Today, Sony introduces its new Home virtual world for its 17 million or so PlayStation 3 owners, and while the environment is not as expansive as Second Life, it does contain superb three-dimensional graphics and the potential to become something even more impressive.

Home appears on PS3 following a software download that takes a short while to import and install. Once it’s ready, Home’s visitors are asked to create an avatar through which they explore the environment — an avatar of better quality than either a Nintendo Mii or Xbox Live avatar. These faux folks can run, jump and dance, even play some sports. Home’s visitors can also use their avatars as intermediaries for texting other visitors and talking to them, provided on that latter part that PS3 owners have a USB microphone attached.

Mostly though, Home’s avatars just sort of walk around for now. That’s because Home’s still in “beta” — a software testing phase — and the virtual environment has not yet evolved much beyond an urban shopping mall-type setting, though there are real brands of products visitors can browse to outfit their avatars or their avatars’ living quarters.

The beta label implies that we’re expected to see a few bugs to pop up on occasion, but that the Home environment will evolve into something richer over the next few weeks. Considering that Home has been delayed at least twice for quality control, and as a concept actually dates back to before PS3’s birth, the bugs better not be too big to squash.