Behind The New PlayStation Store – An Interview

Following the extended tour of next week’s store redesign, which you can read about here, I was able to have a follow up interview with Gordon Thornton, VP of Network Operations, and Elliott Dumville, Product Development Manager for PlayStation Store, both from Sony Network Entertainment Europe.

Read on to see “What’s New” with content handling, search, the infrastructure and maybe a few tidbits about what’s yet to come.

TSA: This has been a redesign a long time coming, you’ve been working on it for the last 2 years, but has this launch point been planned for a long time or is it more a “when it’s done” approach?

Gordon Thornton: I don’t think the project has really taken a long time. We started a process of actively engaging with the customer and the gamer, and you saw some improvements which we made to the old store, which initially was great but needed signposting to help you get to the right place and understand it.

Why is something on the home page? Well it’s important because it’s on sale, or something like that. So we had improved a lot of that on the blue version. Where this came from is that it got to this point of inflexion where we just needed to make a step change.

Part of that as well is that is about the amount of content that is available. There’s lots of games, over 1,000, lots of add-on content, over 8,000, and there’s 20,000 bits of smaller downloadable content. So what we were hearing, and Elliot will reinforce this, is we just need to make the search better and get people to the content faster, and that’s what we’re trying to achieve by doing this.

Elliott Dumville: In terms of that timeline, Gordon’s already talked about the improvements we tried to make with the current store. I think the important part of going through that process was it helped us to develop some design principles that we could then take forward into this step change.

It’s simple things like how I should always know where I am in the store, it should be clear what I’m being asked to do or why I’m being shown something, and how I never want to get to a dead end. We had a list of these principles which we had to deliver against, and we had to kind of test those in the store that we had.

So in terms of getting it to market and it taking a long time, this actually represents getting the fundamentals right, and then we can start dropping new features in once it’s up and in the public domain. Going forward we’re hopeful that every month, or every couple of months at worst, we’ll be dropping in new features, updates, changes and so forth. That will be a process which is a dialogue with the fanbase.

TSA: One of the first things you notice when you load it up is that you have games very prominently shown still, but you also have movies and TV on the left. Before this was a more distinct separation. How have you worked to combine these together into a more cohesive store?

Gordon: Well, you can see right on the home page that we’re showing the user all types of content straight away. I think on the page that’s going to go live we’re going to be showcasing TV content right on the home page.

Ultimately what we’re showing is that we’ve got loads of great content. There are tens of thousands of videos on the site, and before it was kind of lost because you had to tab across, but now it’s all in the same place.

Particularly when you go to the search, if you search for Batman, you’ll find that you’ve got all the game content there, but also the TV and movie content there aswell.

Elliott: I think there are two things on this. “What’s New”, which is the homepage, will always feature a big mix of new stuff for each category in a given week. Clearly the balance of that will be different from week to week, but we’ll always be showcasing the latest and greatest. Often people will just head straight to the specific categories on the side.

In search, Gordon talked about Batman, so lets look at that example. This was a design decision that we had to think about very carefully. Do we segregate products in search, or do we try to make it a consistent and coherent experience?

So if you search for Batman, we believe that you’ll be expressing an interest in Batman in general. If you’re looking for a specific release, like Arkham City, the more people who perform a Batman search like this and click on Arkham City will make that a more popular search, so that result will be featured at the top.

But if you’re looking for Batman in general, then we want to make sure that we show you all the great content we’ve got for Batman, regardless of format. So I think that’s our opening approach as far as that goes.

TSA: Sticking with Search, this is a completely overhauled section of the redesign. The onscreen kayboard is gone, but can you still use a physical keyboard to type in your search? 

Elliott: In terms of typing, no, but you can use the keyboard’s arrows to navigate the store.

TSA: Personally, that would be a feature I’d like to see return at some point.

Elliott: The place where the kayboard still exists is for entering personal details and other things we use for checkout. So that’s still there, but for search in particular, keyboard or otherwise, we really wanted to make sure that a consumer never really has to enter more than three or four characters before they get to what they’re looking for. We think we’ve kind of delivered on that.

TSA: There are a few hold over topics and requests from the old design. It would often feel like there was a lack of responsivity, with long waits and the little loading ripple in the corner. Have the underpinnings to the system, the server back end and so on been altered to help the new design combat this?

Elliott: Well I’m not an engineer, so I’m going to put this in the terms that I understand it!

The architecture which supports all of the UI and the front end is completely new. Not just in terms of the programming and the HTML5 which deliver the experience, but also in terms of where it’s served, how it’s served and the technology that really supports that.

The underpinnings in terms of how everything works with security, buying things and all of that is fundamental, but we’re happy that the performance of this will be in line with PlayStation fans’ expectations.

TSA: Another big focus for you has been bringing content together in dedicated game hubs. This is a big change and looking quite final, but is this still in flux or are you happy and think this is going to stay for a long time? 

Gordon: No, this is all part of our programme. This is just the starting point of our step change, and we wouldn’t be commiting to regular updates if we believed that this was an end point. This is, conceptually, the start of a new PlayStation experience, a place where we’re showcasing the content now.

Even just looking at the parallax Messi on the home page, it looks great. Then when you get into the game’s hub we’re showing much more information about the game. Part of this is going to be working with the consumer, taking their feedback and developing the platform. Part of it is going to be working with the publishers to get the right content and showcase their games and content.

Elliott: I think additionally, particularly on product pages where we’ve designed that to be a hub with additional content and DLC, a lot of our backlog of features are focussed on the product page. The opportunities to not just showcase a product but also show the relations to other things in a series, those related in theme or mood. Kind of a more editorial focus.

So we really look at this as the step change to the programme which we initially kicked off with the current store, and then we’ll be dropping in new features as we go.

Gordon: The other thing we’ve tried to achieve is to really show off PlayStation Plus, showing where the value of it is. There’s a home page for it showing all of the features, and then there’s another page which just shows the whole instant game collection, and the value that we give to the consumer as well.

TSA: Again, going beyond this initial release, are there plans for a much requested web interface for the store? This particular design is specific for the PS3.

Gordon: I can’t really answer that question directly, but this is built in HTML5. It’s been built in that way to give it flexibility, and there’s a programme…

TSA: Finally, another tangent from the redesign, but of late there have been a lot of issues with delayed European releases of games which launch in other regions and on other platforms, and perhaps a lack of communication on these. Is something happening to alleviate these alongside the new look, or are these considered separate issues?

Gordon: I mean, they’re slightly separate. What I like about the store, and we’ve shown it to all the publishers over the last few weeks, is that it requires them to be much more interactive with it.

So to address the issues which you’re talking about, it’s about us working with those publishers to make sure we get the content right for the European market. It’s all part of the dialogue which we have with those guys.

TSA: Thanks a lot, and good luck with the launch!

Thanks again to Gordon and Elliott for taking the time to demonstrate to us the new store design, and answer some questions about it and the wider PlayStation Store.

You’ll all be getting your own hands on time next Wednesday, 17th of October.