At the start of this month, Sony announced that it would be merging its EU and US PlayStation Blog websites into one cohesive platform for its gigantic audience spread across the globe. It was all about streamlining the message the Japanese giant delivers to its fans. That's fine when it is applied to generic posts concerning games that will launch in every territory across the globe, but in the weeks since the merger, particular posts have seen a real drop in quality. The Drop, a weekly post which details the PlayStation 4 and PlayStation VR games releasing across the next seven days, has been worst hit and fans are really starting to notice.
We would link you to the latest example of The Drop, an article now dubbed "PlayStation Store: New games launching next week", but the first problem we have to address is the fact that these posts are actually being randomly skipped. Since the merger, the PlayStation Blog has not published the piece in question on two different occasions, meaning that it isn't even making the article half the time. The Drop played an important role in this scribe's job as it highlighted smaller indie games that we at Push Square might have been interested in reviewing, but now the post doesn't exist half the time. We're sure these articles also formed an important milestone for independent devs as it put their titles in front of a much wider audience.
But again, it's also the fans who are losing out. The comments section of the latest post is inundated with requests to revert to the old style of listing upcoming PS4 games with artwork and brief descriptions of each title. Commenters are also noting incorrect release dates and issues between regions. Instead of this previous method, the PlayStation Blog now simply lists a whole bunch of games alongside a date and platform. It's a very boring list which tells you absolutely nothing about the titles in question. We've embedded two images above so you can compare which approach is better.
Rather interestingly, the old post which is more than a week old now sports the following message at the bottom: "This post will be taking a break for a few weeks. See you again soon!" Let's hope the PlayStation Blog has taken the criticism to heart and has decided to revert back to the far better method of old. Have you noticed this drop in quality over on the PlayStation Blog? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
Comments 31
I imagine they're just figuring out a new way to present this information. Can't be easy to be honest.
@get2sammyb maybe they should figure it out before making the changes
The merger smacks of a rush job, they should've figured out new formats for the regular articles that addressed the different markets.
'Goes down poorly with fans', I guess it's a 'fans are panicking', 'fans are freaking out' type of article 😃
I didnt even know The Drop was a thing scratched my hear at :'particular posts have seen a real drop in quality. The Drop, a weekly post '
🤔
@JJ2 You only have to look at the comments section to see that the merger hasn’t been taken positively.
It's kind of hard to merger the blog if the games/release are different.
It's really going to hurt the indie game zone without having The Drop. Those write ups tend to sell people on some of these titles without ad campaigns and most won't/can't be bothered to look up the info themselves.
They really need someone to take the PS Blog and curate it properly.
With the now merging of EU & US blogs, it just seems that someone's left the job and now it's become a part time thing.
I'll do it SONY!! GIve me the job!
I quite like the new blog, it's much better to read than the old EU one. I also like the way the charts are compared so you can see what is selling better where.
Aside from some links still being US-only I think all in all it's a good change.
It also says on the latest new releases post that they are taking a break to make it better so nothing to panic about.
The new version is so unfriendly and dull in comparison. However, the old version was far from perfect. It regularly posted games coming out that week that never were (when checking developer website about a release date), Tamarin was a good example of this. It was listed on several separate occasions.
My guess is that it’s a cost-savings move to save on labor costs. Employees probably had to take mandatory furloughs, and this is what got cut. And, if there’s enough public outcry, then Sony will bring it back and say that they’re listening, the fans have spoken, and they’re committed to providing the best info and service that they can. At that point, the furloughs will have been taken, and business will be back to usual...and Sony comes away from this whole thing smellin‘ like a rose.
I think that, in general, PlayStation is quite week online. The ps store is a joke on PS4. It's easier to navigate through a cellphone, but it's still far away from being good. When we take in consideration the amount of money sony makes just from the ps store alone, I can't understand why aren't they investing more and making it better?
What I mean is that making two websites that cover two different regions, into just one... Seems like a clear message that, for the time being, they aren't willing to invest and develop their online platforms. I just hope they are saving the money to make ps5 as cheap as possible (I'm being ironic).
The blog is down now too. Which is great
Who's this Fans fella I keep hearing about? He doesn't seem to like much.
@LiamCroft But let's be honest, when do 'fans' react positively to anything these days?
It also says, right at the bottom of the article: "Pardon our dust! In the coming months, you may notice the occasional discrepancy in this post as we’re updating the back-end systems we pull game info from to populate our list. Game release dates should be correct at time of publication but we will strive to correct any mistakes as they arise. Thanks for your patience!"
Been a PlayStation fan since day one and have never heard of this blog of which you speak. None of gamer friends have either. Can't be all that popular.
@ChipBoundary Well personally I read it a lot, it's often a good place to get interesting developer-led articles. Recent one about accessibility in TLoU2 was a great read, for example. I'm sure it's not got the same following as their social media channels or whatever but with nearly 14 million PS4s out there, maybe one person and their mates isn't the best barometer for success?
Just been and the comments covered half the article.
@JJ2 same here
@Paranoimia The issues are more to do with the presentation rather than the release date discrepancies.
@LiamCroft @get2sammyb The bizarre thing is for the touted "improvements" mentioned by Sid Shuman of the merged blog, its actually lost features! No emoji's,can't upvote someone's post,& no edit button!
In the post regarding their Mid year sale,all they did was post a link to the U.S. or EU store...much less that when you checked out the "sale" it felt pretty recycled as far as content went. Been noting a number of indies on sale elsewhere like Eshop,Steam/GOG etc. all bar the PSN.
The EU blog had as you'd noted in the past had been getting rather cut,paste & dash with zero interactivity, but is almost been made to look good with the efforts of the "new" blog.
For all the efforts of the likes of Shuhei Yoshida & Greg Rice on twitter promoting indies esp. with the recent ps5 showcase,the blog's recent posts have looked like amatuer hour for indies in comparison. And certainly not a way to advertise them for potential buyers.
Why they can't hire anyone to interact with people like the old days about upcoming indie releases seems incredibly odd.
P.S. Thank goodness Push Square has an edit button!
@LiamCroft Yes, but if the details used for the presentation (images, descriptions, etc.) are automatically pulled from that back-end database, it explains why it's not quite up to scratch.
Without being too self promoting if you miss the drop we do one every episode - we call it stingrays boot
I used to check The Drop every Saturday. When I started noticing it was gone I was pissed. I looked forward to seeing what was releasing the following week.
It would appear the quality of the Blog has dropped to that of previous EU version, which was always the poor cousin of the US blog entries. Listing all sales titles, without pricing info had always been the case and has put me off spending money in the past.
Until today I actually didn't know there is some Official Playstation Blog. I thought it was just some random playstation advertisement.
disgustingly lazy and cheap, this is what you PS plus isn't paying for
Honestly, I hate the US version of the blog. The one we used to have in the UK (and rest of Europe?) was so much cleaner and nicer to look at. I don't even bother checking the site any more since they merged it.
RIP PS Blog/The Drop as we knew it T_T.
Hey, so long as we can start spelling "favourite" and "centre" correctly again it's all good!
Well, i must say it was a really dumb move.
You can't unify the message when theres so many different cultures and languages. So, the message must be better delivered to each audience.
This honestly sounds like a terrible executive decision where someone completely forgot that placement is also relevant in promotion and thought they'd get great cost cuts instead.
There is a reason why a message must be tailored to the audience that is being delivered to. This unified nonsense was nothing but an excuse to fire people, i'm guessing.
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