Discovery takeaways from the new PlayStation 5 store? 2

[The GameDiscoverCo game discovery newsletter, which you can subscribe to now, is written by ‘how people find your game’ expert & GameDiscoverCo founder Simon Carless, and is a regular look at how people discover and buy video games in the 2020s.]

Welcome to the final GameDiscoverCo newsletter of the week, in which we discover actual snowdrifts of news have built up. This is thanks to next-gen console launches, the continued pushes towards cloud gaming, and sundry other announcements of note.

So let’s don our pith hat and push forward into the jungles of discoveryland…

Sony’s new PS5 digital store - what’s it like?

Now that the PlayStation 5 is out in the wild, we all get a chance to check out the brand new PS5 Store for discoverability, navigability, and various other factors. We already took a quick look at the new PlayStation web store in a recent newsletter, and there’s clearly code and navigation choices shared between the two.

(Side note: when it comes to next-gen consoles, the Xbox Series X/S’ store is using a lot of the same code as the Xbox One’s new store, which I examined in depth at the end of September. So no need to rehash that one.)

Anyhow, PlayStation Universe did a lightning-fast narration-free video zoom around the PS5 store. So I’ve embedded it for anyone who didn’t get a chance to check it out yet:

Looking at some of the notable features briefly, here are some our chief takeaways:

When you scroll down far enough, you can do a basic browse by PS5 or PS4 games. (And there’s a TINY amount of PS5 games available right now. If you can release in the next few weeks on PS5, you could be golden!)

You can sort all PS5 and PS4 games by various parameters, including ‘best-selling’, which should provide some good data for the future.

Anyhow, our conclusion is - the new store looks high quality and is easily browsable. It’s still the most heavily platform-controlled of all of the console stores, which I am ambivalent on, because I think browsing best-selling games is a great discovery mechanism, and could be prioritized higher. (Both Microsoft and Nintendo do so.)

One small note - though they’ve now fixed this in the PlayStation web store, the PS5 on-console store still doesn’t list game names underneath the square icons when you’re browsing. (So if your PS4 game’s icon doesn’t have the game name readable on it - you might want to update.) But actually, the main issues we’re seeing at launch are not around store navigation, per se.

They’re based around some of the publisher-specific ‘do I get an upgrade, and which version of the game am I getting?’ PS4/PS5 game purchase issues - things like this:

Popagenda’s A/B concept test pitch!

The latest issue of Lizzie Killian’s ‘a bit like this newsletter, but game PR-specific’ missive VGPR comes bundled with a super-good interview with Geneviève St-Onge and Nicolas Verge of Swiss Army Knife publishing/promotion helpers popagenda (Bugsnax, lots more).

We particularly wanted to highlight it, because Nicolas (right) has a great comment around what indie studios - especially first timers - struggle with the most:

“We… get a lot of the classic ‘why does no one care about my game (ahead of launch)?’ or ‘why didn't it sell (post-launch)?’ questions. This is honestly something that is really hard to answer, and there is often not one simple answer to it. There’s a reason we see more indie devs basically A/B testing their game concept and/or art direction with GIFs on Twitter to see what catches on. It’s extremely heartbreaking when a game doesn’t find its audience, but it happens. A lot.”

This idea of exposing ideas to players super early and being transparent - in order to see what catches on - is still very underutilized. For example, Philomena Schwab of Stray Fawn Studio (Nimbatus, Niche) has been talking & exploring ideas re: their studio’s new game The Wandering Village, even before it had a name or a Kickstarter:

Of course, you can argue that your game isn’t the type that can be encapsulated so neatly, so that’s impossible. (At which point I might respond - slightly tongue in cheek - that this could be an issue, because then your game doesn’t have enough of a hook.)

The game discovery news round-up..

Well, it’s nearly almost the weekend, and we hope you all have something exciting planned for it. Playing the new video game consoles until the early hours of the morning, perhaps? In any case, here’s some links to serenade you to gameplay-induced slumber:

Finally for this week, we were amused - slash slightly horrified - to find out that you can exchange reduced royalties on Spotify for more plays on featured playlists. No, seriously - imagine the Internet reaction if somebody like Steam did this, hahaha… *actually dies*.

[This newsletter is handcrafted by GameDiscoverCo, a new agency based around one simple issue: how do players find, buy and enjoy your premium PC or console game? We’ll be launching a ‘Plus’ paid newsletter tier with lots of extra info/data - watch out for it soon.]