Sony's Hight: 'Pretty Big' PSN Store Change Due For April

Author: by Staff

As part of an in-depth new Gamasutra interview, Sony exec John Hight has confirmed that the PS3's PlayStation Network will be getting major interface changes in April. Responding to Gamasutra's questioning on how the downloading of games, Hight, who heads-up first party digital game publishing for Sony, commented of questions on PSN's graphical interface: "We give [Sony's interface team] a lot of feedback based on how our customers are reacting to things, and I think you will see a pretty big change in the PlayStation Network in the early part of April, where we roll out some new interface stuff largely based on customer feedback. Simplification, cutting down on the number of mouse clicks, making it easier to find stuff that you want to find... that's kind of an outgrowth of us having more content now, so we have to make sure that you can get at it easily." Recent unconfirmed reports by Kotaku sourced from the Destination PlayStation retail event had hinted at an April 15th date for the change, with their sources indicating that "...the revamp of the PlayStation Store is said to give it a look more in tune with [SingStar's] SingStore." Elsewhere in the interview, when Hight was asked whether Japanese PlayStation 1 titles were coming to the PlayStation Store, he noted: "I'm pretty darn sure they will, but I don't know which titles." He added of the some of the issues in re-releasing legacy games: "Even with those titles, you want to make sure that they look good and play fine, but there are rights issues." Finally, when asked if he thinks that we'll be able to see more original digital games which have elements downloadable from the PS3 to the PSP, Hight commented: "Yeah. We actually have a couple that are at least in concept phase right now." You can now read the full interview with Sony's Hight on Gamasutra, in which he talks about the company's philosophy towards fostering 'signature' indie developers, and future plans for the service.