever laid eyes on, you're going to have a hard time making a cohesive argument that the Android-based slate doesn't run circles around the G1 for physical design. 'Course, that just makes it all the more maddening that it's apparently nothing more than an early model of the "Ophone," a handset designed to comply to China Mobile's Open Mobile System that combines Android's core with support and apps for the carrier's homegrown TD-SCDMA 3G network. Translation: we'll never see one outside China, so yeah, just lust from afar while you pray HTC and its comrades are busy cooking up some stellar gear.

http://www.engadget.com/2008/12/12/l...ith-a-defecti/ ...

EA spent much of 2008 pursuing an acquisition of Take-Two Interactive, but will EA become the hunted in 2009? That's the speculation that is flying after the "Heard on the Street" column in Wednesday's edition of The Wall Street Journal speculated that the Walt Disney Company might be preparing to bid on EA.

The column comes after Disney CFO Tom Skaggs said a "strategic and attractive" purchase could be a possibility rather than developing more in-house games. Financial sites such as The Motley Fool jumped on the speculation. EA's stock is certainly low enough to be attractive; it closed on Thursday at $17, slightly above its 52-week low of $15.50. EA's 52-week high was $60.35. The company currently has a market capitalization of under $6 billion.

While there are certainly strategic aspects of the deal that would make sense (EA works closely with Disney's ESPN on many sports games), it does bring up interesting questions. Would there be a culture class between Disney and EA? Does Disney understand the videogame market? Would this spur other major conglomerates in a bidding war for EA? 2009 could be very interesting, indeed.

http://uk.pc.ign.com/articles/937/937870p1.html ...

EA spent much of 2008 pursuing an acquisition of Take-Two Interactive, but will EA become the hunted in 2009? That's the speculation that is flying after the "Heard on the Street" column in Wednesday's edition of The Wall Street Journal speculated that the Walt Disney Company might be preparing to bid on EA.

The column comes after Disney CFO Tom Skaggs said a "strategic and attractive" purchase could be a possibility rather than developing more in-house games. Financial sites such as The Motley Fool jumped on the speculation. EA's stock is certainly low enough to be attractive; it closed on Thursday at $17, slightly above its 52-week low of $15.50. EA's 52-week high was $60.35. The company currently has a market capitalization of under $6 billion.

While there are certainly strategic aspects of the deal that would make sense (EA works closely with Disney's ESPN on many sports games), it does bring up interesting questions. Would there be a culture class between Disney and EA? Does Disney understand the videogame market? Would this spur other major conglomerates in a bidding war for EA? 2009 could be very interesting, indeed.

http://uk.pc.ign.com/articles/937/937870p1.html ...

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