Word: virtually
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...After downloading the software to your PlayStation, you log into Home and create your virtual character, whom you'll pilot around. Using your PlayStation controller, you've got a seemingly infinite array of choices to customize your human. Everything from the height of the cheekbones to skin color and hair (color, texture, length) is customizable - within limits. Want your character to be 8 ft. tall? Forget it. Humans are sized like the real deal. No really enormous noses, either. You want your character to be as obese as a tech-gossip blogger? Sorry, only the slightest of beer guts...
...Sony's obsession with verisimilitude is oddly out of place in a virtual world. And you see that same fixation repeated endlessly throughout Home. It's as if the Sony guys, watching some of the abuses at Second Life, were worried about what would happen if they gave control to the users. But hasn't the past decade, and the past five years especially, been about putting the user in control? Even the iPhone, which comes from the controllingest control-freak company of them all, Apple, is an open platform upon which any developer can build applications. Home could definitely...
...Sony ignored the whole user-generated thing and has instead created an environment that's as closed, locked down and totalitarian as "the Village," where the Prisoner dwelled. Everything here is too perfect, from the mall, where you can shop for real virtual jeans, courtesy of Diesel, to your virtual home within Home, a gorgeous, modern apartment that you can fill with virtual furniture from the likes of Lignet Roset. Seriously -Diesel and Lignet are among the many who have signed up to be Sony's partners here, and Home is a platform for them to hawk their brands...
...Home catches on, Sony will generate revenue from its partners and provide video gamers a place to hang out, play new game demos, watch trailers of upcoming titles in the virtual theater and even watch real movies from Sony and partner Paramount - and who knows who else. Sony could surely use the money; its PlayStation 3 division has lost nearly $3.8 billion over the past few years. The PlayStation 3 costs $400 and is getting thumped by Microsoft's Xbox, which is twice as popular, and Nintendo's adorable Wii, which has sold four times as many units...
...real Barack Obama deserves note, but it was the virtual i-Obama who so dramatically transformed the future of politics. With millions of online donors and millions of virtual phone bankers downloading call lists of voters in targeted states, and with the YouTube videos, watched by millions, that defined critical campaign moments, i-Obama is my choice...