PlayStation.Blog Europe +1 Month

Congratulations, one month in and a good start ,informative ,regularly updated and regular responses to posts (even when theyre a bit heated , Mike) . Keep up the good work

Need info on PSN cards. I’m going to want to get DLC when I get LBP and Uncharted 2 but right now there is no way for me (and many others) to buy some. Please can we get some info about a suspected release date

I think one of the keywords for Playstation.Blog is exclusives. You have the resources to get some interviews,pictures,trailers etc that no other blogs or gaming sites can get.

Most of us probably want info about games and everything about Playstation at this blog that we cant read on other places first?

And with that said I alsow hope that Sony wil make the PlaystationStore better for people not living in the US…that is the rest of the world. Poor content, way to mych delays and overall not the same service as in the US, your competitor Microsoft is doing a MUCH better job there. So shape up you guys and gals

I agree with LarZen, exclusive content that other websites can’t get, at least for a limited time.

You guys ARE Sony, you should have first hand news on any new releases, updates, features or anything that’s already in NA (Movie rental serives) that is coming to Europe.. one day, maybe.

Other than that, you guys have done a great job and I hope to see more regular updates soon!

congratulations!! i hope i can read this blog for a long time, its a great blog but i want raffles!!

Wow, has it really been one whole month already?
It certainly has been a great start to the EU Blog’s life

Good job everyone

-Ad-

Great first month !!!
PS Blog stands for official news that we requested

I hope to see some updates on the ps blog because there are still some bugs. (the moderator reply counter isn’t allways right: some mod’s replies aren’t counted and a mod’s comment isn’t counted aswell, and maybe an option to go to the next mod/dev comment would be nice)

But the layout is very nice and easy to use. Hope to see a lot of news this month I have a lot of spare time 3 months long holliday

I would like to say congrats on the blog, nice job by all involved.

I would also like to here some news on the PSN cards as there is some DLC I want for a few of my games.

Thanks guys.

A top job so far guys, really well done. Well balanced, informative and great to have a dialog with the mod comments.

My only gripe would be being a bit more candid with firmware updates in future, I just don’t see the logic in not sharing what fixes are in a firmware update, however small.

It’s already clear it fixes buzz peripherals to be linked to a controller number other than 1, not sure why that couldn’t have just been stated from the outset as one example.

I also understand that you’re only told as much as your higherups give you however so in the end, this probably isn’t on you to inform us, it’s on the people who write up the description of a firmware and give it to the press. it’d be cool to know that this sentiment might be passed on though to the people that could give out more information. I know I’m not the only one wanting more upfront information, as seen in the comments section of the update.

keep up the good work, so far it’s been a great source for news and info.

Also if this site could get exclusive first hand content that can’t be found anywhere else it would be awesome even if it’s only timed. i know a couple of others have already said this but it’s a good idea.

Doing very well so far, But I’d still like to see an improvement in the the playstation store updates.
Sixth axis do a good job pulling together the rumoured list and adjusting it as fact come in.
Can’t help but feel Sony could manage a target release, being confirmed as they pass QA (Even if it was just during the day Thursday)

Also I can link to my PSN Account Managment (at the top) but not to the PSN Profile (Friends, Trophies , Portable ID) (

I think this blog has had a really good start and has been getting a steady stream of worthwhile content, and it’s great to finally be able to engage one on one with actual members of the SCEE team rather than just a one way PR mouth piece – Mike Kebby in particular deserves a pat on the back for his fantastic response rate in the PS Store Update articles, despite all the abuse he has to put up with!

In terms of improvements:

1) I would like to see “Ted The Dog” the Home Community Manager post a weekly/bi-weekly blog update around Home. I don’t like how you have to be part of the regular clique that frequent the Home forum to have any idea what’s going on in Home – I don’t use the SCEE forums, they’re too over crowded, and I don’t want to have to dig through thousands of replies for scraps of info. Ted the Dog should come to this blog and post summary the latest happenings in Home, any updates to the Mall/Spaces, what’s in the pipe line, any gatherings/events planned etc.

2) I don’t know how you’d actually do this but it would be nice if in the right hand column you could have a sort of “Burning Issues” box that has things like “PSN Cards”, “French version of FF VII”, “MGS PS1 game on EU Store”, “VidZone Europe wide” etc – just something to acknowledge the questions people ask over and over and over again in every comments section! Just to say “We’ve heard you, we’ll let you know more when we know more”, as it will save people asking and save you posting the same in comment responses that some people don’t bother reading. – You could even put the latest update against each one.

3) Increase the 1,250 word limit! lol

I am truly enjoying it so far although i am horrifyingly shocked at the neglect surrounding the Playstation Network Redeem Cards deployment situation. The one and only official word coming from SCEE for the past two years is the following: “We do not have any news for you at the moment”

The Playstation.Blog should be our primary resource for news targeting the Playstation universe, and not a website simply regrouping articles that have been published elsewhere. In short, i am asking for an increase in excitingly interesting exclusive news.

I would suggest the introduction of Playstation.Blog meetings in Home. Not only would that enable us all to meet new people and explore cultures [if my memory servers correctly, SCEE is serving 104 countries] but also discuss the many news appearing here on the Blog. In my honest opinion, a brand new Home space dedicated entirely to the PS.Blog would be the very best option. Moreover, members of the team could occasionally jump in and discuss with us. In fact, you could join us every Sunday evening for a ‘weekly PS.Blog recap meeting’. Oh and Livechats on the blog have yet to be introduced.

All the best,
Good day.

First of all congratulations! You guys have been very active in posting a lot of topics. However I feel that there might be a lot of changes. The lay-out and the design are top notch and shouldn’t change but some things like avoiding hard questions or being lazy with firmware updates is killing me.

When you guys have so much in the pipeline and working your asses off by adding features and increasing things like chat character limitations then say so instead saying… uhm we added playback compatiblility :S

That’s my humble opinion and I would like a change in the right direction… maybe small at first but this shows that we are taking seriously.

Thanks in advance,

A true Playstation fan

@Charlotte Large
Congrats on a great first month pass it on to everyone else who works behind the scenes on the blog also.

I think a cool feature would be a list of upcoming software available that week (obv posted on a Friday) which just lists the games available that week on store shelves and PSN. Maybe linking to some previous interviews done on the blog or some other reviews from EU sites around the web! I think it would compliment the PSN update on Thursdays nicely but then Mikes got to deal with 2 lots of abuse lol.

keep up the great work

I REALY like aat08 thoughts about a HOME space for this blog!

Top job so far on the blog. One suggestion I can make that I think could be cool is if you get the guys at VidZone to post a weekly update on the blog to tell everyone what songs they’ve added, because atm there is no way of telling apart from searching for every song you want to see if it is now available….right? They could also inform us of any software updates they are working on etc.

I’d like proper release notes with the firmware updates. It completely baffles me that you only say they “improve software compatibility” when they other things. The last update increased the text chat entry limit and smoothed out the use of it (you can jump in and out of the XMB without having to quit the text entry).

Why are things like this a *secret*? Aren’t they being improved for our *benefit*? How are we supposed to use them if we don’t know they’re there?

Fantastic job, keep it up! I’m loving it so far.

One suggestion – More competitions!

Hey guys. Excellent work on the blog – this was soooo needed following the US blog being setup. Can now be informed so much easier and feel more part of the community

One thing I’d like to suggest for the future yeah is abit more on firmware releases. Can we do a firmware feature – who develops it and how do features get chosen etc. I’d love to also be able to get comments thru to the development team also re: Bluetooth A2DP and HDMI CEC possibilities which frankly languishes with no attention in the PS3 forums.

Again – brillant work guys, I read it everyday! Keep it up and oh don’t forget Australia and NZ are SCEE so please include us in published times/timezones etc

Keep up the great work on the Blog SCEE and co.
It’s better than I thought It would be

Good Job.

@
I agree with you about this, More info the FW updates would be good.
If it’s a “Bug fix” or what not, Tell us what been fixed.
Like,

“Trophies will now Sync faster on the XMB”

“Browser freezing has now been fixed”

See simple

I’d like to bring something up which would be great if you could take to the people who control all regions. There are a great many people who’ve spent loads and I mean loads of money on the Playstation Store. I’m one of them. I’ve bought over 250 Singstar songs, at least a dozen PS3 PSN games, at 10 PS1 classics and heaps of DLC for various games.

In many other industries, myself and many others would be receiving some kind of brand loyalty exclusives or discounts. Maybe a free game by now at the least. I’m not one for handouts, but I’ve a US account and a NZ account and I’ve spent easily well over NZ$1000 just on Playstation Network.

I would’ve thought Sony could’ve said for every $100 spent on PSN you’d get $1 credit, or something like that. That’d encourage spending. Instead it’s coming across very, very greedy. Especially in a recession.

So come on Sony, I’m (and many others no doubt), doing my bit. How about rewarding those who reward you?

I have emailed you a suggestion on a future blog-post, but I’m not the only one that wants that.

Think you’re doing a great job, would like to see some competitions like we have on the american blog, not thinking stuff like the 500th comment and so on, they just make people SPAM a lot – last time the US Blog actually died due to this, but more in the lines of best reason why I should get a free game or what ever that is on the line, we had a funny little competition on the Scandinavian Forums, our Mod asked us a question nad we needed to answer it, the one with the right answer won, if no anyone was right the one that was closest won.

//WhiteWolf

Sorry if that seemed snappy, but nearly every other retailer is fighting for the consumers dollar too. Some of them are trying harder and PSN has been around long enough that the novelty is starting to wear off a little. A year from now, when peoples hard drives are full it’s going to get harder unless you give something back to your biggest customers.

congrats to your greatly solved first month

2 questions i wanna ask…

can someone please confirm if we get the patch for “The last Guy” with the Addon & the Trophies..

& second i wanna know is y we havent got the Trophie Patch for Blast Factor yet… the game is absolutely cool & i played it several Times but it would be a new challenge to unlock trophies… & the patch was launched motnhs ago in the US…

would be cool if u could give me some hints on that…

ty

An official Podcast like Podcast beyond by IGN would be excellent, some of us have little time apart from the journey to work, so to be able to listen to the official EU blog Podcast on my PSP would be perfect

I think you guys have done an excellent job with the blog so far. A big well done to you all for keeping it fresh, easy to read and updated with your replies to our comments.

More of the same is whats needed.

Well done

great first month keep it up people

Congratulations guys, really good stuff on the blog, this is my new centre of information.

I would like to see more interviews and PS3 events posted here.

Also you guys will be going Gamescom, i also want to go but is it open to the public?

Thanks Charlotte,
We just want to make ps3 better,
We’d happily give you guys/gals our feedback.

Good too know that SCEE Is listening to us

Great work guys. This is a great platform for developers to interact with the community and get useful feedback.

I would like to see a possible content window (already mentioned this in a store post) where approximate release dates are given when possible. Such as when content is just waiting final approval and will be in one of the next few store updates

Considering some studios like DICE are based within the SCEE region it would also be nice to have more updates from them ( the “home-grown” devs )

But still “Great Work again Guys and Girls”

Give yourselves a pat on the back

[JohnSketch]

1 month on…and i’de say well done!

My only gripe is the horror of the comments and being able to track down who’s posted what, when and where.

Once 50 posts go by its “new comment page time” and although I can see the thought process behind this – itd still be nice to have the option to have the comments all on atop the other so you can simply scroll down the page and read them all without having to fuss with clicking “next 1,2,3,4″.

Otherwise all i’ll say is – can I have some jaffa cakes =)

i know its not to do with this blog site but how about updating the playstation site so we can send messages to people from the site.iv not got a ps3 atm and it would be cool to speak to people on my friends list while i wait to get the ps3.

I think it’s been a great first month for the PS EU blog, finally some official words from Sony about the EU territory =)
Oh, and you’ve actually fixed some things since the start (Blast Factor Trophies! Yeay).

I’ve a little suggestion for the PS3 browser: when typing comments or e-mails I’d like to be able to switch languages on the fly by clicking on a button on the virtual keyboard. Closing the browser and then changing the language via XMB is really a pain.

I haven’t tried it lately, so if this has already been taken care of I’d be glad to hear it.

Great start, what i like best about the blog are the responses to our questions in the comments, one thing though: you should check if there are other questions which are posted the following day that the original blog post was written, because some of us don’t check the blog everyday, so we miss the “window” for posting questions about a specific post.

Which brings me to my question: when is the patch for echocrome that brings PS Eye support coming out in Europe?

Thanks

The most obvious thing missing here from the EU blog is contests, so we can win some “swag”. And also you failed handling out beta codes (which i hope you will for other games in the future).

Yeah, liking it so far. Some of the comments really, really wind me up at times, but that’s something i’ll just have to live with. At least there still seem to be a good number of intelligent and realistic people to counter the dumb folks from la-la land…

@ Apnomis – although i quite like the “burning issues” box idea, they’d either have to make it really, really big, or it would simply become something else for the masses to whinge about. I can see it now.. “why isn’t my suggestion for a new PS3 that plays Atari 2600 games and makes toast and costs £5 not in the burning issues box?!?!”

@ craigiversen – i kind of get where you’re coming from, but i wouldn’t say they’re being greedy. In all fairness you do get rewarded for spending more, in that you get to download all that stuff you’ve bought. Don’t get me wrong it’s not a bad idea, i just don’t think you pitched it too well

Congrats on the first month!
I look forward to all the future blog posts keeping us up to date
(*pixeljunk* hint!)

Best of luck, and thanks for putting up with us!

Excellent site. I vist every day. Keep up the good work
All i would like for Europe is -
Video Store
&
PSN Cards
& bring back PS2 playback to the PS3 soon please

Well done to your first month on the playstation blog, hope the next few months will be even better with great news stories, great start

It’s good to have an official European source of information, but evading/not answering questions posed by your customers is bad form.

Also you should decide once and for all whether you want to treat Europe as an entity, or whether you want to word press releases/news such that you specifically mention where a given service will be available. Doing both just costs credibility and goodwill (it’s rather provocative to see things about Vidzone availability in my RSS newsticker on the PS3 every day and not actually have it). At least try to keep this blog straight on that matter as far as possible.

Oh, and please do smack someone around so we can finally get our PS2 backwards compatibility on European PS3s.

Hope you come into your own in the blogging world – it’s definitely good to have you here – I just hope you act transparently and efficiently – otherwise we may as well stick with unofficial sites, since those will be closer to the truth at times if company politics get in the way of news.

I’m really liking the blog so far, it’s a great site for news, previews and dev interviews! Keep it up

I was thinking, since Mike gets the same questions over and over again when he posts the EU Store update, how about having a section at the side, perhaps under the news widget, for FAQs and problems/concerns. Stuff like “when is MGS coming to the Store” etc. It doesn’t have to have answers in, it could be updated regularly with progress about the issue, something along the lines of “talked to Konami today, they say they’re working on it but can’t pen a specific date.”

And yes, I agree with 39, we need some swag

yo mike

must say that its great news that this has been running for over month nw congratulations.

hope you keep up the great work your doing

This blog has been all I hoped of it – a way for Europeans to have direct contact with SCEE. Here, we can ask the annoying questions – “WHERE’S MGS1!?” “WHERE ARE THE PSN CARDS!?” – and I’m delighted to see you’re responding to them.

I’m able to say congratulations on being one month old today, and I’ll be reading everyday until I congratulate you on your first birthday, and well into the future.

Congratulations… As there are so many questions/things to cover I really do not know how you will do it . Not to mention the different countries. E.g. Croatia still has no Store, would be nice if we could hear an update about all the countries that are waiting for PS stores (if it is in works, not even planned, whatever). Anyway, ThreeSpeech did a good job, the only issue I have is that we should see that Sony is the one running this blog (interviews with the teams from London, Liverpool, Cambridge et al? Media Molecule etc.). Be Euro centric, it would be nice if people from the USA would read this blog too because it has *additional* information here and vice versa. Anyway, good luck and most importantly have fun…

It’s so good having an update blog closer to home!
No more mis-information and constantly having to ask if it applies to me!
Thanks heaps guys!

Please culd you considder optimizing the blog for mobile devices. I follow your updates on my iPhone via Twitter, but opening the blog make my iPhone grind to a halt. Thanks forlooking into this.

Also how about making it possible to ue thepostable id as your signturein the Blog, and having the ability to sort the replies.