There are many things I don’t understand in this world – wrestling being the main one, really – but Sony’s recent round of financials had me parroting that emoji where the little yellow guy has his chin perched on his thumb and index finger. A staggering 69 per cent of PlayStation’s revenue for the previous fiscal year was generated by the PS Store – that’s including digital games, microtransactions, and subscriptions like PS Plus. And yet, the shopping experience on PlayStation kinda sucks.
Push Square readers are extremely passionate about subjects like the closure of Japan Studio and crossplay – but in essence, these are drops in the ocean compared to the importance of Sony’s digital storefront. Let’s reiterate the above statistic: 69 per cent of PlayStation’s entire revenue is driven by the PS Store. That percentage includes hardware sales, physical game sales – everything. It’s an absurd number!
But even more absurd is the fact that the shopping experience is so subpar when the company knows that’s where its bread is buttered. It just doesn’t make sense to me: out of all the things the firm is investing in, surely the PS Store should be right near the top of the list. Because, yes, that 69 per cent revenue is propelled by great content and services being available – but if the act of actually buying them is as sticky and addictive as possible, then surely people will open up their wallet more?
Like, I’m staring at the web-based PS Store right now, and I’m not sure it’s showing me the things I want to see. I click on New Games and it wants to flog me a copy of MLB The Show 21 – but I’m logged in and I already bought the game at launch. Meanwhile, there are new titles that released recently – The Colonists, for example – that I can’t even find. I’ve looked on the PS5 as well, and I can’t see that game anywhere. How am I meant to know it’s even out?
The crazy thing to me is that I do this as a job, so I know when games are releasing generally, but there’s tons of stuff that even misses my radar. Browsing is at least fast on PS5 – it’s frighteningly slow on the web – but unless I know exactly what I’m looking for, I think discovery is generally quite bad. All iterations of the PS Store want me to buy Returnal – which totally makes sense – but why isn’t it finding other software based on my purchasing habits that I might like?
There are sorting and filtering options – even on the web now – but I find they generally don’t work well: if I sort price by low-to-high, for example, it’ll put games that cost £4.89 above ones that are £0.79. I get from the sense of usability that major brands like Fortnite and Call of Duty are what the majority of people are looking for, so having them front and centre on the PS Store makes sense, but surely there’s room to promote other interesting titles or things I may have missed?
Redeeming voucher codes and PS Store credit is cumbersome, I find, and there was a period of years where my credit card simply wouldn’t play with PlayStation’s payment processing system. I haven’t tried again recently – I assume this was fixed – but the fact that I’m now all-in on pre-paid vouchers has probably lost Sony hundreds of impulse purchases over time; at least I’ve saved myself some money.
My main issue with the PS Store is that I feel like I’m using it grudgingly a lot of the time – and it really shouldn’t be that way. Surely a storefront that’s driving almost 70 per cent of a division’s revenue should be the company’s focus – it should be sticky and addictive; I should want to use it. I really don’t feel that with Sony’s storefront: I want the content, of course I do, but I wish there was a better interface I could use to buy it.
Look, I don’t really have all of the answers, and Sony is making billions of dollars so probably knows better than I do. Little things, though, like a calendar you could browse to see all of the new releases on a given day; better organisation options; more personalised curation to show me content based on my playing and spending habits – surely the shopping experience can be richer and more fulfilling than what we’ve got? This is PlayStation’s money-maker, so when’s it going to actually feel like it?
How would you rate your overall PS Store shopping experience? Are you happy with it, or do you think it could be improved in key areas? Cough up in the comments section below.
Comments 70
It’s good enough for me to be fair. Now it has a wishlist and numerous filtering options. It’s snappy and well integrated with no loading in as on last gen machines.
The main thing I’d like I completely understand why Sony couldn’t do: A historic record of every games price - so I can see whether a game on sale is actually not on sale for less on a frequent basis...at the moment I have to always go to PS Prices.
It’s much more important to PlayStation than 69% though. This measures revenue rather than profit, which means it counts ps5 hardware income, despite that being a loss making sale.
I don't see the issue. Can use the search bar to find certain games
Nice.
PS3 had the best iteration of the store, Before it was updated into the slow, clunky, laggy mess it became in 2011-2012, I believe? Also, it's embarrassing PS4 never had a wishlist option. At least PS5 does. The sorting and filtering has always been poor. Many products don't even show up where one would expect them too. It's like no one on staff did any proofreading and checking.
I like the calendar idea but don't they already recommend games based on one's previously played? I'm not that displeased though with the Store as it is, like all things it could probably be improved but it's certainly far from the disaster you paint it out to be.
Nice
Which it was better
But nice
Push Square needs to allow 1 word responses for this article cause
Nice.......
I spend my time on psprices.com and only ever use the store when I already know what I'm buying. So it's really not a big deal.
buy a game leave nothing else I need from it
The PlayStation Store integration into the UI instead of launching a app needs improving/better interface. I'm sure they are working on a lot of improvements as we speak so we just need to be patient 🙂
I agree with all of this, but there's something else I feel deserves being brought up:
Sony is currently not advertising their Play at Home Initiative ANYWHERE on the PS4's store. Given that Horizon Zero Dawn is still being given out for free right now, the only way that people would know about it is if they actually follow gaming news, because Sony sure as hell isn't letting you know about it on the storefront itself. I noticed this with the last batch of games as well. I downloaded Enter the Gungeon, Abzu, and Subnautica right away, but held off on Rez Infinite and The Witness until later. When I went back to download those two, I was surprised to find that the Play at Home section was nowhere in sight. I literally had to use the search bar to find them. And that's...quite ridiculous, I have to say.
This is just really weird, I feel. Despite the generosity of the program, it almost seems as though Sony doesn't actually want you to know that they're doing it. You would seriously think that Sony would have a Play at Home section on their store throughout the entire duration that they're giving away free games. And yet....they don't.
Nice.
It’s not great but it’s a store, they’re rarely good. It’s certainly not eShop bad.
As a curated store it’s not bad. It certainly doesn’t function as a means of discovering games or have any inbuilt reviewing structure. But I can find out what I want to buy from third-party websites like push-square and then it functions perfectly well to sell it to me .
If I were you guys I’ll be careful about wishing for a steam like store that works out what you want to play next and gives you a review for it.
It's getting better but they went backwards when the PS5 came out. The website still sucks.
The store is functional. But as PlayStation’s largest revenue generator by a wide margin, functional feels like a low bar. I like the calendar idea a lot and would be happy if it formed the entire basis of the store experience.
Bing up a calendar with all upcoming releases. I click on Friday the 7th. The releases are listed and can be opened up for trailers, info and purchasing options. A bar on the right brings up your customizable “store profile”. Options like ‘remember this game’, ‘similar games’, ‘also from this developer’ and so on. You could even earmark purchases for certain days depending on your cash flow, with friendly reminders about what’s coming up for you.
I think a more customizable store experience based off of a calendar could be brilliant.
69
I do wonder if the experience will ever get 'better'...
I just came here to say: 69? Nice.
Also, the store is meh. A complete meh. It's not bad, it's not good!
The most annoying thing is definitely the 'sorting' function. As the article says when you do 'low to high' it arranges it by original price rather than what the current price is.....infuriating.
I always thought the PS store was terrible until I saw the PS5 store. I'd happily go backward here.
Yeah there are definitely things they could improve about it (certainly for the new web version) but I actually quite like the layout on the PS5 tbh
It does make me wonder why they just don’t take some more time to release new stores etc when they’re subpar.
Is a bit like releasing a game unfinished and that never goes down well…
It does the job. I prefer the PS4 store over the PS5 one though.
@johnny30 Great - so go use the search bar to find a new indie game that came out last month that has that aesthetic you like. It works if you already know what you're looking for. For browsing, it's awful.
It's worse than it used to be at finding DLC and telling them apart.
It's already improved since the PS5 released in November, but there's still plenty of room to improve more. I suspect, however, given the millions of dollars this store is worth, that they've got SOME expert telling them this is the best way to do it to maximize revenue.
If your looking for Netflix style browsing then it sucks hard!! If ya know what u want and go get it and nothing else, it works fine. For me, I wish it was more fluid like Netflix.
the price filtering I think is based off the actual price as far as I have noticed, if it's discounted or in a sale it doesn't take that into account I believe
I recall in the past that my PayPal and my Debit Card stopped working on PS4 store, completely useless, they may be making lots of money but they're still run by idiots, there will people that say but look they're beating Xbox so they must be doing something right... 'yawn' people still pay to watch bad movies, most companies run badly or well can still improve plenty when those at the top have a severe lack of common sense
Cyberpunk 2077 will be a playable game on PS4 before Sony has a useable webstore.
and I see here lots of people saying oh no issue here, nothing to see here.. yes well done but you're not the average consumer, you probably know exactly what something is and if you want it or not months or years before it's even up for a pre order or to buy, the average Joe turns up at the store and it's a lucky dip
Because you played Divinity Original Sin 2, why don’t you try Grand Theft Auto V?
@kyleforrester87 I start watching shows on Now TV and it forces me to watch an advert for the programme I'm trying to watch...
I've just got back from Xbox Series X and let me tell you: if you think PS Store shopping experience sucks, you should check out the Microsoft store. Granted, I do all my shopping with the PS Store app, but at least it lets me buy games, as opposed to the Xbox app. I had to buy all Xbox games via browser and it sucked big time. The new PS Store app UI is leaps and bounds better than the previous one. Also, I don't know why some guys say PS5 UI is bad. I actually love its simplicity. Just my 2 cents.
@Bad-MuthaAdebisi it’s ok though because it’s not like you pay a subscription fee for Now TV is it?
The PS store is another one of those things where I was supported for years by Steam. It works, but it's not exactly elegant, and it frequently takes far too long to find what I'm looking for.
If you look for problems, you're gonna find problems.
On PS5 it is better than PS4 but still not good. My biggest bugbear is when I want to recommend games that I have already purchased to my brother. He'll ask me what the price is and I can't tell him because once you have purchased a game you can never really see the current price again.
Plus I find it hard to tell the PS5 and PS4 games apart. You can filter the game list by platform, or if you search for the game you then need to click those ellipses. Always leaves a little panic on if I have bought the correct version or not.
I find the store complete garbage compared to what it was. Now it is slow, lacking most of what the previous store had for options, and highly aggravating. Half the time game pages stop loading half way through. Missing video clips of games, kinda needed for people who have no idea what a game is about and want to see what the game play is like. No links on the game pages to their respected DLC. When you search for it, It is more of a headache because it shows other unrelated games as well. Randomly logs me out when changing pages.
Those are just some of the things I have noticed. Tried it on different browsers. I tried, really tried, to give it a chance. The latest "update" (if you can call it that) that added sorting was a big plus to me, at least it wont look like something that was just randomly thrown together and makes it easier to browse through. Yet it is not enough for me to give it a passing grade since it is still currently a downgrade from before.
But I have to thank Sony though. Thanks to the new store, I have yet to buy anything from the PSN, so I have saved money in the long run.
I had a look for Judgement ps5 the other day and ended up having to use the search bar as i couldn't find it. I thought it odd as it was released that day! Maybe Sony was shunning them for not charging £50?
It's pretty surprising that he revenue from the store is that low. I would've expected it to be much higher.
I primarily use my PS4 to browse and buy from the PS Store. Some things I discovered by surprise or just dumb luck and other genres are just a chore to dig for. Scrolling shooters for example.
That revenue is about to go higher now that i am part of the all-digital group 😆.
"it’s frighteningly slow on the web"
What exactly is scaring you?
I vote Meh, it just about get the job done but nothing special
I'm really not agreeing with this.
I never had any sort of problem. If i want sugestions the ps4 store has sugestions for me based on what i purchased and genre.
I really, really don't want to see every pos that released every week. Just the major titles. Just the sugestion gives me ptsd from thw switch shop that is cluttered with a million crappy indie titles no one knows or cares about.
If you care about that, the ps store has an indies tab too.
I honestly don't see a problem and this opinion comes as a surprise.
The ps4 store is perfectly fine. The ps5 store is a bit anemic, but they already started improving it. I'm sure it will continue.
I like the wishlist feature they added and searching through sales works fine.
One could even say it's.....nice
@jorel262 the store is terrible on the PS5.
@art_of_the_kill still, doesn't stray away from the fact that they gave those games for free. And just checked the store it's there on the main page just below the advertisement for returnal. And it's always been there. Imagine complaining about something like that lmao
@gollumb82 these people hate everything, the store now has a sorting feature and a wishlist, everything the previous store had and it's much much faster than before
My PS store comes form Best Buy, Amazon, and Walmart online. I have a hard enough time finding the PS Plus monthly games to add to my Library. Some how I always end up on the page that advertises joining PS Plus not the add to library page.
I really wish you could register Physical games in the PS Store so they would show as purchased!
Meh...
It functions well as the alter of sacrifice for my spare money.
The recent addition of some filters & wishlist to the web store has returned it to functional status though the (cluttered),older EU/AU web store was better,so still needs work. It still has me puzzled they launched the "new" webstore minus basics like screenshots & trailers,& need to fire up the ps4 to check through sales!
As others have noted its easier to check out PS Prices to have an idea of not only what's on sale but know the sale history....
Which in turn is my main annoyance with certain titles/indies getting sales every other month & others that a quick check of ps prices show haven't had a sale in years or even had a single sale! Some indies have indicated its out of their hands,& others have mentioned they don't get alerts to sales,they need to continually check & login & hope they get an invite to participate-if you're not on the invite list,tough luck!😕
Not saying other stores are perfect-its not widely discussed but unlike the $5-$10 first party Eshop sales,indies usually have firesales there just to maintain visibility....albeit applying for sales is more simplified there apparently.
And a Steam style refund system is long overdue!
Generally speaking I'm fine with the PlayStation store. It does what it does and I'm okay with it. My only major gripe with it is when I want to see new games it also includes pre-orders which annoys me. Sometimes I want something new to play and I want to see what has just come out that I might not have seen before, and seeing games that are coming out six months from now doesn't help me one jot.
Barring a few weird pauses (which I assume are are memory reclamation issues before it resumes) the PS4's Store is working fine.
It has a search, it has numerous filters (cough...Vita..cough) and it just works.
Why did Sony have to plop the new one out is anyone's guess but given that they have one that works so well, why reinvent it?
Personally, I'll be sticking to the PS4's one for the foreseeable - by the time I can be bothered to search out a PS5, maybe they might have something that isn't trash?
It's slowly improving but not there yet. At launch the 'NEW' store was a HUGE backwards step, loads of features missing but it is improving.
However one thing I like is that the console, web and app all now seem closely matched and have feature parity. We now have deals, wishlists etc across all and we navigate all in the same way. This is a big plus.
Re: Discoverability. There's two sides to this. It is fast to search and find what you want, if you know. (especially with triangle to shortcut to the menu bar and the microphone in the dualsense.)
But I wonder how many people actually go on to just browse and randomly buy something they see? We're all different, but for me, I've never bought a game just because I randomly saw it on the store, other than in a sale. I'm sure there are some who do but is that a user journey that actually exists in enough volume to be a problem? As I said we're all different and maybe many people do this. There are plenty of rabbit holes to dive down there in Collections. I suspect this design is all data driven.
Personally I go to the store to buy a game I already want or to QUICKLY look through the sales and see if games on my wishlist are discounted. It does this last part well now imho.
Lastly the website version is still SLOW, full of unoptimized and bloated code and needs a lot more work. The app and PS5 store is snappy by comparison. As a web and UI designer I know it was slated within the community at launch. In the article linked below, while a little out of date, at launch called it the biggest UX failure of 2020. It's gotten a little better but still has far to go. Ultimately I use the web store less because of all this, it's not convenient anymore, whereas it used to be my primary store.
https://dev.to/rtivital/playstation-store-redesign-the-biggest-ux-failure-of-2020-4g97
I always wondered why they don't try to do some kind of replication of a shop with shelves kind of thing.
You could have a vast panel of titles on screen that you can zoom in and check and move around like you would in a store.
It wouldn't solve all the issues, but it would make checking different titles more interesting in my opinion. It wouldn't have to be the front page, but it would be a nice browsing option.
However, the real inclusion I'd like to see, and this would be especially useful on the switch eshop, would be able to hide games I have already bought or I'm not interested in. It would be amazing if you could whittle away at titles you will never buy so the store becomes simpler and more streamlined over time.
I always get the "it looks like something went wrong" error on the Web Store which pretty much sums up my shopping experience with it. It's a minor annoyance but still annoying nevertheless.
If 69% of PlayStation's revenue comes from the PS Store, then as well as making the shopping experience better (which I agree with), Sony need to also get the PS5 HDD expansion solution live ASAP.
The lack of dedicated PS5 storage (I'm not interested in parking my PS5 games on an external HDD) makes me think twice about buying PS5 games on the store, as my console storage is already full.
I totally agree with the article.
PS5 store is very poor. It lacks variety and options. It doesn't give you options to buy. You have to search for what you want.
They should definitely come up with a re-design.
Nice.
I completely agree, the PS Store is terrible. Always has been, IMO.
When I view latest releases, I want to see latest "RELEASES" (ie, games that have ACTUALLY been RELEASED) .... not latest releases listed underneath a confusing bunch of COMING SOON GAMES where I can't tell whats actually available for purchase and whats not.
It does the job, but it could definitely be better. The curation absolutely could be better, and I have no idea why they haven't implemented a way to hide games from the store that you already own. It's irritating when you're looking through the latest deals page and almost half the games say "purchased" - just filter them out.
I went to the online store the other day to get the PS+ games and performed a search for Stranded Deep, one of the titles the site itself says is available this month. It did not return a result for the game. At all. On the entire store.
@art_of_the_kill The simple fact is, despite the optics of them giving away free games, it's not actually in their best interest for people to redeem them.
They want to be seen as giving them away. They don't want to actually have to give them away.
The store could be much, much better.
1. If I own a game on disc, stop advertising it to me!
2. If I own a game digitally, stop advertising it to me!
3. Separate pre-orders from recently released games. Put pre-orders somewhere on their own. It's just illogical to put them together and it annoys me.
4. Let me sort by more things, like "more from this publisher" or "more from this developer" would be great, and save me having to use the internet.
5. The recommendations system has never made a sensible recommendation to me, ever. All it seems to show are the most popular and current AAA games, which are already easy to find on the store, apparently taking no account of my tastes and making the feature completely redundant. A better system would leverage the rich data that Sony holds about my playing habits, like which games I actually play, which ones I enjoy enough that I complete them, etc, in order to make recommendations.
@OthmaneAD I said on the PS4's store. You're apparently looking at the PS5's store, because an ad for Returnal wouldn't be on the former, now would it? And that's nice if Sony is promoting it for PS5 users, but last I checked, way more people own PS4s than PS5s and it would certainly be nice for them to have that information as well.
On the PS4's store, I just checked once again, and NOWHERE is it being promoted by Sony that Horizon Zero Dawn Complete is available to download for free, nor is Play at Home even so much as mentioned. You literally wouldn't know about it unless you actively searched for the game. And that's just ludicrous.
For those who understand the potential, the Billions that Sony has left on the table because of their second-rate shopping experience is shocking; I take it their stockholders are not gamers or they would be up in arms.
I get what you're saying, Sammy, and I agree with some of it. It could definitely be better in some areas.
But given that the store is providing so much of their revenue, does it not suggest that most people aren't having any/many problems using it and finding what they want?
The store showing you things you already own is irritating, but not unique to the PlayStation store. Search for something on Amazon, then make a purchase, and you'll still get an email a few days later showing you a selection of things matching that search and asking "were you looking for something in our ..... store?"
@art_of_the_kill I'm talking about the website store.playstation.com not the ps4 or ps5 store
@eshy76 Doesn't matter where you buy your PS5 games - buy them on disk, they'll take the same amount of internal storage, because the games don't run from the disk (too slow even for the PS4). The disk just decreases how much has to be downloaded (ideally the most can be copied from the disk other than updates), and serves as the license key.
@nessisonett
I second that.
I just miss the old web store. It was simple and quick to use, even more so than the store on PS4.
I always make my purchases using the web store and barely ever use the PS Store on consoles.
One of the major reasons for this was the web store's wishlist functionality, which they've since added to PS5, which let me see if any particular games I was interested in were on sale.
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