Thursday, Sony opened the doors to its virtual community to gamers, by launching the PlayStation Home service, a next generation social networking website, into open beta.

The Home website will allow gamers who own a PlayStation 3 (PS3) gaming console to create avatars and interact with other people via the service in a 3D environment.

Initially, gamers will be enabled to chat to other users and befriend them, walk through virtual lawns and visit bowling alleys or arcades, invite people to their „home,” although the central activity within the community will be playing games.

For the future, Sony plans to render users able to to stream music and video on the service, which will be permanently updated with new games, licensing partners and events. The first of these events has been announced to be a a New Year’s countdown ceremony for fans of the PS3 machine.

PlayStation Home lets gamers download the software, after which they need to connect their gaming consoles to broadband so as to benefit from the service’s features.

The social networking website dedicated to gamers who own PS3 machines has been in the works for some years now, but it was only officially announced back in 2007. After a number of delays, Sony has finally introduced PlayStation Home, which editor in chief at Official PlayStation Magazine UK Tim Clark described as a hybrid between Facebook and Second Life. The latter is a virtual world developed by Linden Lab, which was rolled out on June 23, 2003. Via the Internet, users, called Residents, can create their avatars that are able to explore, meet other residents, socialize, participate in individual and group activities, create and trade virtual property or services with one another and even travel throughout the world.

PlayStation Home is free of any charge for PS3 owners, still Sony has revealed their plans to draw some profit from the service.

Firstly, gamers will be able to buy new garments for their avatars, while houses with more and better facilities will go on sale in the virtual community in the future, which users will be enticed into purchasing.

Moreover, Sony has also stated they would be adding advertising to billboards and video screens somewhere along the way, in order to bring in revenue from the social networking tool.

Given that the company has recently informed they would be cutting a number of 8,000 jobs in the electronics sector by March 2010 and also pulling the plug on 10 percent of their manufacturing operations throughout the world, the money they would be getting through the service will definitely come at a good time.

Nevertheless, industry experts and as a matter of fact, Sony Corporation itself, believe that PlayStation Home would not be able to draw new people and become an enticement for gamers into purchasing the PS3 console only to have access to the virtual community.

On the other hand though, having introduced the service now was a good move for Sony, since gaming machines come to be in high demand during the last six weeks before Christmas, so maybe the something extra the PS3 currently offers could give a boost to the device’s sales.