PlayStation Home to reboot as social games platform

Sony is planning to give PlayStation Home an almighty reboot, turning it mainly into a social games platform.

The new, updated version of the service, which went into open beta in 2008, will launch this fall, and will now mainly feature large scale games within. Home's central plaza will also be replaced by something called "The Hub," where players will be able to take part in games, community stuff and more.

There'll also be genre-specific distracts within Home, such as the Action District, the Adventure District and Home Sportswalk,

Home boss Jack Buser called the new Home an "evolution of the platform."

"We are going to ‘up level’ games as the heart of PlayStation Home. This means that Home itself is going to become a game. The first things you see when you get into Home are games," he told VentureBeat in an interview.

Buser added that the average time spent in Home is 70 minutes per session - there has been 23 million users within the platform since 2008 - with 230 games, 9,000 virtual items, 65 virtual spaces and 600 community events all part of the service.

There's previews of the service on VB and Kotaku.