Yesterday, at the Game Developer’s Conference, Sony unveiled what it believes to be an ace-in-the-hole in the race to control the space under our television sets.

Playstation Home - an online hub for Playstation 3 owners - will allow gamers to create a digital avatar of themselves, customise said avatar with all sorts of clothes and accessories, and interact with other gamers in a variety of public and private areas, including games rooms, virtual cinemas and their very own virtual apartments.

It has, amongst gamers, been received like the Second Coming.

To me, it is positively disgusting. As it stands, the Playstation 3, with it’s XCross Media Bar, has the cleanest, most intuitive menu of any console or media centre. All your media is laid out in well-defined and easily accessed menus, and when you’re enjoying the media, the menus are completely unobtrusive. With Playstation Home, however, Sony have loaded your media onto a big truck, and crashed it at high speed with Bebo, 14 year old american teenage boys, an ikea catalogue, and the contents of your wallet.

They have showed, again, that they are a company desperately out of step with reality. In theory, it sounds like a great idea to be able to go to a virtual cinema with your virtual avatar to watch a movie - until you remember that you can watch one direct from the media bar without the bother of going to the cinema, virtual or otherwise. It sounds brilliant to be able to invite your online buddies around to your virtual apartment to watch a movie - until you remember that you hate when people talk during a movie. It sounds great to be able to display your trophies in a trophy room, and to browse other people’s trophies - until you remember that you’re shit at games. Being able to meet up and chat with other gamers in a virtual lobby? Fantastic - until you realise that the only people who play games online are 14 year old hormonal teenage boys who want to ‘cyber’ you.

The icing on the cake though, is that Sony are intent on squeezing every penny they can from you. That film you want to see? It’s actually a trailer. That lobby you’re in? It’s filled with billboards and banner ads. Your apartment? Filled with milk-crates, because you can’t afford the ikea furniture. Your avatar? Dressed like a tramp, because you can’t afford the armani t-shirt.

I’m not sure what’s more depressing: that Sony believe gamers are so shallow, so self-obsessed, so vain and so idiotic that they’ll be sucked into buying all this useless virtual shit for real, tangible money or the thought that gamers are actually that shallow, self-obsessed, vain and idiotic. We’ll find out this Autumn, when it’s released, I guess.