Like it or not, Sony seems hellbent on pushing for a disc-free gaming future for the PlayStation brand. After last month’s announcement sent shockwaves across the gaming industry, Sony’s CFO doubled down on the company’s latest financial report, citing that they are proceeding ahead with it, albeit “cautiously.”
This inevitability might not be something people would mind that much if Sony’s actual digital storefront, refund policy, and the like weren’t so outdated and anti-consumer.
I get it, the PlayStation Network Store is not Steam in terms of just sales or even features, but having launched in 2006, Sony’s digital storefront is still missing basic features 20 years later.
Twenty Years and Sony’s PSN Store Is Still Missing Basic Features
Off the top of our heads, some of the PlayStation Network Store’s missing features or inefficiencies compared to other digital storefronts include:
No “game gifting” feature – For a company that loves milking their player base with endless remakes, remasters, and whatnot, it’s odd to see that a basic “gifting” feature is still not available on the PSN Store. You’d think this is one of the key features they’d want to implement right away, no?>
Cart items cap – Sony currently has a cap on the amount of games you can buy at once to 10 items. Perhaps this is done for security/hacking reasons? Either way, there should be a bypass for this instead of having to start a new cart if you hit the max, which should come in handy whenever a good PSN sale is launched.
PSN wallet cap – Same thing with gifting, you’d think Sony would want players to pump their virtual wallets up as much as they want, but they can’t. As far as we’re aware, there is a wallet cap of $350. I assume this is due to security reasons or in case someone’s account gets hacked, but even so, $350 is too low for those who want to stack their virtual wallets and go ham when a good deal or two is available.
Account region lock and how Sony has never accounted for people moving countries/regions – If you’re using an R1 (US) account, and you had to move to, say, Asia, then tough luck changing your PSN region. As of the moment, there is NO way to change the region of your account. It’s as if Sony has never heard of people migrating or working at other countries.
No currency exchange/conversion – Going hand-in-hand with the entry above, there is also no way to change your PSN currency to whichever country you’re in. So, if you have an R1 account and you suddenly want to use the money stored in it for your R3 account, tough luck! The only course of action is to load funds in that account region’s wallet, with no way to transfer any of your funds from an existing account to another.
Account sharing requires you to share your password too –Admit it or not, there are a lot of people who share games by logging into their account on another device and vice versa. Sony has limited this to just two active accounts at a time (down from five during the PS3 era), which is understandable. But why do we need to share our passwords to share games? So if a parent wants to share games with their offspring (regardless if the PlayStation device is in the same house or in another state), they need to share their complete login info too — and yes, that includes your password. Isn’t it time we have a way to do this without compromising security?
PSN and Steam: Two Digital Stores but With Very Different Refund Policies
There’s a reason why so many PC gamers prefer the Steam Storefront over so many other stores. For one, its design is sleek and intuitive, making navigation effortless.
But its real power lies in its feature-rich utilities that make players more “OK” with being digital, given how much there is to protect players.
Steam’s refund policy, which generally lets players refund a game within 14 days of purchase as long as they’ve played it for less than two hours, is one of the most consumer-friendly refund policies around.
In contrast to PlayStation, you can’t even ask for a refund directly from the console. You have to log into the browser version of the PlayStation site, orte being able to enter your own credit card information, along with other personal financial info, directly on the console. They make it easy to purchase stuff, but harder to get your money back
Not only that, but the refund policy states you can’t have even downloaded the game. I can understand if they lock refunds after playing, but having the game downloaded on your console and locking you out of refunding, even if you didn’t start said game? You know how many of us have automatic download enabled? Games pre-load typically two days before launch, with most PlayStation exclusives being a week ahead. Yeah, we should turn this off, but it’s such a silly rule.
We’re hoping that with Sony’s push for an all-digital future, there’s a significant upgrade or overhaul to the PSN Store or even how they handle digital ownership and whatnot. If not, then that makes jumping ship to another platform a lot easier, as opposed to staying in the PlayStation ecosystem.
If Sony antes up the effort, perhaps accepting this disc-free future would be a lot easier to swallow for a lot of us, and for now, that’s the best we can hope for.
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Alex Co
Father, gamer, games media vet, writer of words, killer of noobs.
