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The Current State of the European PSN Store
So it has been almost 2 years of the PS3 and with that we have almost 2 years of the new PSN (not the one that was used for the PS2 – which blew big time!). The main public face of the PSN is the shop and this has undergone many a change during this short lifetime and it must be said that all have been for the better. The layout and design now no longer looks like a bad website build with a generic template and housed on old 486 PC’s. The speed has improved and so has the reliability, navigation is easier and the content is great… oh no wait.. forget that last bit…
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So as anyone who has ever frequented the European PSN Store will be able to tell you it’s a frustrating place to be. It seems to take an age for titles to appear and when they do we are paying more for them than our counterparts across the seas. For example Warhawk – by all accounts a great title – costs $30 at the moment on the US PSN, here in the UK it will set you back £20 which equates to $40, an increase of $10 over the US store price.. why?
We have to wait weeks sometimes months longer for demo content to appear on the EU store. The normal excuse is localization which I am sure is a major headache for the developer and publisher concerned and probably does not come together until near release time. Unfortunately we are normally only a few weeks from release when the demos are released so fail to see why the content is not available to the publishers. This situation could be helped by allowing people the choice of downloading the current demo with the US English audio/text or waiting for a localized version of the title. At least then we would get the same content at the same time as everyone else.
The same arguement can be levelled at the PSN exclusives. How long was the delay between Pain being released in the US Store and the EU store? Months that’s what, months ! For what? Is it text heavy? Is it reliant on pages of spoken dialogue that needs recording in several languages? No, none of these things are true. So the reason for it taking that long: A direct quote from Sony is “…………….” , silence, that’s right.
We are also not being kept up to date with the happenings on the PSN. Xbox Live’s Major Nelson was an absolute master stroke for Microsoft – although he is not officially a blog or outlet for them being the Manager of the XBL product sure helped his access to info and credibility. He has manged to bring the person touch to the faceless XBL. Sony was very slow to respond to this and has just about started to muster itself using the Official Playstation Blog, but this is again an American site. The UK/European equivalent is a poor shadow of it’s big sister site. It is teamed by PR bozo’s and not gamers and people in the know. The US one is handled by SCEA and enlists the help of several large developers (Criterion, Capcom, Media Molecule etc) to stock it’s pages with good info and content. Why not send all to this site and make space for the EU contingent?
All we want is a fair go. All we need, no demand, is that we all be treated fairly. I never experienced this type of discrimination on the Xbox Live service, demos came out at the same time, games too. And as everyone is paying in points not pound then prices are similar – although there is a slight discrepancy due to exchange rates. So please Sony, pull your finger out – we like the console, we like the PSN, we like the Shop service BUT your screwing us over with this and we don;t like ti one bit. Why should we have to make false accounts in Tokyo and Seattle just to access the content we want? Why should we risk our cash in online “credit cards” just so we can purchase Everyday Shooter from the US store 4 months before you release it in the UK? At the end of the day we just want to give you our money – yeah that’s right we want to give you money and you can’t even sort out taking it from us – and that my friends is a sad state of affairs.
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