Goodness gracious, the new PS Store is an absolutely flabbergasting heap of horse doo, isn’t it? Look, we understand: coronavirus, new consoles, complicated – we recognise that rolling out a new iteration of the PlayStation Store can’t be easy. But after the previous versions – which were also rubbish, for the record – we liked to think Sony would finally get it right. Wrong!
We’ve talked plenty about the new web-based PS Store before, and to be fair, it has improved marginally over the past six or so weeks. Marginally. But the rollout of today’s massive January PS Store sale has served as a reminder of just how bad it still is. We’ve tried, over the course of the past six hours, to view the deals and we can’t see sh*t because it doesn’t work.
Okay, so we’ll just turn on our PS5 and look on there, right? Freakin’ wrong! For whatever reason, there’s some kind of lottery associated with whether you see the January Sale promotional banner, so we actually can’t access it right now. To repeat: the sale is live, features thousands of titles playable on the PS5, and there’s no way to see what’s discounted on the console itself.
Alright, then we’ll just go to PSPrices, a website run by a random individual who’s not even employed by PlayStation – it’s currently the best way to see what’s on sale. But the website’s gone offline because everyone else has had the same damn idea! And why are we even relying on third-party solutions to get to the information we need?
Look, it’s a first-world problem, and we’ll figure it out eventually. But of all the things you’d expect PlayStation to put a bit of care into, it’d be the part where you literally give them money, right? Unbelievable. This experience is unfathomably bad, and it needs to improve a lot in the New Year. Maybe the company could just hire the PSPrices person to do it all for them?
Have you had much look browsing the new PS Store sale yet? What do you think of the current state of Sony’s shopping plaza? Try to spend your money in the comments section below.
Comments 103
Doing me a favour tbh. My backlog is huge.
I went on this morning and it had no prices and no buy button. How have they not reverted back to the old store? They won't even comment on it. Same old sony.
@Robinsad The thing is, the old PS Store was awful as well! Which pretty much says everything about this new one.
Seems to be working for me now but it was like in the picture for most of the day
@get2sammyb It was a tad cluttered, but I always really liked their web store in the past. Far more than the terrible, slow way of browsing PSN one had on the actual PS4, anyway. And it led to me spending more money on the console than I probably should.
This new update is, er, well-described as a "flabbergasting heap of horse doo," even when it's working well, thanks to the weird setup that makes it difficult to find games at times, and even the loss of basic functions like a wishlist (WHY, Sony?).
It's not uncommon for me to have issues viewing the sales and such the first day, especially the first few hours. Guess I've just learned to accept it as normal.
Also let's be real, PSprices works and all but it's ugly af.
It's so frustrating! I can kind of get it to work on the Playstation app but the desktop store is awful and there are never any prices or purchase options.
In order to get into the January Sales on the PS Store you have to get to collections, there you should find it.
Random question, does anyone know if the rest mode issue been fixed for ps5?
Well, after trying for several hours, on and off, the web app seems to be working now.
@Aslanmagic
I decided to bite the bullet and started using rest mode around the end of November. Never had a problem. No need to use an external hard drive though, some where implying that might be the issue.
@Aslanmagic Personally never had a problem, even with an external drive connected.
This store. Is. Awful. Seriously. Also, why is it so hard to navigate the sales on the PS5? The PS4 and the app both show active deals. As the PS5 has only been showing Indies.
@JAMes-BroWWWn It's still not there
If you're using the Chrome browser, try signing out of the store, and then sign back in. I had the issue with prices and buttons not showing yesterday, and that worked for me.
@get2sammyb @thefourfoldroot excellent, thank you!
To be fair, there really isn't any games worth buying at the moment. Wait a few weeks, get the discount and thank PS later
@Paranoimia For about a month now, the webstore was not loading game pages correctly (on Firefox and Chrome - add-on enabled or disabled) - no "Add to cart" button and a weird pixelated picture for the game banner
The only way to find and buy something seems to be the PS App on your phone...
The store has become wholly useless to me since the big update a couple of months ago. I stopped trying to use it altogether.
I basically use psprices, make a list of what I want and then manually search for those titles on the ps5.
Im just using the App lol
@Robinsad I had the same problem a while ago. You need to clear your cookies for that trainwreck of a website and log back in.
@get2sammyb The old ps store wasn't good, but seems incredibly great compared to the current one. It doesn't even feel like a website from this decade.
Use the App, it works great!
The old Web store was far from perfect,agreed. But the EU/AU store at least had SOME categories/filters. Unfortunately the "new" web store,is still severely lacking the most basic functionality! Remember when Sid Shuman & co. insisted the united PS Blog would be a big improvement,yet EU users saw the loss of emojis, updates etc. And despite months having gone by we still yet to see any improvements or the return of weekly releases etc.
They claim to read the feedback yet when they can be bothered to post about a sale its usually "staff's on there,waves hand,go look yourselves!" They're the definition of the lazy sales clerk going back to their switch/phone etc.!! And definitely aren't reading the room on the lack of wish-lists, pictures or videos...easiest way is to use the ps4 itself to access the latter,but as has been pointed out PS Prices not only doing a better job but also points out the number of games going years without a sale.
Haven't looked yet,but know Wayforward mentioned in their umpteenth Switch & PC deals that there's no Shantae/River City Girls discounts anytime soon! 😔
Shantae Pirates Curse,High Genie Hero/Ult. Ed at 2yrs+ & River City Girls & Shantae Seven Sirens have had zero psn discounts since launch.
Wish Xeno Crisis,Battle Princess Madelyn, Cursed Castilla,Super Hydorah would have some sales but years/never on most of them but sales on other formats never seem an issue!
Psprices is down too
Blaming the coronavirus pandemic on everything has become very convenient. Corpo’s had ample of time to acclimate themselves to the situation (it’s been 9 months!), especially in IT fields, so please find another excuse!
The new store is bad, and on my usa psn account (and my ps ios app) I still can't find wishlish feature!
It's shocking I thought this the other day no deals section. I have to look on the ps mobile app
Use the app 🙄 no dramas.
@Olmaz It's been a bit flaky for me on Chrome since they updated it for the PS5, with prices and buttons sometimes not appearing, but so far signing out and back in seems to resolve it. I bought a game in the sale earlier with no problems.
The old store might have been a bit creaky and rough around the edges but it at least had functionality, filters, dedicated sections and was organisable, this new version has none of that. It still boggles my mind that a company such as Sony would roll out a new web store without even the basics, and theres been absolutely dead silence from them about it.
@Stragen8 @Hyperluminal except it didn't work this morning either (not for the January Sale anyway)
The European store is fine for me...
https://store.playstation.com/en-gb/category/b927020d-dff5-4112-a3b6-80f2f91c2cd0/&emcid=or-st-269900
It’s absolutely horrifically bad. It beggars belief just how bad the new store is.
No Deals section yet on PS5. I'll spend my dosh on the perfectly working xbox store then 🤷♂️
"This probably isn't what you're looking for..."
Well I mean, it does say PS Store in the upper left corner but have it your way.
@Sealightbreeze You do mean the PS Store on the PS5 right? Well, for me it's right at the second bar at Collections. It says January Sales. Weird that it varies.
@ShaiHulud @get2sammyb It’s a tad convoluted but if you go across to collections. The second one down is January sale. if you spend scroll to the end you can select view all which basically gives you the same screen you will get on the PS4.
I've already stated how bad the store is previously, it's just an absolute utter lazy disgrace. Sony has a lot of morons running the show, the game dev side is excellent as is the hardware but services wise they're a bit clueless. The same people deciding this was an acceptable front of shop are probably the same morons that decided we didn't need a PS4 pro controller even though it would have made them mountains of cash. Useless.
@Voltan Weird, I went on before posting my (earlier) comment to check and saw a bunch of the sale items. Maybe certain regions have more issues idk.
Between the bots and scalpers and now the weird PS Store stuff, I've never tried so hard and failed to give a corporation money.
@Paranoimia I did try signing out and back in (and deleting cookies and so on) on both Chrome and Firefox, to no avail...
Only the PSapp works well... In a way, it may be exactly what they want, I'm sure there are some marketing schmucks that showed them that people are more inclined to impulse buying while on their phone than when on their browser on a computer...
I went on the store and saw this. Was ok on PS4 though, had a look through the list there.
On a side note, the purchase option on the PS3 store has been glitched for some time now and no longer appears on the individual game pages, I had to look up a solution online. You can only 'add to cart' by clicking on the game image... I know its PS3 but seems they really dont want you to buy anything there.
Don't need any new games atm, but yeah, hire the PSPrices person Sony; do it today.
@Aslanmagic mines always in rest mode, not has an issue with it.
@Ryall Cheers! Odd place to put it.
The store on the ps5 is dreadful ,its basically a lucky dip
At least you guys are dealing with games actually in the browser store. Vita did get a courtesy handful of discounts (all PS4 crossbuys, no PSP or PS1 Classics this holiday), but good luck finding them on the console even while browsing through the full list. I looked at the PSPrices stuff and picked Axiom Verge for comparison - indeed, the price checks out, but it's literally listed as THE price, with zero mention of discount percentage or original pricetags. I don't even.
Works fine on the app. Just download from there
Agreed - it really is rubbish.
PSPrices is great but often overwhelmed with demand. PlatPrices.com is a good alternative...
https://platprices.com/en-gb/news/113-psn-sale-december-22-2020-united-kingdom
Yep. It really does. The old one was much better. I’d rather have it back, be able to see legacy games, then fight this one and have it waste space instead of displaying old games. I’m amazed this made it past concept art.
@wiiware Yea, I think they got rid of the wishlist for some reason, lol. Reminds me of when the iTunes Store also got rid of the wishlist feature, like are they expecting me to impulse buy things at full price? Nah...
My sister-in-law was dating a UI designer once, for some sorta tech company. Wanted to tell him that his whole industry is full of idiots.
@JeffWhiff glad to hear! I finally secured a ps5 but won’t be getting it until Jan 2 so wanted to see if there was anything to be worried about.
I quite liked the old store. I could search and find things, then buy and download them from my phone or computer - which seems almost impossible on the new one. Surely that’s a minimum! They don’t even have a wishlist function!
I use the PS Deals app which is pretty good to see prices now.
The web store worked just fine for me before they made all the changes prior to the PS5 launch. The absence of the wish list is my biggest complaint now. It was easy to find games and DLC, and I could add both to my wish list. As part of my normal routine I would check my wish list for sales, etc. Now that is all gone, even on the PS4 itself, and it doesn't make we want to buy anything digital from Sony. I don't know about Xbox but Nintendo still has a wish list. Bring it back!
AMEN! And why was the "wishlist" feature removed on app? It was so easy to check my list at each sale and begin purchasing. I've been working my backlog ever since the "reiteration" because I don't have the patience to shop. I can honestly say this new store has cost them my money at least.
Really struggling to find games. Got a bunch of vouchers today that I’m keen to spend!
I thought it was a problem if mine, being somewhat stupid or so... But I couldn't find the sales banner neither all the discounted games altogether. Since I wanted to buy ghost of tsushima I directly searched for it and there it was at 40usd.
Really starting to miss the old design right now lol
@get2sammyb it was no where near as bad as this one and best of all it was functional. It was cluttered and the filters didn’t work great but this one doesn’t have any features, and often doesn’t work. They should have kept the old one running in the background at least till this was up to scratch. It’s probably 6 months away from being a functional storefront.
It is quite hard to comprehend that this store was their intended user experience. It is truly awful.
@Aslanmagic I’m fairly confident that those rest mode issues were over stated by the gaming press based on a few high profile reported incidents.
As soon as you connect your PS5 to an internet connection it will download the latest OS version anyway and if that rest mode issue was as wide spread as the gaming press would have you believe, I’m confident it’s been patched. (No evidence to back that up though)
Glad to see a gaming media outlet finally talk about this issue.
I've noticed this problem occurring for the last couple of years and it happens on an almost weekly basis. New sale banners show up on the console and web browser stores and when you click on them there's either no titles listed, only a few titles listed, or there are games listed but no discount is showing. Sometimes it takes a few hours after a new sale goes live until everything is properly displayed. It's so half-assed.
Since the 'new this week' filter is missing I don't even care anymore...
@JeffWhiff totally makes sense. I’m not as concerned about it now as I was. All launches have hiccups so I’m not surprised some of it has been resolved. Thanks a lot!
I have a 100£ basket and it won't let me pay... that's absurd. I might remove a game from that total now that I have some time to think about it...
The new store is worse than it was. Sony - how do you keep messing up the cash register?
Nintendo's secret to loyalty - they don't chop you off with every iteration. How many 3DS games are on sale this week and how much money will Nintendo make off its legacy systems, instilling loyalty that goes a lifetime.
I went in deep on PS4, and it even pulled me into PS Vita and PS3. But I'm seriously thinking of skipping PS5 when I see how Sony runs its full line of products; Cyberpunk almost made me jump in, but the signs all say I dodged a bullet.
@Aslanmagic NP, enjoy it when you get it.
Sony always had problems with their Store, specially on consoles. Not surprised the current one still has problems.
The old webstore was excellent. Now you don’t even have trailers to see what a game is about. Often I can’t see any prices. I also want my wishlist back. I just stopped buying games altogether.
It’s a mess. I am using the PS5 wishlist feature cause the website, app, and PS5 store are failing me. I guess I save cash cause I can’t find new sales? That’s why game makers offer sales, right? So no one can find their games?
I have the EA acess this month and because of that PSN store doesn’t allow me
To buy the game ???? My trial expired and I’m unable to play it al all ....
Since day 1 (yes, I got a release-day PS5 in the US, don't hate me) the PS Store on the PS5 has not shown sales. It's shown the banner for whatever sale is active, but it's never been selectable and there's no "Deals" section or sale section on the PS5 store.
The good news is, if you search for a game that's on sale, you'll see the correct sale price, so you CAN buy what you want from the console. But there's simply no option to view everything that's on sale, together, in a single display - switch to the web or a PS4 for that. It's stupid.
Now check this out - the web version of the store USED to have a Wishlist option, which they dropped after warning everyone it was going away before the PS5 came out. And the web version (and PS4 version) still have no Wishlist option. Guess what DOES have a Wishlist? That's right - the PS5 version of the store lets you build a Wishlist (though it won't remember what was on your old web store Wishlist)!
I remember in 1995 running software that showed a text-based version of a forum in the old-style BBS format (which was still pretty current in 1995), and a web-based version of the same user forum, and a Windows-client version of the same forum (Mustang Software...it kills me that I lost the hat I got from them when they closed shop). It was slick, to have three different ways to interface with the same back-end system. I know it's simpler to put something like that together than Sony seems capable of with a web store, PS4 store, and PS5 store.
@get2sammyb Ditto - not a single issue with rest mode so far, including having Miles Morales snoozed, which some people said was a particularly troublesome title for some reason.
Honestly, I've had more issues with my Sony TV (which Sony recommended for the PS5, with two HDMI 2.1 ports) - just today it lost the ability to play audio from HDMI 4 (my PS5) until I rebooted the TV. Ain't technology grand?
it took all of 5 seconds to find the sale on the PS5.. i don't use the website store (didn't use the old version much either) so i don't know how that is. search seems to be better on PS5 than PS4 for me anyway.. out of curiosity, decided to see if final season of walking dead was finally on sale, typed 'walking dead' and it came back as the first hit (and it's on sale!).. on PS4 i have to scroll through a bunch of fluff before final season appears.
@RobN - for me in the UK, the sales have always appeared under the "collections" tab on PS5. right now, if I'm on the store home screen, I press R1 and then down on the PS5, the January sale is right there.
It's no worse than the PS Store on the PS5. It looks nice enough, but the fact that they don't even have a dedicated section for deals is baffling, which means you can't access them on there at all unless it happens to pop up as the Featured thing in the store. Weird considering Sony would prefer you bought everything digitally from them. I still have my PS4 Pro hooked up as it's the only way to actually look at each sale consistently on my TV. Well, that and I use it to download PS4 games instead of leaving my PS5 on to do that, but that's beside the point. It's crazy, but I much prefer the PS4 store and most people wanted it changed.
You'll think a company as big as Sony could hire some deceant web programmers to do something about the store.
I like the style it has but it shows no pictures nor info on size of a game which is just dumb.
Can't even filter anything as well!!
They should've kept the last one since at least it had functions unlike this new one.
It is yet another fine example of Sony simply not caring whatsoever about it's consumers. They want you to buy everything off the crappy implementation of the store that they have on their consoles, you see, and if you don't like it then too bad. It's a mentality that is of course genuinely detrimental to sales, and is therefore quite pathetic. Yes, the design is horrible, yes, the console implementation is poor by any decent standards. You are an absolute fool if you defend either one. But really I mean, there are geocities web pages made by users circa 1995 that have a better design structure than this new website. It's one of the worst ever made. The ONLY way it got approved is because Sony does not care about the end user at all.
Oh and while we're at it the new mobile app removed a TON of user functionality and social features, further proving that they do not give a damn about anything that benefits the user experience. It is appalling.
Exclusives? Playstation, service? Xbox , easy like that
Its super easy just using the PS App, dumb ps5 doesn't have a sales section though
Hate navigating the store on PS4, slow responses and no wishlist. Not to mention the size of these games on my tiny 500GB.
The whole experience puts me off digital only.
@stinkyx Yeah that's annoying as well, sometimes I want to buy games on itunes store but not at full price, I usually go to https://appsliced.co to wishlish ios games, it's a pretty good site 😃
@eltomo Also no digital refund, one of the reason I'm comfortable purchasing games on steam is because their 2 hours non ask refund policy.
Usually buy a game every month or so, but even with all the sales I can’t be bothered since my Wish List has disappeared.
@leucocyte Okay, you got me - I hadn't found that. So, to get to the full list of games in the sale you have to scroll to the right for 20 items. Twenty. That's still nuts.
And it does show you what's in THIS sale, which is fine (and seriously, thank-you for that tip), but there's still no option on the PS5 to see all deals. Without searching by name, using only the PS5 store, how easy is it to find Death Stranding is half off (just not part of THIS sale) right now?
Welcome to the all-digital future
@wiiware Awesome...thanks for the tip on the iOS deals tracker / wishlist website!
It's right there in the PS5's news section... Maybe it was updated, but I found it in about 2 seconds.
Tried to download the free costumes for Sackboy: A Big Adventure the other day but couldn't.
https://ibb.co/p0N7QXW
This issue happens quite often and most of the time I'm unable to download free content from the store. Worst of all one of customer support agent I talked to from Ask Playstation said I needed to own the game before I could download the costumes when that actually isn't the case. Goes to show how much they know about their own product.
@zupertramp PSdeals is pretty much the same thing and it has a cleaner interface
@SweetSummerShunv yeah like that has anything to do with Sony choosing to be apathetic about how they do things.
@SidNightwalker no but rather this illustrates the potential inconveniences of such a future if you don't have the proper infrastructure to back it up.
It's very surprising that they released such a bad web store. The UI design is quite awful, difficult to find info and games, and the worse is that it has tons of bugs. Worse when it happens at the payment phase - got to an error page after putting my CC details - now go figure if it charged me or not.
They should've kept the previous store, was much better (though still with issues) and at least it worked
@get2sammyb Atleast it worked.
Seems fine on the 4. Sony do seem to be having a bit of a PS3 launch this time around rather than a PS4 one but then Microsoft haven't actively shot themselves in the foot this time (yet)
Didn't have a problem with the previous web store front - it worked OK but 99% of the time I just went to the store on the PS4.
@SidNightwalker As a big fanboy i agree its bad but im happy too physical only so not my problem. But still its a joke that it works so bad.
It's worse how Sony thinks in the future it could go digital only, yet even items on sale are still more expensive than buying physical copies in store.
@Grimwood I don't buy games I don't want to play. I don't include games from PS+.
@RobN - maybe it would be easier if there was a "Deals" tab to go along with "Latest" "Collections" and whatever the other one is.. but i've found all the other sales easy enough - death stranding was there the other day on the collections page.. i assumed one sale replaced another, but i since i buy so little digitally (i think i've only paid money twice since 2017) i didn't take that much interest in what happened to the previous deals to be honest.
as for having to scroll across a bunch of games for the view all button - yeah a bit inconvenient, but i wouldn't be surprised if some publishers have paid for prominent placement - you're going to have see their products before you see any others. it's not just sony that does this.. and with limited screenspace available, UI design choices aren't going to be great. pretty much every app store, particularly ones that use tiles, has utterly terrible UI/design, not just sony's.
Couple this with all the PS5 games I’d be buying if I could get my hands on a console and you have a whole lot of money that Sony is leaving on the table right now. Oh well, I’ll just leave my hard-earned cash in the bank for a while and earn my own interest on it. Sony’s loss, I guess.
Still no screenshots on the Web Store...
@skaarj217 How hard is it too integrate screenshots and a small trailer.... ☹️
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