PlayStation Home 1.5 Update + Sodium Personal Space, Aurora War Event & More!

PlayStation Home will be taken offline this evening for our weekly content publish. While this downtime will occur approximately 24 hours earlier than what you have become accustomed to per our regular schedule, when the doors are re-opened on the morning of Wednesday, April 20th, you’ll find that PlayStation Home will be updated to version 1.5 and will, in turn, be bigger and better than ever before.

PlayStation Home v1.5 was developed with one singular goal in mind: high-quality games. The 1.5 update will introduce a suite of new technology for developers with tools that will provide their future games with real-time multiplayer, improved physics, as well as more realistic graphics and animations. PlayStation Home v1.5 is packed with tools and features that will enable developers to expand the types of games possible on the platform – from first-person shooters with real-time, peer-to-peer multiplayer to racing games and more.

Also coming with v1.5 are more avatar save slots (24!), new facial building features, better furniture management, various graphical tweaks to the Navigator, improved object placement options within your personal space, increased Chat Log options, and more. For full patch notes, please visit the official PlayStation Home forums.

This week, the highly anticipated Sodium Blaster’s Paradise personal space will be released. Head to the Sodium Store in the PlayStation Home Mall to pick up this lush, sub-tropical personal space which includes the awesome Sodium TankTop 1.0 mini-game – a maddeningly addictive game where you can blast away waves of enemies with an array of explosive weaponry and fight your way onto the leaderboards.

The latest additions to Lockwood Publishing’s Cucumber’s line will hit the shelves of the Sodium store this week. These wide arrays of items are available in a variety of shades which will leave you with a huge amount of scope to create an apartment that is personal, comfortable and stylishly decorated. Pro-tip: The Cucumber Value packs make it even easier to create the look you desire without spending precious time searching the Sodium store.

From now until May 1st in the mega-popular Aurora game space, nDreams will pit the North American community against the European community in a duel to determine which territory has the most hardcore PlayStation Home gamers in the “Battle of the Atlantic” competition. Here’s how it will work: Each day nDreams will take an average of the top 50% of scores from each territory using both Orbrunner and Aurora Defense scores. The running total will increase as the average scores are added from the previous days and will be broadcast on the ticker in the Aurora space as well as on a special website set up for the event: AuroraWar.com. The prize? The top two best players from both North America and Europe will both be inducted as the first “Generals of Aurora.”

This week in the PlayStation Home Community Theater, we introduce PS Talent, a long-standing Home-centric machinima, print and video group that specializes in showcasing the most talented members of the PlayStation Home community. For their first episode, the PS Talent team interview Heavy Water CEO, Tammy McDonald, and talk about the recently-released Pin-Up outfits.

Next up, PS Nation returns with some of their awesome coverage from GDC – including pieces on Pixel Junk Shooter 2 and Super Chime Deluxe.

Last but certainly not least, Urgent Fury releases their fourth episode. Watch as host Jack Dellhouse reviews the recently released Homefront, followed by Wolfie D’s Newb Tube and coverage from PAX East.

See you in Home!