Those of you who own a PlayStation 3 have the joy of being able to download new content like games, trailers and add-on’s. This process takes place in the PlayStation Store.
As someone working a lot with online usability I tend to look at these things with a different eye. Let’s just say I am a bit more critical then the average user. First I would like to say that it’s great to have direct downloads to your PlayStation and it’s awesome to finally have a stable platform for game demo’s, as PC gamers have had for years.
The localization problem
The stores content differs from region to region. In Europe for instance we get most game demo’s a few weeks later then the states. Japan has a lot more PSP exclusives and the store content is updated almost daily, while Europe and North America only get updates once a week.
The region of the shop is connected to the address set in your PlayStation network account. You can have multiple accounts on one PlayStation and content can be shared between accounts. So what I did is just make two extra accounts (for North America and Japan) on top of my European account with addresses I got from the internet (I live at 350 5th Ave, New York… otherwise known as the Empire State Building).
Why make a region section at all, if it’s so easy to get around it?
Store content searchability
Because my main account is dutch I see the dutch store. The dutch store is a bit different from the North American one. For one thing, it’s a hell of a lot slower.
More annoying then everything else is a missing function that’s available in every other language: view new content. It’s not possible to check what items are new in the dutch store, so each time you want to see what’s new you have to go trough all sections and since everything is so badly categorized it’s a real drag.
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Mathieu Burgerhout
July 5th, 2008 12:49 am
Sigh, the new store is a disaster. Not only is it slow as hell, it’s also not viewable/watchable/usable on a SD (bog standard CRT) TV! The text is too damn small. And with the interlace it guarantees headaches!
And I hate to click several times to actually download the damn demo. Select from overview -> demo synopsis -> download -> add to cart -> download -> download to background… uugh…