Starting October 23 the PlayStation Store will ditch its bright blues for a darker, hopefully more responsive interface.
The PlayStation Store launched in 2007 and while it’s always been considered a second-rate goofball compared to its rival’s place of commerce, Microsoft’s Xbox Live, the folks at Sony have done an admirable job in trying to play catch-up.
Because, if you were around at the beginning to see what it originally looked like, you’d probably become the first recorded case of someone dying from laughter. Yeah, it was that bad.
Thankfully for all PS3 denizens, over the course of several overhauls the PlayStation Store has managed to become a respectful digital retail-front, where folks like you and me can find the awesome range of PSN content available online – well, whenever Grace Chen feels like it (I kid Grace, love yas!).
Now the next radical change for the PlayStation Store will be commencing in two weeks, as Sony rolls out a newly improved interface: slate-colored wallpaper, faster response time, and easier to navigate through if all goes according to plan.
One step in that process is a revised navigation structure, where finally content for a single game – items such as new DLC, themes, and demos – are now smartly grouped right under the title as opposed to having everything stupidly separate. Bernie is pleased by this, what else?
Well, next on the list of changes comes to the Store’s search engine, which will sport a snappy list of suggestions upon typing in letters. Say, you begin typing in “M” for Metal Gear Solid and in return the system tries to guess your query. Thus, cutting down the time spent scrolling through letters with your controller as it tends to happen to most of us.
A part of me wants to remind Sony that pretty much every search engine and their granny has this function, but I am immensely grateful, as I’m sure everyone else is, that it’s being implemented at long last.
Even better news is that these two bullet-points aren’t the only new features planned for the PlayStation Store redesign; those of you who have acquired a heavy amount of past purchases, should be able to sort through that catalog with better ease.
Awesome news, indeed, and hopefully just a tiny tease of what to expect when the new Store opens up for shop on October 23. I’m looking forward to it, myself. Oh, and you can also look forward to retro geek chic dresses and info on the release of Retro City Rampage (now available via PC, PSN, and PS Vita if you stick with Walyou. Which – duh – you should totally be doing.
