Sony Europe’s baffling Store categories
- Posted April 15th, 2008 at 15:55 EDT by
- 6,513 views
- 60 Comments
Today Sony released the smoother, sexier PlayStation Store. It has delivered on its promises: intuitive navigation, significant speed improvements and improved access to all the content.
Well, at least for North America. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the categories present in the new European/UK Store - they simply do not allow users to access all the content logically.
A post of the Fragcast blog by ‘Genki Rocket’ explains the issue quite well:
On the UK store the main categories are:
* Latest
* All Games
* Game Add-Ons
* Videos
* PSP Games
* Family Games
* 'other' media(what?!)
* We recommend
This is just crazy... so if you're looking for a demo, you need to either go to latest, or if it's not there, look in all games - which are sorted into sub groups by genre, not title. Also, all PSone games are mixed in with the genres... so if you want a PSone game you need to find it in the melange of other titles... is Sony Europe bonkers?
On the USA store:
* New Releases
* Downloadable Games
* View All by Title
* Add-ons
* Demos
* Videos
* Themes and Wallpapers
* Featured Items
These categories make perfect sense - you can find the same piece of content multiple ways, and if you go to 'downloadable games' the titles are split by platform (PS3, PSP, PS Eye, PSone Classics) and other sorting (top downloads, genre, alphabetical)...
I, for one, share this guy’s pain. In fact, the US Store had an A-Z before the re-design. SCEE deciding to miss out on this basic function is madness.
We reckon a lot of you out there feel the same way about this bizarre categorisation, especially if you’ve set up both European and US accounts on your PS3 and can see the huge difference. We’re hoping to get in touch with SCEE about this, but you can help us by leaving a comment, even a short one, showing your disagreement with the current categories.
We know it’s human nature to get what we want and then find something else to moan about soon after. But the new Store is near-perfect. Whoever deals with the Store at Sony Europe – please listen to our final request!
PSU readers: Leave a comment below and be sure to check out the Fragcast blog.
Comments
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electric juice |
ElectricJuice- 4:02pm BST - April 15th, 2008
- 2
Seriously, along with this and the redesign of the Official EU forums i have to wonder who SCEE have employed?? One's guessing that they are actually a bunch of chimps, and not trained ones at that
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IIIKAGEIII |
IIIKAGEIII- 4:05pm BST - April 15th, 2008
- 4
sure makes finding demos a lot harder on the australian store.
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Carl |
almighty-slayer- 4:08pm BST - April 15th, 2008
- 5
Indeed, i think they are mad. They also missed out one of the coolest features of the new store - the preview option which the US has.
SCEE need to get some new staff. They're currently rubbish. Infact, that is too kind to describe them. They phail. Hard. At everything.
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Chris_Redfield
- 4:30pm BST - April 15th, 2008
- 7
What, did you guys at psu first notice that PSN in EU sucks now? Actually I don't even want to mention EU in this whole subject because I as a Swede feel that I get all the s*** because the rest of the countries in EU S***. I mean, where does the bad taste in PS1 classics come from? I sure as h*ll didn't pick third rate titles leaving tripple A titles like Bio Hazard 1-2, Metal Gear Solid and Castlevania SOTN behind.
SCEE has more than 1 screw loose, and the F***** tin can is rolling down a pretty steap god d*** hill let me tell you. It's no wonder that every EU PSN user feels betrayed and treated like crap, it's just a given fact, THEY ARE. In North America they get AT LEAST 10-20 things EVERY WEEK, we are lucky to get 5 things a week, and what do we get? Things North America and JPN has had for at least 1 month, some things even 4 months before we get it. Now that is just plain ridiculous. And JPN even gets demos and other goodies of a game that isn't even remotly close to being released in EU (of course I'm talking about Yakuza 3 aka Kenzan). I've said this to a lot of magazines in EU and I will say it again. The peoples voice will never do anything to make SCEE take their heads out of the sand, get a clue and do something about it. Only the united power of the magazines (online/offline) stands a chance of making a change in this matter. I mean, the people at SCEE working with this must be stupid or something, at least they have no CLUE about what the people want on their PSN, if I had a job there I'd never let this kind of thing go on for a year.
I mean, since the other regions get tripple A titles, if we can't get out own tripple A's, the least SCEE should be able to do is offer US (pun intended) the same tripple A titles and not give us crap like Syphon filter, Bandicoot, titles no one even recognizes and Cool Boarders 1... For example, everyone knows Cool Boarders 2 outperformed nr1 in every aspect, and who's idea was it to get syphon filter when even Mission Impossible beat that game, but to take an example that exists on PSN on a part that we can't get to, let's mention MGS again, almost the same type of game, and soooo much better.
Enough of this, no one is gonna do anything about it, I'm never gonna get hired by SCEE and give them work, so I'm just gonna sulk and watch how all the cool people in JPN and US has fun while I'm in awe.
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Nabus |
nabus- 4:30pm BST - April 15th, 2008
- 8
I disagree with the statement that the sections on the Europe store are crazy, I find it easy to navigate... I like the new design and the different sections... Much better than the old one. Although I do have to say the US store ones do seem to be better... so...
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Cesarcsrf |
Cesarcsrf- 4:44pm BST - April 15th, 2008
- 11
a couple of bugs the images don't appear at first it takes to long to they appear and EU PS Store got no video or images preview ! also not region free ok the song's of GH are here but some other thing's aren't ! the new store is cool but it need a couple of fixes.. also it would be god if this be some part of Home or maybe thru In-game XMB.. In Sony we trust :D
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Limanima |
Limanima- 5:02pm BST - April 15th, 2008
- 14
I'm totaly submersed in desbilieve. I simply can't believe that this store is even worse then the other. All have been said about the categories, the icons take ages to download, and the store has BUGS.
Unbelievable. This is definetly not the way to go.
Sony, please make ALL stores equal, improve loading times for the icons, and correct those BUGS!
I'm in Portugal and the US store loads faster then de EU store. Ridiculous.
Who needs pictures? Why there are pictures in the first place? Making things look prety is not the only objective of pictures. They help find things with just a look. The images should and must load fast.
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bigbossakajack |
BiggestBoss- 5:03pm BST - April 15th, 2008
- 15
hmmm. on the positive side: now I don't have 2 useless sub-accounts! yeah! postitive thinking for the win!
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Koroshiya_1 |
koroshiya_1- 5:24pm BST - April 15th, 2008
- 20
This is absolutely ridiculous! Why must we always fall short of what the US are getting? Someone needs to get their a*se in gear and sort this out (not that it should ever have been released with these stupid categories in the first place. Is it so hard to implement for Europe what the US is getting!!??).
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Chris_Redfield
- 5:48pm BST - April 15th, 2008
- 25
There's one simple answer to all the questions and negative thinking toward EU PSN. SCEE S.U.C.K. I think that by now we all know this simple fact, SCEE have no idea about what work is, the don't know what to do and they don't know how to do it. In fact, it seems they don't know anything about anything in the gaming industry, they are a laughing stock, not only that, the embarrassed parts of Sony are embarrassed by how poorly SCEE do their work, simple because they are clueless about what their task is. So yes, this is SS*spit*SPAAAARRRTTTAAAA, they scream and go to war claiming to be in the entertainment industry, but they are going with 300 men from "Meet the spartans" and not from "300". Lets break-dance and have a screen showing what we can do, but lets not actually do it, people might think that we actually do like our fans, and we wouldn't want them to get the wrong impression, so lets make a confusing webstore and lets put ONLY BS in it so that every EU user will feel compelled to get a second and a third account in order to get the things they DO deserve.
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IONIXX |
IONIXX- 9:38pm BST - April 15th, 2008
- 34
yea come om SCEE it is pretty dumb, it doesant negativly affec my daily life but its harder to find thing in this store than it wasin the old one and ur plan was to make navigation easier, and it need to be more stable! all these corrupted images are bogus!
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InfernoReaper |
GrimDarkling- 1:40am BST - April 16th, 2008
- 37
Hey encryptioncsta, I guess you can blame the UK store design on stupid Americans too. Makes perfect sense...
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I don't know what SCEE has going in their heads but they need to sort it out. I feel terrible Europe is getting boned on content and now, the PS Store. I think Phil should have gone to SCEE and fixed them first.
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chilledbreeze7
- 3:41am BST - April 16th, 2008
- 39
I thought this store was supposed to be a lot faster? My god its S**T slow!!!!!! You have to leave it about a minute to load all the icons! I hope they sort out this first rather than the way its all arranged!
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frank_magnet |
Frank_Magnt- 4:09am BST - April 16th, 2008
- 40
Whoever dealt with these categories on the EU site were probably on crack or something. Why do we always get the short straw, im going to apply for a job at SCEE and sort all the sh!t out !
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bluesuedeshoes
- 5:18am BST - April 16th, 2008
- 41
Yeah I got the store update yesterday had a sneaky peak and thought the categorization was bizzare in the extreme. Now having actually had a look at the USA store first hand it confirms that the Euro store is gimped compared to the USA one. Also it takes an absolute age for the images to load into their slots on the Euro store and some never do. Where as I've had absolutely no such problems with the USA store. So I know its not my connection.
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Shadow Dancer |
Shadow_Dancer- 5:55am BST - April 16th, 2008
- 42
I'm really impressed with the new store and all but I have to agree. Why not make the categories listed the same in every territory? There's no reason why they should be different in the first place.
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benstevens
- 6:22am BST - April 16th, 2008
- 43
Great new store!!!!
But what is going on with the menu setup???? I see the UK has been giving a crap setup!!!!! someone seriously needs to be fired for this!!!!!
I am not a happy UK customer right now........
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Kung_Fu_Russ |
kung_fu_russ- 6:45am BST - April 16th, 2008
- 44
I agree. Sort the catagories properly. We know that decisions like this are made by SCEA, so when they were handed over to SCEE, why was the decision even made to change them?
I really believe that SCEE don't know what the f*** they are doing.
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Zippie151 |
Sanguineous- 8:11am BST - April 16th, 2008
- 46
Old ways have resumed i see, why do we always get the bad end of the stick. Sure the store is great, a vast improvement over the old one and xbox live if they can sort the icon issues out, but the catergories are useless just like the older store. Plz sort it out!
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TobiUchiha |
TobiUchiha- 9:20am BST - April 16th, 2008
- 48
give us europeans a better stronger faster ps store
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