Jump to content

Sony Launching New PS Store on Web and Mobile This Month


Aranea Highwind

Recommended Posts

Music Magpie? My God, i bought many PS3 games from that seller. They were really cheap just like the old Play.com days.

 

It's really sad that he/she ceased selling stuff to Italian users because of few idiots who pretended have never received anything and obtained refunds.

Edited by Lance_87
Link to comment
Share on other sites

The main thing that will annoy me is how this update will make it much harder to find avatars & themes, on the app or website, all you have to do is search a game title & you'll see everything for sale for it, DLC, themes, avatars etc.

 

On the PS4 doing the same search only brings up the game you've searched for & any DLC it may have, it does not offer themes or avatars in the search results, sometimes they don't even show up under addons on the gamepage either, this means you have to manually go through thousands of avatars and (or) themes if there's one you specifically want to buy which is a complete joke & most people just won't bother doing.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, Lance_87 said:

Music Magpie? My God, i bought many PS3 games from that seller. They were really cheap just like the old Play.com days.

 

It's really sad that he/she ceased selling stuff to Italian users because of few idiots who pretended have never received anything and obtained refunds.

Have you tried ordering off of their Amazon.co.uk or ebay.co.uk stores? The main Music Magpie website only ships to the UK, whereas the stores on those platforms ship just about anywhere I believe.

 

You can also try Momox, I think they are German, and are also very good. They have a store on Amazon.co.uk as well.

 

Just looking at my Amazon order history for recent PS3 purchases, I literally got one game for 1 penny (not even joking), another for 29p, and Prince of Persia: Forgotten Sands for 85p. One wonders why they bother selling them at all at those prices!

 

 

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I tried to use psprices before I found out about the wishlist feature, but AFAIK-it’s not free (if you want to track more than 5 games) and you have to pay a recurring subscription for it. I’m not interested in that at all. 

 

Instead I’m simply downsizing my wishlist by quite a bit so looking for individual sales will be slightly more manageable. And because (even though I literally bought the system months ago) I now know eventually the same thing will likely happen with PS4 digital titles as is currently happening with PS3 and Vita (and has already happened to PSP) so why would I want to invest heavily in a bunch of digital games that may not even be able to be redownloaded 10 years from now? 

 

As someone who still owns (and plays) consoles back to the SNES era, the current attitude from Sony is 100% making me lose interest in buying any future consoles from them, PS5 included. Might eventually just go back to PC for most new releases (didn’t own any current-gen systems until buying the PS4). 

 

If I’m forced to buy mostly digital going forward, at least Steam and GOG have frequent sales, notification emails about sales for your wishlisted items, and no cap on the number of items you can wishlist.

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

18 minutes ago, TimeLordCrow13y said:

I tried to use psprices before I found out about the wishlist feature, but AFAIK-it’s not free (if you want to track more than 5 games) and you have to pay a recurring subscription for it. I’m not interested in that at all.

 

Well, I tracked 45 games on there yesterday, and was never asked to pay anything more than an optional donation. Maybe that's an old thing?

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

19 minutes ago, TimeLordCrow13y said:

I tried to use psprices before I found out about the wishlist feature, but AFAIK-it’s not free (if you want to track more than 5 games) and you have to pay a recurring subscription for it. I’m not interested in that at all. 

I don't know if it was always like this or if it just changed within the last couple of months, but when I signed up there was none of that. You can easily wishlist hundreds of games and AFAIK, the subscription is only if you want to set what price a game has to be before they email you about it, if you want to be notified of retail discounts  or if you want to find out about deals for games in other regions.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Key takeaways from this.

 

We don’t know yet if this is a full scale “doomsday” for PS3/VITA. All we can hope for is that this will be the worst thing to happen. We have a few more days to buy whatever we can from the web and app stores. To be more specific, if you were interested in any digital title written in kanji, katakana, hiragana, hanzi, hangul, you might want to buy now while it’s easy to do by copy/pasting from the PSNP page. Unless you have the right keyboard to attach to your PS3. I have however been able to get lots of normal search results on JP, HK, CN with English typing. But last time I tried to open the PS3 store on console it was “under maintenance.” Oddly enough I got the same pop up on the VITA console store recently, but I was able to simply proceed, buy, and download.

The wishlist removal looks really extreme, but if you already utilize PSDeals or PSPrices the impact on you will be less. I don’t think the games will disappear from your lists, but the thumbnails will go white, the store link will not follow, and you might not be able to add it back to your watchlist if you remove it as they may disappear from search results like all delisted games do.
I think for now, for what we are about to lose, we have an opportunity to mitigate. We cannot stop this and no amount of complaining will influence Sony’s actions. However if PSN sign-in, console activation, download list access, or trophy syncing get adversely affected, those things we will absolutely have doubtless cause to take more seriously and only the collective backlash of sufficiently vocal fans can have a chance to overturn it. It’s hard to predict the true functional lifespan of the PS3 due to the PS2 predating the PSN and thus lacking a precedent for more than online servers for individual games.

 

You can start by buying another PS3, loading it up for all it’s good for (ya get 500 GB), and also boycotting the PS5 Digital Edition.

 

Funny how I just got the email for my main account as I write. After getting the same email for all my alts last night. Keep in mind this part at the bottom of the email. ?


What about the content you already own?
You will still be able to access all your previously purchased PS3, PSP or PS Vita content as before. Your existing PS4 apps, themes and avatars will remain on your PS4 console.

  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, ScarecrowsFate said:

 

Well, I tracked 45 games on there yesterday, and was never asked to pay anything more than an optional donation. Maybe that's an old thing?

 

1 hour ago, Hero_of_Time_507 said:

I don't know if it was always like this or if it just changed within the last couple of months, but when I signed up there was none of that. You can easily wishlist hundreds of games and AFAIK, the subscription is only if you want to set what price a game has to be before they email you about it, if you want to be notified of retail discounts  or if you want to find out about deals for games in other regions.

 

Thanks for the info. Will have to check it out again and see if I’m still hit with a paywall. 

 

Edit: Have added over 5 items to the site and haven’t been hit with a paywall yet. Maybe it’s just a thing for their app? That’s what I was trying to use before-but I thought I had tried the mobile site too, maybe not. 

Edited by TimeLordCrow13y
Link to comment
Share on other sites

7 hours ago, baboon_overlord said:

Have you tried ordering off of their Amazon.co.uk or ebay.co.uk stores? The main Music Magpie website only ships to the UK, whereas the stores on those platforms ship just about anywhere I believe.

 

You can also try Momox, I think they are German, and are also very good. They have a store on Amazon.co.uk as well.

 

Just looking at my Amazon order history for recent PS3 purchases, I literally got one game for 1 penny (not even joking), another for 29p, and Prince of Persia: Forgotten Sands for 85p. One wonders why they bother selling them at all at those prices!

 

 

 

Yes, i used Amazon UK, and i was told there that they ceased shipping to Italy. That was a little more than 2 years ago, i don't know is something changed in the meantime.

 

Momox is another name that rings a bell to me.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Goings from what i know of the PNS tech.

PSN sign-in, console activation, download list access, or trophy syncing

Everything should be fine on that front. The codeing on psn has always been bad. My guess is the ps5 codeing won't talk to the older stuff well. Instead of doing patchwork to make it work. There just dumping it. And makeing it the default. They then only needed to ps4 work. That why all the ps4 game can work on 5.

 

Im not shocked by it. Hate it but not shocked. As long as we can log in to psn form the device. Mean the severe are still running. And sony know to keep that up and running. Or the emulator community will take over.

 

 

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

12 hours ago, Darling Baphomet said:

Removing the wishlist feature is absolutely ridiculous. Just saw the e-mail. I have 70 or so games in my wishlist and I still need to get most of them.

I agree,what om earth are they thinking?

I really do appreciate the PSPrices link people posted here - I spent last night manually adding the 99 games in my wishlist there instead of having it on the store. I also noted that Murdered: Soul Suspect was £1.59 so bagged that in the process. ;)

 

15 hours ago, TimeLordCrow13y said:

I tried to use psprices before I found out about the wishlist feature, but AFAIK-it’s not free (if you want to track more than 5 games) and you have to pay a recurring subscription for it. I’m not interested in that at all. 

 

 

I created an account last night and added my entire PS Store wishlist manually. I've now got 109 games in my "Discount Subscriptions" list. Not sure if that's different to "My Collection" and you need to pay for that or not but Discount Subscriptions does what you want anyway.
 

11 hours ago, ladynadiad said:

 

I had planned on boycotting that version if I decide to get a PS5 anyhow.  I don't feel any of the consoles have really done enough to fully gain my trust to avoid physical copies entirely and actions like this definitely don't get them any further trust here, if anything it lowers my trust. 

   

In related news, does anyone else think the new recording and "moderation" of voice chats in game is just a tad Orwellian? I really would discourage anyone from buying the digital only PS5 - we are going to get to the point where Sony starts banning players for almost no real reason and then your entire library is worthless, at least with physical you can just create another account and still play your games.

 

Sure, there may ultimately be class action lawsuits, but I really don't like the way this is going at all I'm afraid. The move of Sony HQ to California is going to be a disaster.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

18 hours ago, Kevvik said:

I’m not happy about this either but the only problem with all of our “constructive criticism” is that Sony doesn’t care.  All the sheep will get this news, momentarily look up from their FIFA/COD/cloned game of their choice, say “did something happen?”, put their heads back down in the sand and continue spending their parents’ money on the new store like nothing ever happened.  

I think you have actually nailed something very important here though, the average casual lootbox buying "gamer" will probably buy the latest FIFA/COD/whatever game from their local supermarket at full price and will only visit the console store when prompted to buy microtransactions from the in-game menu.


Only the more hardcore gamers are going to wade through the online store, read some reviews, maybe watch some gameplay videos, check the trrophy lists to see if they sound interesting and then add them to their wishlists before ultimately buying the games.

 

I spent a heap of time building my wishlist. It wasn't like I just added whatever games were on the homepage.

 

So my point is, this hobbles the core player group that Sony should actually be catering to. I don't know if Sony gets a percentage of any physical sales or not but even if they did, surely they make a lot more on the store? Why remove thousands of games and make it harder for your customers to buy things from you? Why did they generally stop doing discounts for PS3/Vita when you have over 100m owners of those things? Why not make the PS5 have PS3 compatibility, if only with digital? I don't get what they are trying to achieve from a business perspective to be honest.

 

Edited by baboon_overlord
clarifications of two points
  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

15 hours ago, EqualityEarth said:

What about the content you already own?
You will still be able to access all your previously purchased PS3, PSP or PS Vita content as before. Your existing PS4 apps, themes and avatars will remain on your PS4 console.

 

It is interesting how there's no real mention of being able to re-download your content there. I'm sure it will still be possible to for quite some time, and I'd imagine they'd probably announce at least a year in advance when the stores on the consoles themselves shut down and/or you're no longer able to re-download your purchases if they decide to go down that route. Even Nintendo gave over a year's warning of the Wii shop's closure.

 

One other thing to note is that in that same email, they mention still being able to buy content on the PSP's store, which has been shut down since 2016.

 

14 minutes ago, baboon_overlord said:

I think you have actually nailed something very important here though, the average casual lootbox buying "gamer" will probably buy the latest FIFA/COD/whatever game from their local supermarket at full price and will only visit the store when prompted to buy microtransactions from the in-game menu.


Only the more hardcore gamers are going to wade through the store, read some reviews, maybe watch some gameplay videos, check the trrophy lists to see if they sound interesting and then add them to their wishlists before ultimately buying the games.

 

I spent a heap of time building my wishlist. It wasn't like I just added whatever games were on the homepage.

 

So my point is, this hobbles the core player group that Sony should actually be catering to. I don't know if Sony gets a percentage of any physical sales or not but even if they did, surely they make a lot more on the store? Why remove thousands of games and make it harder for your customers to buy things from you? Why did they generally stop doing discounts for PS3/Vita when you have over 100m owners of those things? Why not make the PS5 have PS3 compatibility, if only with digital? I don't get what they are trying to achieve from a business perspective to be honest.

 

 

Unfortunately yeah, most people that play games are generally only "casually" interested in them. They're not going to care about things like this, but they still make up a pretty big chunk of what's making companies like Sony money.

 

I think Sony likely does make some percentage in physical, I doubt Microsoft would have been so hard set on preventing second hand games from being played on the Xbox One back in the day if they didn't at least make some money off physical sales that were being taken away from pre-owned game purchases. One thing is for certain though, Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft would all much prefer everyone make digital purchases.

 

As for why they no longer do sales for PS3/Vita, and the fact they're making it harder to buy games for those now, I can only assume they're seeing such little sales from those nowadays that they simply don't care any more. I assume they're making far more money with the PS4, and soon to be PS5.

 

I imagine they also just like charging people for PS Now rather than allowing us to make a one time purchase for a £8-20 PS3 game that we can own "forever" on PS5. I think it's one of the reasons Nintendo no longer does virtual console as well. Why allow people to "own" your older games when you can just charge them a monthly/yearly subscription to play these older games?

  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

22 minutes ago, SuperSmexy500 said:

One other thing to note is that in that same email, they mention still being able to buy content on the PSP's store, which has been shut down since 2016.

 

Here in Italy we say "things done with the arse" (i.e. done in a bad way) to refer to things like that email. But in general it could be said about the whole situation. They are doing this without thinking about the consequences, i.e. the missing titles from the Store apps. Or without knowing about things that happened years ago.

 

Can they face legal consequences for this? I'm quite sure they don't mention anywhere that games could be lost from one Store to another.

Edited by Lance_87
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

21 minutes ago, Lance_87 said:

Can they face legal consequences for this? I'm quite sure they don't mention anywhere that games could be lost from one Store to another.

No, part of Sony’s terms of service is a binding arbitration agreement. They even state you don’t actually own digital games. You only possess the license for a game. After you purchase it and download it, no where does it state you have the right to download it in perpetuity. In layman’s terms: you are screwed.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

52 minutes ago, SuperSmexy500 said:

I imagine they also just like charging people for PS Now rather than allowing us to make a one time purchase for a £8-20 PS3 game that we can own "forever" on PS5. I think it's one of the reasons Nintendo no longer does virtual console as well. Why allow people to "own" your older games when you can just charge them a monthly/yearly subscription to play these older games?

Good point, but wouldn't it be better to at the very least emulate the games rather than stream them? I've never used PS Now but it sounds terrible, and as my Internet connection is quite rubbish, likely wouldn't even work anyway.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

25 minutes ago, baboon_overlord said:

Good point, but wouldn't it be better to at the very least emulate the games rather than stream them? I've never used PS Now but it sounds terrible, and as my Internet connection is quite rubbish, likely wouldn't even work anyway.

The games run on actual PS3 consoles on the backend side of the service, and the streaming service sends a video feed to the console or PC at home to the client, while sending back the controller's input to the service. You don't need much upload speed for the input, but 4,000 to 6,000 kbit/s in download should be doable for at least 720p. And emulation for PS3 isn't even something that might run stable on the PS5.

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

39 minutes ago, ladynadiad said:

To be honest if sales are low for PS3 and Vita games, a big part of the cause is definitely the lack of sales and the fact that the prices are still far higher than what they could get buying the game used. If Sony isn't seeing much in the way of sales for PS3 and Vita games, it's their fault for expecting players to pay regular price for games that are overpriced compared to other offers.

100% this. The Store prices are now so out of line with the secondary market, I don't really see why anyone would buy from there unless they had no choice. That's for PS3 though, I think physical Vita games are more expensive because they are "rarer". I've only had my Vita a month and haven't really looked at too many games yet, but when I was searching for Uncharted: Golden Abyss that seemed to be the case.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

19 hours ago, EqualityEarth said:

 

To be more specific, if you were interested in any digital title written in kanji, katakana, hiragana, hanzi, hangul, you might want to buy now while it’s easy to do by copy/pasting from the PSNP page. Unless you have the right keyboard to attach to your PS3. I have however been able to get lots of normal search results on JP, HK, CN with English typing.

 

 

In my case I simply won’t have enough time to put money on a Japanese account and buy the game. 

 

Can’t find it by typing the name in English, but did manage to bring it up on the mobile store by typing the hiragana equivalent of the title, so it should be fine. 

 

19 hours ago, EqualityEarth said:

You can start by buying another PS3, loading it up for all it’s good for (ya get 500 GB), and also boycotting the PS5 Digital Edition.

 

Unfortunately I don’t have the money just lying around to buy a used PS3 500 GB console that  *might* work right atm. And I wouldn’t do that even if I did. I’ll get mine repaired when I can find a reliable repair service nearby. If they end up having to replace the motherboard it’ll be costly, but still cheaper than buying a used system that could very well have (or get) the same issue mine has-or worse.

 

I’ve also discovered that the PS3 games I’ve made the most progress in don’t even HAVE trophies (Folklore, etc) so I’m not even all that concerned about having to re-earn my trophy data. 

 

Might buy a few of the cheapest digital titles before they’re gone from the mobile shop-and hope for the best on the rest. 

 

And I wouldn’t touch the digital versions of the PS5 or the Xbox One S with a 100 foot pole. 

 

 

 

 

Edited by TimeLordCrow13y
Grammar (I have OCD)
Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, baboon_overlord said:

Good point, but wouldn't it be better to at the very least emulate the games rather than stream them? I've never used PS Now but it sounds terrible, and as my Internet connection is quite rubbish, likely wouldn't even work anyway.

 

I'm pretty sure the PS3 games on PS Now are run on official hardware, and just streamed to your console. Not 100% certain since I've never used PS Now either and have no intention to ever use it, never been a big fan of subscription services like that.

 

PS3 emulation right now is pretty bad, and I doubt Sony really knows how to emulate it themselves either. Even for PS2 emulation, it's always had issues even with the "official" PS2 emulation on PS3 and PS4.

 

47 minutes ago, ladynadiad said:

 

Don't forget that before PS3 all consoles were physical only.  Yes, the company that makes the console gets a cut of the sales.  However, physical sales work a bit differently.  With digital sales, the dev uploads the game to Sony's servers.  A player makes a purchase of a game, Sony gets a cut and the dev gets a cut.  At a certain time period, probably monthly or quarterly Sony would pay the dev their cut.  With physical games though, the games are sold to the retailers with each retailer buying so many copies.  So lets say EA releases the newest FIFA game and prints up a million copies.  They then sell those to Walmart, Amazon, Gamestop, etc.EA and Sony are paid, now it's on the retailer to sell the games and make their money.   The only way they'd get further sales for a physical game is to do another print run.

 

Digital benefits Sony and the dev more because they don't have to share part of the sale with the game retailer.  On top of this, they don't have to pay for printing a physical disc and case and they can charge the same amount as a physical game. All game companies want to get rid of used sales though because selling used only benefits the one selling it since Sony and the dev don't get anything for that sale.  Digital is a great way to discourage it because players can't resell digital games either.  Also, they don't have to print more copies to ensure people can still buy the digital game.  As long as it's still listed, people can still buy it. To be honest if sales are low for PS3 and Vita games, a big part of the cause is definitely the lack of sales and the fact that the prices are still far higher than what they could get buying the game used. If Sony isn't seeing much in the way of sales for PS3 and Vita games, it's their fault for expecting players to pay regular price for games that are overpriced compared to other offers.

 

I had a feeling the fact that physical copies are sold through retailers was also part of the reason why Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, etc. are more keen to sell digital copies of games nowadays. It makes sense, as they have more control of their digital marketplace than physical games which can be re-sold with no extra profit on their end.

 

I know some PS3 and Vita games have gotten permanent discounts on PSN over the years, but not a lot and even then, the asking prices often still tend to be a bit high, especially if those games also have physical versions which may often be cheaper. I think some Vita and PS3 games have occasionally gone on sale the past few years, but not very often, and usually not very many actually go on sale when they do. Maybe during those scarce few sales in the past couple years, they saw such little profit that they just started to care less and less. It's just speculation of course, but it does seem like Sony is putting most of their focus on what's "new and hot" nowadays, and doesn't seem to care too much about making their past games very accessible any more. They might throw in the PS1 start-up sound into a trailer to drum up nostalgia to try and get older fans interested in the PS5 (or PS4 before that came out), but you can be sure you won't actually be able to play any of your old favourites on the new system unless they get remade or re-mastered. Which I do find kind of sad, especially considering Microsoft does allow you to play a very large selection of games from their past systems on both their current and next gen consoles.

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...