Ah, Major Nelson, the epitome of what’s right with public relations. Every day he’ll update you with what’s coming up for Xbox 360 owners, and you’ll know in advance of any Arcade titles, demos or even Gamerpics – usually a day or so before they hit the Marketplace, where for the most part content is uploaded Globally.
And then you’ve got Sony. Not only is the PSN Store departmentalised into regions, but we usually have absolutely no clue what’s coming on a Thursday update unless we get prior notification from a developer, like we did yesterday with Novastrike, and that’s only ever on the US Store – official blog ThreeSpeech tends to update the Store lists about 4 hours after everyone else, which is a shame but we understand they have stricter editorial guidelines than sites like TSA.
But it doesn’t have to be like that – why can’t we be told when WipEout HD is coming out? Why must we sit refreshing the Store on a Thursday to bring you the updates (although PSP Remote Play is pretty damned cool)? We’re assuming that the list isn’t decided 20 minutes before the content is uploaded, so if the games, media and demos are organised on a Tuesday, let us know on a Tuesday, that way we won’t buy that pint and we’ll have enough for whatever PSN game you decide to publish.
It’s not even that the Store is in it’s infancy anymore – the European Store alone is over a year old, and if there’s not brand new PSN games every Thursday then that’s cool, but don’t restrict us from not getting our hands on new game demos, especially ones that have already appeared on the US PSN Store (or the 360’s Marketplace) some weeks before. We know you have to space things out, but Super Puzzle Fighter last Thursday was a joke – that’s months late and frankly not good enough.
This might feel like a misdirected rant, but Thursday’s should be a day to look forward to – a day when we can set the latest games downloading at lunchtime and come home from the office to a bacon roll and a quick blast of whatever games are hitting the shelves soon. Sure, European updates have gotten progressively better recently, but we’re still way behind other stores and thinking about all the stuff we’ve missed that 360 owners have had access to for some time baffles us.
Sony, your customers are generally cash rich, so let us spend our money. Tell us what’s coming, stick to your dates and start making the most of the easy revenue. And no, Qore doesn’t count.
