PlayStation Home
Sony opened an ambitious virtual world to every PlayStation 3 owner, but kept the service labelled beta until the day it vanished.
Quick facts
- Existence state
- Limited Appearance
- Peak stage
- limited public access
- Research confidence
- high
- Last verified
What it was
A free social virtual world for PlayStation 3 that remained officially in open beta throughout its public life.
Users created avatars, decorated apartments, visited branded spaces and attended events in a persistent 3D meeting place connected to PlayStation Network.
Existence timeline
Selected PlayStation users test Sony's planned social world.
Ordinary PlayStation 3 owners gain unrestricted access to the unfinished service.
Sony and outside brands add games, venues and virtual goods while the beta label remains.
Sony schedules the end of regional services and stops new content.
PlayStation Home disappears without reaching formal general release.
Why it ended
Regional content updates stopped in late 2014 and Sony closed the service worldwide in March 2015 without ever declaring a normal full release.
Last confirmed trace
Videos, screenshots, cache preservation projects and official launch records preserve parts of the long-running public beta.
What it left behind
Home demonstrates why duration alone cannot decide classification: millions encountered it, but only as a formally unfinished public service.
How we classified it
Ordinary people encountered a restricted preview, pilot or test, but the archive unit never reached normal general availability.
Verified limited public access without general availability maps to 98 under Arrival Score V1.
Sources & verification
Last reviewed 2026-08-01. Sources are linked so readers can inspect the evidence directly.