Sony to show love for user-generated content with Home in GDC 2008

Game Developers Conference 2008 is still several weeks away, but Sony is already prepping up some serious fireworks come showtime. Like last year, it’ll be showing off PlayStation Home. This time, however, they’ll be highlighting the value of user-generated content. Eric Lempel, director of operations at PSN talks about it in the full article.

With a bit over a month to go before Game Developers Conference 2008 hits the scene, Sony Computer Entertainment (SCE) is already prepping up what’s going to be a huge demonstration of one of the console war’s biggest weapons. Yup, it’s Sony’s PlayStation Home virtual space, and it’ll be showing off how user-generated content will mold it into a living, breathing community.

In the same event last year, Sony let the world know about Home and how it will play out as a key factor in their online strategy. In this year’s GDC, Sony will show us an eagle’s view of the current tools which are incorporated into Home.

Speakers James Cox, Senior Producer at Sony Computer Entertainment Europe (SCEE), and Warren Keyes, Lead Tools Programmer will give us a walkthrough on how players can create Interactive Items within home. More importantly, they’ll demonstrate how any user can develop their own 3D games within the space.

Sony hopes that Home, along with the features already existing in the PlayStation Network (PSN) will stack up well with Microsoft’s Xbox Live. Xbox Live was established in 2002 and is recognized as an industry juggernaut today.

Sony believes that the PSN distinguishes itself from Xbox Live with its free subscription approach in synergy to embracing user-generated content. PSN Director of Operations Eric Lempel says an example of this are the tools developed by Epic Games to make Unreal Tournament 3 friendly to everyone who wants to create their own content.

“I think Xbox Live is a solid service with a lot of good features,”  Lempel adds, “but I donÂ’t think any one at Microsoft would disagree that there is still room for improvement.”