Honestly surprised with how often the library/games view on XB1/PS4 gets brought up nobody mentions this.

The design on the individual games pages on the PS4 view of the Playstation Store is just the absolute worst. If you want to watch the trailer for a game, there's a gigantic overlay taking up a solid 1/3 of the screen that shows you a thumbnail of the video you're already watching behind it, and the video stops after 3 or 4 seconds (sometimes 3, sometimes 4, not sure what triggers this) requiring you to hit play to get past the production logo screen. Then the overlay stays up for another 5 seconds or so as the trailer plays.

As a graphic/web designer myself I honestly can't believe how this made it to production, it's such a dumb concept and execution. The old version was so much better. Just had to vent about this.

I buy everything PSN-related on my PC. It's not a fantastic layout but a hell of a lot better than the PS4 store.

@dave_tacitus: The site is definitely speedier. However, AVOID THE PHONE APP.

I don't really like the PS4 store interface much, but I think the Xbox One's store front is WAY worse. I don't use either to browse though, when I know I want something it's launch store, purchase, get the heck out, all within 2 minutes.

And to view the screenshots, you have to go through the trailers tab, but that will always automatically start the trailer, so while you look at screenshots the trailer will all of a sudden be back on the screen after a few seconds until you switch to a different screenshot

My main issue with it is how slow everything is. I have to use the website whenever I want to download something because nothing ever loads properly on the PS4. It's really frustrating.

The only issue I have with it is that it uses that weird keyboard.

yeah i agree with you, the old layout was much better. that overlay shit is annoying. also, sometimes stuff that comes out and is new is hidden behind older shit they want to sell, so ill have to manually search for the title, instead of them just inserting it to the new section. despite the complaints, i do like everything else though, but for what its worth i feel as though neither consoles have gotten their store layout right yet.

The Classic PS3 Store layout was so much easier to navigate. There was no need for the change a few years back.

Woof. Yeah, I noticed that also (graphic/web designer too here). I have to wonder if the decision to immediately feature a video is an attempt to hook people into remaining on a product page and taking more time to consider purchasing a game instead of risking them taking that time to search for that same video (with no guarantee they'll find it or watch it) which could possibly lead to people saying "fuck it" and backing out of the page to look at something else. Seeing a trailer or gameplay is more compelling than reading a description and seeing screenshots, after all, and could lead to more sales.

Maybe this was done as a reaction to publishers' requests, information gleaned from surveys, numbers indicating how long people stay on product pages, or a mix of these things? Oh, then enforced by individuals who want it done without knowing if it could be done well.

I can at least get to stuff quickly rather easily. Still nowhere as bad as the design of nearly everyone on XB1.

I don't think it's that bad. Some of the Plus stuff is laid out weird, but other than that, it isn't abysmal.

Yeah, the old PS3 store was pretty good, it's damn near unusable after the update about three years ago. You can't even browse the full lists of PS1 and PS2 classics, you can only find a small list of featured games, for everything else you have to search for specific titles, making it impossible to find anything you're not already aware of.

Agreed. It had been a little while since I bought anything on the store (I mean a purchase with money, not PS+), and I thought that something was wrong with it loading, or that I had clicked on something I shouldn't have. It just looked terrible. The way it was just a few months ago was way better. At least from an individual game view. It also seems to be missing some menu options on the top menus, particularly demos. I had to dig to find a place where I could look at them without typing in an individual game first. Also, there are some errors too. On the browser on my PC, it says there is a demo for the new Odin Sphere, but when I go to PS4, I can't find it. I hate that kind of shit. Maybe it was a preorder bonus or something, but regardless, take it off the store if nobody can actually download it that doesn't already have the game. Honestly, I didn't hate the layout of the PS store when the PS4 first launched and even on the PS3 for a while. The PS4 was pretty much the same but way faster. It didn't need changing, and even if they did change it, it didn't have to the nearly unusable state it's in now.

For whatever reason Sony keeps bloating everything up. I get that you don't sit as close to a TV as you do to a PC monitor but can we please have the option to see more than 4 items on the screen at a time? Why is everything so huge? This new store takes it to another extreme where every individual piece of info requires the ENTIRE page dedicated to it forcing you to scroll through several screens instead of just having all that info on a single well organized page.

@dave_tacitus: you ever get errors right after purchase? Every time I'm on the site it successfully purchases then kicks to a "page not found" 404 type page, then I see the game/app in my library. Not a dealbreaker since I know it purchases correctly, and I'd much rather use the PC on both Xbox and PS4 purchases but it happens consistently. Not looking for troubleshooting just wanted to see if I'm the only one.

@joe_mccallister: I haven't ever noticed that, to be honest.

@dave_tacitus: I do the same. I'm not a fan of the layout either, but if I already know what I'm going to buy I do it either through my PC or I just search it, buy, done.

Their web store is no great shakes, either. Trying to filter down to the PS+ games is a hassle without a bookmark, and don't even get me started about trying to enter a credit card without it getting rejected.

@joe_mccallister said:

I actually get errors at purchase. I can't use their site at all to buy anything, it's some weird conflict with my card. My boyfriend, however, uses his just fine (same card, same exact account as he's secondary holder). I end up having to grin and bear the PS4 store in order to purchase games during sales and whatnot (because if I use the store from the console it works fine for whatever reason).

Can't say I've ever had a problem purchasing stuff. Maybe it's because I use a debit card rather than a credit card? No idea.

Seems fine to me. I use it daily.

It's terrible and I also have CC purchase issues. Ironically I got a Playstation credit card and the Playstation Store does not play nicely with that. For awhile it rejected it entirely, then I called customer service and now I can get it to work from my cell phone if I input the CVV number every time, but can't make purchases from the web store from my laptop for some reason.

Also, and I've said this before but it bears repeating, they once charged me twice for a game. When I called customer service they told me to dispute the additional charge with my credit card company, which I did, and got it removed. I was then banned from PSN and had to spend like an hour on the phone explaining to get reinstated. I also had to repay, via a PSN card I bought from Amazon, the double charge fee to get reinstated. Now to be fair to PSN they did eventually spontaneously refund me that additional charge* so I only ended up paying once total, but man was that whole thing a huge hassle. Plus when you're banned you lose access to your digital library, and with the PS4 so low on hard drive space that means losing a lot of games as a practical matter.

I know other people have had similar nightmare experiences with Xbox but I've never had a problem like that with Microsoft.

It's strange that these companies who have invested so much in an all digital future want to make it so clear that that future will be dystopian and awful.

*If the customer service rep had just told me "The system will catch the double billing and refund you in a week or so" the drama could have been avoided.

The Xbox phone app is really good imo. Wish all the stores were good like it. Playstation app is garbage for browsing the store... Just opens a web browser.

And while we are at it... The Steam store could be better designed.

Yes the new layout for games is so bad. to get screenshots you have to press up up right down. its like a fucking code.

Glad to know I'm not alone with this opinion. It's insane to me that a company as big as Sony or Microsoft have this much trouble doing one of the most time-tested design projects: the storefront.

I don't like the last few changes they made either.

Neither are great experiences. Much easier to navigate stores and make purchases in a web browser.

Yeah, the newest version of it is fucking awful.

I haven't used it in a while but man it was really hard just to find things, i had trouble finding that overwatch beta I think i had to use the search engine. It may be different now but at one point i couldn't even find the section where the demo's were, and when it first launched I couldn't even figure out how to list all the games that were available on the store to buy. Those issues may be resolved now but yeah from my experience it was always a hassle.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, PSN has been worse than Xbox Live was when it first launched and it's stuck there.

The Playstation Store gets worse and more of a time-wasting hassle to navigate with every single update. The store is virtually unusable on PS3. They updated it to match the PS4 store, but the PS3 isn't capable of running it. It's just nothing but freezing and crashing and I don't know why they think that it's acceptable to leave it like that.

Now the exact same problems are starting to arrive on the PS4 and it's a shame because you know they don't care at all. The PS3 store wouldn't be in the state that it is if they did.

The PC store is also probably the worst digital storefront I've ever seen, but at least it's much, much easier to navigate and use. The one positive of Sony abandoning the Vita is that they will probably never force a god awful store update on it.

Yeah, I don't like the PS4 store but I really, REALLY don't like the XB1 marketplace. I can't get over how fucking bad it is.

This. Absolutely this. Hell, the entirety of the Xbox One interface in general is so bad that I rarely even turn the system on. The thought of digging through that muck is just so disheartening.

Thank god someone elese made this topic. I kicked around the peanut of making the same thread myself as I've been in the store a bit lately with the big sale and just found it borderline horrific. Same reasons most have stated but the "video trailer first " thing has actually cost them 2 sales in my case. Previous store at least went to a summary page with text and some pics plus info first, regardless of whatever problems it had of its own. Lump me in the pile of not wanting to even navigate it on PS4, if I can help it.

They've reduced the density to an absurd degree. There's like, two buttons per page, which is kind of insane when you take into account that this is on the biggest screen I own.

And the keyboard for searching the store is a million times worse than the default system keyboard. Having to scroll through the alphabet for every single letter feels really inefficient.

PSN is bad? Xbox needs to do some cleaning up, especially their credit system is weird as fuck.

It's also just unbearably slow. Like, that main page where you scroll to the right to see all their featured games or whatever takes forever to load the images for each game. At this point I use the website for everything.

@bluefish: At least the games tab is accessible on the XB1 store. The all games tab is buried under so many layers of trash on the PS4 store. The other nice thing about the Xbox store is that all the DLC for a game is right there. Again, the PS4 requires a bunch of digging since the DLC is a separate page on the store

I am glad someone was venting about the Exact thing about the new PSN store that I hate the most: that stupid trailer pre-play overlay garbage on individual game pages.

I'm right there with ya yelling into the void about how shitty it is!

I hate the trailer nonsense, but it's so much better than the ps3.