Thursday will see the release of the latest version of Home for the PS3. The patch to 1.3 will add the long awaited ability to launch any game from within Home’s virtual world. The update also adds new item types and emotes for your avatar. More controversially, Sony has also added something called the “Reality Inversion Matrix mode”.
While representatives from Sony were hesitant to give details, recent patent applications by the company’s R&D lab may shed light on the mode’s purpose. The document describes software that leverages the immense computational power of your Cell processor in a distributed network of internet connected PS3s. Such systems have previously been used by research projects to simulate protein folding or crack heavy encryption systems.
In this case the network of PS3 with the Reality Inversion Matrix mode engaged will be running a custom algorithm created by a previously unknown research group within SCEJ working out of a high energy lab in Kyoto. The language in the filing is highly technical, referring to cutting edge theoretical physics, information theory and even 19th century epistemology.
In layman’s terms, it would seem the algorithm, when executed on enough systems simultaneously, will have a cumulative quantum effect that would be capable of rewriting the matrix of reality one subatomic particle at a time as if it were a bit of data on a computer. As incredible as that may seem, what’s more remarkable is the goal of this particular implementation. This god-like capability when activated in PS Home 1.3 will be used to invert the virtual reality created in Sony’s massively multiplayer 3D gamespace with the actual reality of the external world.
The real world will, presumably, be preserved on Sony Online Entertainment’s servers, while the fabric of space-time is reshaped in Home’s, commercial, fashion-obsessed image.
Home has long been criticized, rightly, for missing obvious features and a lack of focus or purpose, but this development goes beyond the pale. I can imagine no greater horror than seeing our beautiful world transformed into some consumerist nightmare where you have to pay for everything and the landscape is blighted with corporate owned eyesores, shopping centers and gigantic, technicolor advertisements. We can only pray PS3 owners have the good sense to leave this feature OFF, saving us from such a terrible fate.