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While our first impressions of the PlayStation 3 hardware and XMB are in the works, many people seem really interested in what the PlayStation Network and Store has to offer. As of last night, the U.S. version of the PlayStation Network and Store went live (though not officially so), and we had the opportunity to poke around. Check out our impressions of the registration process and profile creation, and details on the pieces of content available at the store. PlayStation Network
Signing up for the network is simple, as expected, and required if you want to download content from the store, communicate with friends, or play games online. You choose a sign-in ID (email address), a public user ID/Name (Gamertag-style) and password, then fill in a bunch of your private information, such as your mailing address, password reminder and optionally, PlayStation Store billing information. You can then also create sub-accounts to attach to the main account, which is used to set profiles for other family members. Once you successfully register an ID, you then setup your profile. You can choose an avatar from a pre-populated list of pictures and icons including various PlayStation characters like Jak, LocoRoco or Kratos, or sports themed icons, or just some wacky smiley faces. Many of the avatars are a bit goofy and there's currently no new ones available for download or purchase, though they are coming. From there, you can setup your tag or saying, for example: "Gaming-age.com rocks!", and adjust your basic preferences such as auto-login, online status, notifications and whatnot. When you profile is setup and configured, you can then begin to populate your Friend's List. You can add a friend, block a user, see users you've recently met or played against, send text messages to a friend and read messages sent to you, and setup a live voice or video chat (the latter two of which I have not yet tested). As compared to Xbox 360 profiles, the PS3 Profile settings and preferences are a bit sparse at the moment though the base functionality is there and it works. We still need to dig deeper into the process when the actual network goes live and the general public jumps on to it. There is definitely room for additional information and improvements so far, which we will undoubtedly see over the coming months and years. PlayStation Store
With a PSN account registered and ready to go, we jumped into the surprisingly populated PlayStation Store. While the Store doesn't officially go live until tomorrow,and there may be some changes or a new version before then, there was already a nice amount of content to download and things to check out. Thankfully, we took notes. The interface is definitely slick, and like the PlayStation Network Registration, is entirely web-based. The layout is very iTunes-like and it thankfully scales really well from an HDTV to a SDTV. Navigation is handled with the Sixaxis by using the d-pad to jump around the selections or the analog stick to freely move the cursor around, mouse style. The store actually also supports a mouse/keyboard for navigation if so desired. Content in the PS Store is divided into a few obvious categories: Featured Items, Demos, Downloadable Games and View All. Featured Items is a list of everything available that Sony has decided to call attention to, say a Resistance demo, a Black Hawk Down 1080p Blu-ray HD trailer, and the downloadable version of Blast Factor. Demos is a mixture of full game demos, and demos for the downloadable titles. None of these categories have any sub-categories at this point, and everything is broken down into pages which are dependent on your screen's resolution, i.e. standard definition displays show less items with more pages, and high def displays show more items on less pages. Now the View All category is a different story. View All has a few sub-categories: Blu-ray Movie Trailers, Game Trailers, in addition to the other top level categories. Blu-ray Movie Trailers are pretty self-explanatory, although what I found most surprising was the option to download a full HD 1080p version of most of them in addition to the standard 720p trailer. The trailer files are now up on the network, and they seem to range from about 10 megs for the 720p versions, to a few hundred megs for the 1080p versions. The same can be said for Game Trailers, although only those games which run at a native 1080p had corresponding 1080p trailers. Drilling down into to each piece of content shows off the basic details, a title bar, sometimes a little thumbnail, and the ability to "Download" for the free stuff, or "Add to Cart" for the pay content. All trailers and demos are 100% free, so don't worry. After spending some time browsing about, I did realize one particular annoyance - the PS Store interface does not map any of the Sixaxis buttons to various navigation actions. For example instead of just hitting L1 or R1 to jump back or forward a page, which is how the PS Browser works, you need to manually move the cursor to the "Prev", "Next" or "Back" button. Drilling down into a detail page and then backing out takes a bit too much time, and could be streamlined. Also, there is no way to know how large a file is until you click further into the details and actually begin the download. Lastly, the one major feature that the store is currently lacking is the ability to either download multiple items simultaneously, or at least queue up many downloads. Like the first revision of the Xbox 360 dashboard, you have to just sit there staring at a progress bar as the content downloads. From what I can tell, there is no way to navigate away or do something else while the download is happening, and it also doesn't look like you can resume canceled downloads. Trying to navigate away from the download screens will toss up a prompt asking of you want to cancel. These issues are all very fixable via a system software update or slight interface tweaks, but like Microsoft did, I hope Sony is continuing to work on improving the experience. PlayStation Store - What's Available
I'm sure everyone cares most about is the actually available content in the Store. Like mentioned earlier, the Store is not really officially live yet, so changes are expected. Here's the breakdown and the details: Demos of Downloadable Games: - Blast Factor - 97 MB - $9.99 normally, $7.99 for a limited time
- Cash Guns Chaos - 326 MB - $9.99
Demos of Full Games: - Formula One Championship Edition - 678 MB - FREE
- NBA 2007 - 883 MB - FREE
- Resistance: Fall of Man - 865 MB - FREE
- MotorStorm - 456 MB - FREE
Game Trailers: - Lair (720p, 1080p) - Unknown Size - FREE
- Cash Guns Chaos (720p) - Unknown Size - FREE
- Calling All Cars (720p) - Unknown Size - FREE
- Resistance: Fall of Man (720p) - Unknown Size - FREE
- Warhawk (720p) - Unknown Size - FREE
- MotorStorm Trailer 1 (720p) - Unknown Size - FREE
- MotorStorm Trailer 2 (720p) - Unknown Size - FREE
- Untold Legends: Dark Kingdom Cinematic Trailer (720p) - Unknown Size - FREE
- Untold Legends: Dark Kingdom Gameplay Trailer (720p) - Unknown Size - FREE
Blu-ray Movie Trailers: - Black Hawk Down (720p, 1080p) - 96 MB, 228 MB - FREE
- Click (720p, 1080p) - 96 MB, 229 MB - FREE
- House of Flying Daggers (720p, 1080p) - 75 MB, 178 MB - FREE
- Silent Hill (720p, 1080p) - 97 MB, 231 MB - FREE
- Stealth (720p, 1080p) - 97 MB, 230 MB - FREE
- Talladega Nights: The Legend of Ricky Bobby (720p) - 97 MB - FREE
- Ultraviolet (720p) - 87 MB - FREE
- Underworld: Evolution (720p) - 89 MB - FREE
It's possible the line-up will change, but we'll have to find out on launch day. Check back then for updates. We'll be back with our PS3 impressions and photos soon! Feel free to email us any questions you may have.
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