More on Sony Home later in the week, but to kick things off following is one of the better (and perhaps more enthusiastic) reviews of the platform:

Clearly, Home is a visually rich environment. I’m particularly impressed with the avatar customization. The environments are richly rendered, although the importance of this is always a debatable point: it’s the ‘eye candy’ that can get you to stay past the first few minutes, but richly rendered does not necessarily mean rich experiences.

The user talks about Second Life, and not “getting it”…which is where Home, as well as other social 3D Web applications that include a large number of game elements, are meant to help: to give users clear paths, tasks, entertainments and rewards.

Another video shows Red Bull sponsored content:

As the immersive Web continues to evolve, expect to see a widening range of mechanisms for attracting and keeping people. From Blue Mars, which promises to be a Sony Home for the PC-enabled, with rich graphics, games, and shopping; to Metaplace with casual games and social mechanics (although that will really be the ‘first wave’, the architecture is intelligent enough to support far deeper use cases); to further developments on the casual games from, on the Small Worlds or Puzzle Pirates model. And I should probably mention Little Big Planet - which is the most fun I’ve had with a game in years, and includes an incredibly clever user-generated content platform.

What Sony lacks is user-generated content and, well, a keyboard. But there are some lessons here for other 3D worlds: a nice clear user interface, specific tasks and rewards, and, YAY, lots of advertising.

If nothing else, Sony has extended the visual language for virtual worlds, introduced a new generation to social 3D spaces, and has raised the bar for others wanting to enter the space.