The folks behind Destination Home (PlayStation home preservation project) have now started a closed beta. Active participants in the project have been able to join and test the beta online on PS3 and RPCS3, with even testers showcasing Destination Home running on the Steam Deck! (screenshot below).

What’s PlayStation Home?

PlayStation Home was a 3D social gaming community that allowed PLAYSTATION3 users to meet, chat, plan, and launch into games together. Players could create their own custom avatar, decorate their personal apartment, play mini-games, shop, watch videos, attend special events, and more. The service remained in perpetual beta until its closure in 2015.

What’s Destination Home?

Destination Home is a fan-driven project dedicated to restoring PlayStation Home original online functionality for gaming history preservation and education. Initially restored for offline functionality only, the project has made tremendous progress, and is now in closed beta phase for online features.

Testers have been sharing screenshots of the current state of the project as it plays online, and the results look impressive! Who needs the metaverse? This is what Sony had for us 15 years ago, folks!

Below is a screenshot of PlayStation Home running on a Steam Deck, via the RPCS3 emulator.

What’s next for Destination Home

The folks behind the project, Nagato’s Revenge in particular, have shared a pretty ambitious but achievable roadmap for the project. From their readme:

•  Adding additional security services to protect our future database, as we know Home had many exploits during its time on the PLAYSTATION®3.
•  Ensuring that our Home client is compatible with all PS3 firmware e.g., 4.89 official firmware.
•  Fixing any broken services & functions e.g., broken video content, network activity between minigames.
•  Localization for all objects & all public/private scenes.
•  Stress testing our current network infrastructure.

Just with any massively multiplayer online title, our online services will go through rigorous development cycles/stages to ensure that once we fully release Home back to the masses, we can ensure that most issues are sorted out. Down below here is the following development roadmap/pipeline that we are adhering to.

• 1. Closed Alpha – Internal testing by Testers/Helpers and Developers.

• 2. Closed Beta [Session 1] – Testing by Cache Donators & Nitro Boosters.

  • Closed Beta access will be expanded in four incremental phases:

    • Phase I: 20 people.
    • Phase II: 50 people.
    • Phase III: 100 people.
    • Phase IV: All donators/boosters.

• 3. Closed Beta [Session 2] — As above but with improvements, fixes and more content added to our client.

• 4. Open Beta — Early Access available to all members of the Discord.

• 5. Official Release

How to join Destination home

If the above sounds exciting to you, head over to the project’s page (or the team’s discord server) for more details on how you can help and join.

Source: Nagato’s Revenge