Sony's much awaited Virtual Home is being ignored by users. The virtual ghost town has ended up that way because users complain it is like being caught in a small town in Wales when it is raining on a Sunday in December.

Sony's virtual world to the PlayStation 3 was supposed to be a place for players to mingle and hang out.  You can build a virtual self from scratch, selecting everything from facial features to the clothes that will cover your digital body. After that, off you go to wander around advertising-laden movie theaters, malls and bowling alleys, to meet and converse with your fellow PS3 fans.

However, it has come a bit late. Most virtual worlds that do not involve hitting an orc on the head with an axe have been losing members.

But Sony has made it worse by making users download shedloads of updates everytime they log in.  Some of these updates kill off functionality that some users had been using, including voice chat.  Voice chat is important when most of your users don't have a USB keyboard, so this means that many users are suddenly muted.

It is also heavily censored, as Sony tries to make it a safe place for children and therefore a boring place for ordinary mortals.

More here.