Yep, That's GAME's Astronauts In Playstation Home.

How strange. GAME, the UK’s largest video game retailer, has announced they are to debut in Playstation Home – albeit on the moon. Yep, as we thought, it sound even weirder when typed. But it’s true.

The new Playstation Home space will feature video screens, billboards, Internet browser stations and free astronaut costumes.

Could this be any better? Honestly?

Playstation Home Has A Rather Large User Base Apparently.

Playstation Home’s usership has grown to a whopping 12million, according to director Jack Buser. He announced the figure as part of a panel at last week’s GDC, emphasising that the population of the virtual world had grown by 2million since December 2009.

Sony also stated that these figures on based on “one-off” visits; according to their data 85 percent of users who create a Playstation Home avatar return to the service.

Interestingly, talking about the future of Playstation Home, Buser stated that we can expect “total game itegration to really extend out the experience of your games”. Sounds interesting.

Playstation Home Will Get A Bit Easier To Navigate As Of Tomorrow.

Sony’s announced via the Playstation Blog that they will upgrade the Playstation Home client to version 1.35 tomorrow – binning the old World Map navigation tool and replacing it with a new interface. The Navigator will help you to find your friends and “Featured Spaces” much quicker, and looks to resemble Sony’s XMB interface.

Aswell as the client upgrade, there’ll also be a host of Ratchet & Clank figurines, SOCOM costumes and, of course, the Final Fantasy XIII content we told you about yesterday.

For more, check out the Playstation Blog.

This Could Be Your Very Own Futuristic Home Apartment.

Square Enix has announced a host of new Playstation Home content set to release this Thursday 11th March in order to tie in with Final Fantasy XIII’s release today. The content includes a new Personal Space set on the planet Eden, alongside a slew of Final Fantasy XIII inspired furniture.

You can get the full details over at the Playstation Blog.

Hustle Kings Is In The Playstation Events Space Right Now.

Hustle Kings has officially hit Playstation Home, occupying the Playstation Events Space. Players will be transported to a huge pool table where they’ll have to live life on the edge, avoiding multiple shots from all over the table. Survive ten shots and you’ll earn yourself a cape for your avatar. Top the leaderboards and you’ll earn a crown too.

In other Playstation Home news, SEGA’s announced that AvP costumes will be invading the virtual world. You’ll be able to kit yourself out in Alien, Predator or Marine threads.

There’s more Playstation Home updates over at the Playstation Blog.

Home's Not Quite Pulling The Amount Of Advertising Sony Envisioned.

Playstation Home is actually a pretty busy service considering. Sure, when the Home open beta launched what seems like an eternity ago, it was pretty sparse. But since then the space has grown quite a lot, still not quite delivering on its potential, but still giving users plenty to do.

Sadly, according to Brand Week the service isn’t quite attracting the level of advertising expected. That’s because there’s a huge barrier for entry, in getting content developed and implemented into the service.

“From moment one, it kind of felt clunky,” said creative director at Denuo, John Rafferty. “And once you got through that, there wasn’t much there.

“There’s just a huge barrier to entry for advertisers.”

Alas, there is hope for the PSN in general as an advertising platform however:

“Sony is a little more conservative in embracing their system as an ad platform,” said Dario Raciti of Ignition Factory.

“They just have less people [than Microsoft]. I think they are starting to go down the path of being more competitive with Xbox Live.”

The problem is, do any of us want to boot up our Playstation 3s to be greeted with a host of adverts? Obviously, from a financial sense it makes sense, but anyone who has seen the XBOX 360 dashboard will know the thing is cluttered to high-heaven with advertising. Which is most uncomforting seeing as you pay £40-a-year for Live.

We guess if Sony can implement a method of unobtrusive and relevent advertising (we wouldn’t mind the odd note to tell us the day’s new releases for example) we don’t have a problem. But no-one wants to see Coca-Cola on the XMB.

Fancy Dressing Up As A Storm Trooper? Of Course You Do.

… Finally our wish has come true, as SCEA and LucasArts has announced a bunch of Star Wars themed content is coming to Playstation Home. In fact, you won’t just be getting Star Wars content, LucasArts has also pledged Indiana Jones goodies via a new themed store front in the Home mall.

There are a ton of screens over at Kotaku. Check them out if this takes your fancy.