I love my PS3. I have nearly more games after a year of PS3 than I had during my PS2's life time... and I loved my PS2.

The PSN - PlayStation Network - is great. I love that it is free. I love that you can buy games online - even though my wallet sometimes do disagree.

One of my good buddies recently got himself an XBox 360 Arcade game system (found a pretty sweet deal too!).

So I went to his place and we browsed the XBLA (XBox Live Arcade) - which is the "equivalent" of the PSN Store.

I use quotes here, because XBLA is actually far superior to the PSN store.

And I'm not talking about the quantity of games (even though, IHMO, it beats PSN's offering), their price (PSN seems overpriced to me) or even the quality of the games offered (won't play them all :P)

I'm talking about the store itself - the way it is browsed, the way the games are presented.

See, every game we saw on XBLA had a demo, some screen shots and a short description - just about everything you need to make a basic educated decision on your purchase.

The games were also neatly displayed and easy to navigate.

When I came home to my PS3 and was treated to the grid layout (yes, I know I can change it to a less horrible layout), lack of any relevant information on games and prices that always seem to be 5$ too expensive, I've started to get XBLA envy.

See, I think the PSN store has the capacity to be a very (and I do mean //very// profitable venture for Sony and game developers, but - as I seem to notice in a lot of Sony products - it lacks some vision.

PSN does a very poor job of selling the wares it show - they are (outside of the main page), badly showcased, provide very little information and really do nothing to stimulate the potential customer from parting with his hard-earned money (or too-easily acquired credit).

When I go to a game store, I can pick up a box and look at the description at its back. Look at the screen shot. I can talk with the guys at the counter. I have just about every resource at my fingertips to decide whether the game is of interest short of actually trying it out.

On the PSN, I am nearly forced to whip up a laptop and ask the Internet what it thinks of the game I'm looking for.

PSN is basically forcing me out of the store, away from the "purchase" button.

That, as far as marketing goes, is usually a no-no.

In the no-brainer category.

What do I need from the PSN?

A decent description

All games should have a decent description. What game type is it? What age is it for? What is it about? Why would I want to play this game? Why is its existence relevant to the rest of the world?

What we currently have is always nearly useless, informationless blabber.

Screenshots

What does this game actually look like? PSN can do this, it just never actually bothers to do so. You have to buy to see.

Gameplay Videos

Like the screenshots, PSN can actually do this, but few developers really bother to provide. Again, I ask, what is it that I am purchasing? What do you have to hide?

Demos

Yikes. XBLA has a demo for every game out there. On PSN , if you're lucky, you get the demo a few week after the game comes out. The main game and its demo are not even linked together. If you stumble on the full game and are interested, there's nothing to get you to the demo, if it exists. There's nothing to tell you whether the demo exists or not.

It is my belief that demos should be mandatory for every PSN game. I know it taxes the developers but really, in the end, it will only stimulate sales. Except, of course, if the game is bad. In which case it will hurt the sales.

Do you think Sony wants to sell PSN games? No - they'll want games that are good enough to get friends of customers to purchase as well.

Ratings

Community ratings would also help towards closing sales. I'd love to see community reviews, but I would expect that moderation of such things would be way to bothersome.

Platform Clarification

PSN can sell games for PSP or PS3. What tells you this is a little logo under the game's icon. That's it.

How cool is it to download a PSP game or demo when you don't own the device? Not much.

Games should be either categorized by platform, or you should be allowed to filter them out.

Conclusion

I think Sony should invest and push the store forward - it can be improved to deliver even greater content and boost its rentability through simple, basic selling techniques - its not even marketing efforts yet (almost), its just the equivalent of having a competent salesperson in the shop.

Did you know you can propose and vote on ideas and features related to the PSN?

Check these out: All Games Should Have Screen Shots All Games Should Have Demos Community Reviews Clarification on Platform

I've been playing with a Web application called The Sims On Stage.

Basically, its an online community where people can share artistic tidbits such as songs, poems, videos, karaoke. I've been having fun with the karaoke part.

One of my ways of working through this is that when I hear a song I want to consider recording, I add it to my list of favorite songs.

I stumbled upon a little "bug" on their Website. It's a simple UI bug: every list in their application is broken up in pages of 20 items. Nothing wrong with that.

But in the list of favorite songs, they forgot to put in the page navigation controls - you know the "next page" and "previous page" links that we are all so fond of...

The functionality is there... see, if you go to my list of favorites songs, you'll see 20 items. At the time I'm writing this, I actually have 27...

Notice the lack of "next page" link in there. Well add a "startAt=20" parameter to the URL and you'll get the songs on the second page.

All this stuff being beta, and myself being a developer, user and tester of the system, I decided to report the issue to Electronic Arts.

I am no confronted to the "dreaded" first line of response.

There's nothing wrong with first line support in itself. Its frustrating when you can do you own first line, but first line has a reason to exist and I do my best to remain calm and help then realize that I need second line - it also backs me up in case I was being stupid and just didn't see an obvious solution :)

Anyway, I go through the hassle of creating an account for support (yes - its not the same account as for accessing the service) and submit the issue using what I believed was a simple enough message.

Navigating the favorite songs in Sims On Stage, there's no links for changing pages.
The functionality is there, if you use the page parameters as they appear on other sections of the Website... the links are just not displayed.

Of course, I should have known better... this is usually to dry, straight to the point and technical... words like functionality and parameters are not common to all people. And, in my experience, most people just ignore words they don't understand.

I received this typical first line answer:

Hello,
Thank you for contacting us here at Electronic Arts Technical Support. I'm sorry that you?re having difficulties with The Sims On Stage.
It sounds like you need to install or reinstall the Flash plug-in.
Instructions on how to uninstall Flash can be found at this link.
... (various links)
If this does not correct the issue please it could be a problem with your current browser. Depending on your hardware configuration a different browser than the one you are using might work better. Try to switching to another browser like Firefox, or Internet Explorer 7. If you are using a Mac you most likely have the Safari browser. Please try it. Otherwise try switching to the Firefox browser. You can get it from www.GetFirefox.com.

And it is follows by an invitation to search through knowledge base.

Okay, so, first line answers usually go with the solution that fixes 95% of the problems and, in the case of Sims On Stage, yes, reinstalling Flash probably fixes most issues.

Of course, if someone would've taken the time to actually read my original email and have at least working knowledge of the product they are supporting, they could have figured that flash had nothing to do with it...

Nevertheless, no to be deterred from my willingness to help with bug squashing, I reply with the following, hoping to clearly illustrate the problem and give the impression that I don't really care about getting help, but I am more about trying to help them...

Hi there.
This has nothing to do with flash.
Its the Web site.
If you go to the "favorites" section of "My Studio" and go through the favorite "Songs" - the one that you tag because you want to record them later...
If you have tagged more than 20 songs, you'll need page controls to navigate - you know, the "previous" and "next" links. In the "songs" section, the user interface does not show page controls.
This is a bug in the Web server part of your application - the one that generates the HTML. It has nothing to do with the client side and even less so with flash :)
You should let this issue reach the development team so that they can fix this small oversight for the next update of the web server software.

A few days later I'm getting hit with this response:

Hello Eric,
Thanks for contacting EA Technical Support! I am sorry that you are having difficulties with The Sims On Stage.
Customer feedback is greatly valuable to Electronic Arts. To comment on any of our titles, please post on the appropriate game forum. These forums are maintained and monitored by the community leaders and production team. By posting on these forums you will be able to submit direct feedback to the appropriate person. Please make sure that you follow the EA terms of service when posting. You must have an EA member account in order to post on the forum.

Follows links to forums (in which, by the way I have found no forums related to Sims On Stage).

I don't know about you, but I'm getting the feeling someone is not reading... or just plain not understanding my emails.

I think my willingness to help them with beta testing has been squashed...

(Oh, and feel free to listen to my songs and give me ridiculous amount of points)

January 31st: UPDATE

It seems that my whining actually worked... I have been notified by one of you readers (Thanks Tx!) that there is now a "Next" button where there only was a void.

Huzzah!!

Out with WoW3. Out with GW.

In with Civ4.

If you've never hear of the Civilization games, Wikipedia will give a better overview than I care to type at this point.

Let it be said that I own the game. That it sucked me in. That, in order to keep my life functionnal, I need to set a timer and flex the muscles of my will to tear my brains out of its intricacies.

I'm a neophite to the world of Civ games (I played Alpha Centauri a while back).

For now, let it be said that I have waged war with what I'd describe as an American McGee version of Mahatma Ghandi - a twisted ruler practicing slavery and despotism. I crushed his empire under the smooth fist of my own civilzation's culture and multi-teologic influence.

There are many ways of winning in Civ4. The one that has my attention, for now, is winning through culture. And what I intend to study is how to use Civ4's version religion to influence culture.

More will most likely follow in the days to come.