Ever since PlayStation Home launched, Sony has been toying with different ways to incorporate games into its virtual world, with various levels of success. Now the company has announced that the entire service will be completely redesigned to put the focus almost entirely on games. According to Home director Jack Buser, the redesign will represent the service's change "from a social network to a social game platform."

Home had slowly been increasing its focus on games prior to the announcement, and the service, which now boasts 23 million users worldwide, currently features more than 230 titles to play. But the new redesign will take these efforts a step further by making the service almost entirely about games. It will still look a lot like Home, but it's going to be set up like an amusement park.

"We are students of Walt Disney here," Buser told Ars, "and we’re going to be designing the core experience inside Home not unlike the way they’ve designed Disney Land and Disney World, where you have a central transportation hub surrounded by themed districts. Except out districts are going to be themed off of game genres."

The central plaza area that currently holds Home together will be replaced with a transportation center that can take users to a number of different locations. At launch there will be four themed spaces, representing action, sports, adventure, and casual games. Each area has been designed to look and feel like the genre its based on. The action area, for example, "feels like a level from an FPS, this really gritty urban feel" according to Buser.

Home has always had themed spaces, but the main difference here is that the entire world will be "filled with games." And not just the occasional casual mini-game here and there, but actual games aimed at the PS3 audience. For example, when the service relaunches, the indie puzzle game Cogs—currently available on both Steam and iOS—will be playable.

"So when you first enter into the hub the very first thing you’re going to see is just games," explained Buser.

A new, optional quest system is also being introduced into Home, which will turn the service itself into a sort of giant meta-game, letting users play games and complete other activities to earn various rewards. When you first enter into the new Home you'll be confronted by an activity board that lists all of the different quests you can take on. User-generated content will also become a big part of the experience, as Sony will be introducing a new event system.

"It won’t just be Sony and our partners throwing events on the platform but we’re going to give the keys of the castle to the community and actually build an event system such that they can post and promote their own events inside PlayStation Home," Buser told Ars.

In addition to the redesign, Home will also be getting a separate technology update aimed at streamlining the service and making things faster overall. That update currently doesn't have a release date, while the redesign will go live sometime this fall.