I spent a chunk of time on Monday morning hanging out with Matt Levitan and Kyle Moffatt from Playstation Canada.

They were in Vancouver to meet with members of the media and to show off some of the great games coming this fall to a Playstation 3 and Playstation Portable near you. I’ll be writing about some of them in the weeks to come, but there were two pieces of information revealed to me that are worth sharing.

The first is that Sony is releasing a keypad, which attaches to the PS3 controller, and makes it easier to enter text in the various Playstation 3 environments. The device, which will be available in the first weeks of December, is Bluetooth enabled and will retail for $49.99.

That keypad will make it easy to chat with friends and strangers in Playstation Home, the virtual world that Sony’s been trumpeting since the PS3 was launched in 2006.

Levitan and Moffatt walked me through the latest incarnation of Home, which is currently in a closed beta test phase. The functionality of the social networking space is close to what was originally promised.

We decorated a personal apartment space, visited the bowling alley where you can bowl and shoot pool, and hung out at the virtual mall where there were impromptu dance parties, chess matches, and movie trailers being screened.

Levitan said the mall is a great place for multimedia opportunities, suggesting that Sony could decide to stream films from their archive for free in the “theatre” and that new bands could benefit from listening stations installed throughout the mall.

Home, Levitan and Moffatt said, will be available before the end of the year.

It is free, too, a service provided for anyone with a Playstation 3 console.

So for the price tag of $399, Levitan said, consumers get a game console, one of the best Blu-ray players on the market, and access to a Second Life-like virtual world.

Cross-posted at the Georgia Straight.