PlayStation store has been redesigned with the arrival of PS 5. As much as I am a great defender of the physical format, I do not deny digital, especially knowing that not all indie games manage to make the jump to traditional stores. Besides that when they get it, many months pass and in digital it is already on sale, as it happened with Blasphemous, which I couldn’t wait.
I am one of those who take advantage of offers to buy lots of games that I had my eye on, however that task has not been as satisfactory for a few months in PlayStation Store and the blame is on the arrival of PS5.
A redesign that has removed many features
Sony was already warning it at the end of last year, making it clear that before the month of November the trace of old PlayStation consoles (except PS4) would be removed from the design of the digital store. The objective? Make way for PS5 and unify its presence with PS4 , a more than established console of the previous generation.
What did this bring with it? A pot soon, not being able to buy PS3, PS Vita or PSP games from the web or even the PlayStation app. Now it can only be done from these old consoles, going to the internal section of the PlayStation Store.
Goodbye to the possibility of filtering by console, for example, where it was previously easy to find the best classics of the first PlayStation , despite the fact that some were incomprehensibly hidden from the standard search. The worst of all? That with this redesign, we can’t even apply filters to PS4 or PS5 games, which is much more serious. Now we only have “Collections”.
This could have its pass, being divided by genres or by functions (VR, free, DLC or discounts, to name a few examples), but it is quite chaotic as you cannot order alphabetically or by price. And to top it all, they are mixed.
It doesn’t follow a logical pattern, seeing how it messes up even the episodes of a game, like Batman – The Telltale Series , without putting all the chapters in a row.
PlayStation Store needs another facelift
Worse I find the deletion of the wish list , when it was said that it would only affect the games of PS3, PS Vita and PSP. Now in PlayStation Store that function no longer exists, unless we go directly from PS5 to the internal store itself. In my case, I was able to secure the first ones, but the PS4 ones I lost.
This redesign also does not help to discover video games for PS4 or PS5, since now the cards do not show images or videos to have a better idea of what awaits us in each one. And to make matters worse, if a game has several editions, they all appear crowded there with the only option “add to cart”. But in reality, even the function of the cart has been modified.
Now if we click on “add to cart”, we will be taken directly to the purchase of the product , displaying a bar on the right side to confirm the purchase. Therefore, it forces us to have to cancel by clicking on the upper X to continue looking at more products until we have them all.
Ironically, this redesign dispenses with the classic sidebar, where we could apply filters in one fell swoop to see upcoming releases or which games were just out recently. Failing that, it forces us to browse its home page, going down until we find the “New games” or “Very soon” section, with those that are close to its departure. And obviously, it takes much longer like this.
In fact, to be able to see the next releases, you have to swallow a huge promotion featured on the cover, the most relevant news and a PlayStation Now advertisement , before reaching that section. In case we bite with the “publi”.
How long will Sony take to correct those shortcomings? Hopefully little, although there are people who have looked for solutions, such as an extension for Chrome to have a Wishlist or non-official stores that not only inform us of all the offers of the week at a stroke, but even show us the number of trophies for each game and when it would take to complete them, as is the case of the PlatPrices website, one of the best that I discovered together with PSprices, with wish lists and even warnings when they drop in price.