The Meta Connect 2022 keynote event took place yesterday, with Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg revealing new details about his controversial metaverse vision. However, viewers were quick to point out how the metaverse shares a startlingly similar appearance to another divisive social platform — PlayStation Home.
Metaverse compared to PlayStation Home by Twitter
Meta Connect 2022 included an enthusiastic, almost human-like Zuckerberg showing off how Meta hardware could help collaboration between colleagues. This saw Zuck highlighting Meta’s use of virtual reality and augmented reality technology, including the company’s brand-new Meta Quest Pro headset. However, viewers have pointed out how the work-focused Metaverse looks very similar to PS Home, PS3’s social gaming platform.
PlayStation Home was launched by Sony in order to drive memberships to its PSN service, with it being free to those who subscribed. It launched in open beta in December 2008, and it remained in beta all the way until its closure in 2015. The subject of much derision over the years, PS Home aimed to be a contender to the popular 3D virtual world Second Life, though remained a janky experiment until its eventual demise.
During the Meta Connect event, the company Accenture showed off its virtual office in the metaverse, and it was almost immediately the subject of ridicule on Twitter:
PlayStation Home in 2007 https://t.co/ChiDNyARqQ pic.twitter.com/Y2ZzZAsOnM
— Casey Mongillo (ケイシ・モンジロ) (@CaseyTheVA) October 11, 2022
Similarly, Meta’s announcement that it would introduce full-body avatars with legs also drew unfavorable comparisons to PS Home:
https://twitter.com/draglikepull/status/1579932565884276736
Sony shut down PlayStation Home’s servers back in 2015, but some fans actually managed to revive its servers last year, reintroducing public and private servers to let those who missed the odd social platform revisit it one last time.
