EA Sports announced they were getting into the Home business--the PlayStation Home biz, that is--a few days ago and, today, I had a chance to check head over to the Sony booth today to get a look at the work-in-progress of the EA Sports complex and talk to some of the people behind its development.

　　As you might have seen, the EA Sports complex consists of a huge area to roam around in, and will be home to three minigames upon its release in a few months: golf, racing, and poker. Only racing looked to be working in the demo I saw--and the open-wheel cars looked promising at first, until I watched the actual race itself. As it turns out, the racing looks more akin to Mario Kart than anything else, and the F1-style rides are miniaturized. There's just one track to choose from, though if the racing proves to be popular, new courses, as well as purchasable upgrades for your car are a possibility.

　　The golf game wasn't working in the demo but I was told it will be a single hole, closest to the pin-style game, and players will be able to organize in foursomes to compete against one another. As you might expect, all three of the mini-games feature multiplayer support. That said, there's still tweaking to be done: for example, the developers are still trying to decide whether to make a normal race session consist of one race for up to eight players, or make it a two-heat race for as many as four players.

　　The poker game will feature several table types, with beginner's tables and higher stakes tables for more experienced (or less risk-averse) players. That said, you obviously won't be gambling real money, instead you'll be gambling fake currency--though the system will keep track of how much money you currently have in your avatar's possession, as well as your lifetime earnings (which will be used for leaderboard purposes).

　　After taking a tour around the complex, I had a few questions on my mind: namely with regard to the future of the space. Look out the virtual windows and you'll plainly see a soccer pitch, a football field and more. Producers told me that, while the space has room for EA Sports branded games to have a presence in Home, the actual implementation of those spaces will be handled by the teams that are actually making those games, not the team responsible for the "general" space on display at CES 2009.

　　I also asked about plans for interaction between the Home space and EA's community portal, EAsportsworld.com. The first step seems to revole around video--stuff you might see on EASW will likely find its way into the Home space, but expect to see more in the future. Producers told me that one possible idea would be to have athlete virtual appearance events in the EA Sports Complex. I'm not exactly sure who might want to attend something like that--but what do I know?

　　All of this leads me to my questions for you: What do you think of the EA Sports Complex in Home? Do you think this kind of thing has a future for sports games or games in general? What would you like to see in a feature like this?