Home for the Playstation 3 is officially live, albeit in a beta stage, reviews are… mixed to say the least, but mind you this is a beta version only. Despite spending more than a year on the closed beta, it’s now clear that Home still has a long way to go before maturing. So how long exactly?

Well if you ask Sony Computer Entertainment of American, a spokesperson will say that as a “continuously evolving service”, the virtual world is still considered a beta. Right now they’re adding and removing news based on user feedback. As for the full launch, that depends on how well it evolves in time.

Jack Buser, SCEA’s Home director addressed the problem of microtransactions, explaining that things are priced so that people will want to buy it. They want people to not think twice about people buying a virtual item to represent themselves.

Buser said that if one has “a remainder of money lying around in [their] wallet”, one would want to buy, for instance, a pair of jeans for one’s avatar to match the jeans they wear in real life.

Other possibilities may include the ability for members of different territories to invite each other to their apartments, as well as unlockable rewards.

Responding to the issue of the ubiquitous griefing and cursing in Home, Sony PR said that Playstation Home adheres to the same guidelines and rules as the rest of the Playstation Network as far as age stipulations and acceptable behaviour is concerned, and uses the same age controls as the system software of the Playstation 3 console. Areas will not be monitored or restricted, but there will be an abuse report system in place.

The real issues that have remained unaddressed so far however include the lack of any real content, at least one that’s engaging, and certain arbitrary limitations that take away from the fun of the virtual world experience. Mayhaps these problems were not as evident in closed beta due to the small number of people using Home, but now they’re becoming detracting and annoying, and Sony will have to give Home a more fleshed out direction if it has any chance to outdo the Xbox NXE or even the “casual” Mii avatars.