Update (1/6/20): Sony's Sid Shuman has clarified what's happening with PlayStation Blog via, well, the PlayStation Blog. In a new post, he announces that the Blog has received various updates that all will now benefit from, including any foreign language versions of the site.
Shuman also acknowledges that the European and North American PS Blogs have been rolled into one, saying simply that it "just makes sense". One important quote we can pull from this is that Blog posts will "reflect regional info for North America and the UK in one place whenever possible". In other words, any regional differences -- PS Store sales, for example -- should be apparent in each update. Thanks, Sid!
Original Story: As a PlayStation-focused website, we've always got an eye on the PlayStation Blog. This official news feed brings us all kinds of announcements, whether it's the latest PS Store sale, the new PS Plus update, or even the unveiling of the DualSense PS5 controller. The PS Blog is divided by region; there's a European version and a North American version, for instance. A lot of posts are the same, but when regional differences occur, splitting things up in this way helps you find the most relevant information. Well, it was operating this way until today.
If you try to access a region-specific PlayStation Blog now, it will redirect you to a central URL. Try to open the European site and you're brought to blog.playstation.com. It seems to be based on the North American PS Blog (which also redirects to this new URL), and any European posts appear to have been archived.
We're not really sure what's going on here; perhaps Sony just wanted to tidy things up, and consolidate all the sites into one? That doesn't seem right for the reasons outlined above. If you're based in the UK, for example, the US-centric posts about sales and products are of little use. It's a strange move. Unless all of a sudden Sony is making every sale and every product the same across the globe, we don't know what this is about.
The only thing we can think of is that Sony is redirecting all PS Blog traffic into one URL because it's gearing up for something. There's a lot of talk about a PS5 reveal event as early as next week -- perhaps this is preparation for an announcement of some kind?
Whatever the case, there's now just one PlayStation Blog. How do you feel about this change? Is it a hint that something's coming? Tell us what you think in the comments section below.
[source blog.playstation.com, via blog.playstation.com]
Comments 34
Maybe the PS5 is coming to the US only, and the rest of the world is out of luck?
Honestly I wouldn't be surprised if we saw the box and got an announcement of the event for next week today. I'm certainly not going to hold my breath, but Jason Schreier's colleague said that production is starting on the console VERY soon, and much like the Dualsense, I imagine they'd want to get in ahead of that. If they show the box and tell us to tune in on the 3rd, Playstation will be all anyone is talking about for the next several weeks.
Redirect all traffic to one neutral location allowing the regional blogs to be updated to a new design for after the reveal maybe?
Hopefully it is so that everyone gets the news of ps5 reveal event at them same time, fingers crossed for June the 3rd.
The sales have been made to be the same in the US and EU for awhile now. However some games only come out in certain regions per week so having them all in one blog is odd unless they will mention it in the post.
@Quintumply I think the latest sales were the same in US and Europe.
@HungryWolf Yep. They made the sales across the regions the same for awhile now.
@PSfan4Life22 @HungryWolf PS Store promotions might be the same in both regions but the game selections differ. There's usually some overlap but the sales are not exactly the same.
There are plenty of differences between EU and US. Maybe they really are squaring everything up to be one and the same, but that would be quite the sudden change.
I dunno, it seems odd to me.
Slow news day?
@hi_drnick not at all, what makes you say that?
@Mintie
You could be on to something there.
@Quintumply could be a good change.
make everything equal for all regions. same sales,same release dates of hardware/software.
sony themselves said they aim to release the ps5 on the same date worldwide,so gone are the days that the US get the hardware first in this case. maybe they aim to that with everything PS related hence the sudden change in the blog. no need to have region specific blogs anymore,when everything will be the same worldwide as the US one we have now.
They've been unifying everything for a while so this does make sense to me. The blogs usually repeat the same information for the most part, it's just obviously pricing differs.
I'm sure they'll figure out a solution for the sales.
I hope playstation doesn’t forget about European Market...
Perhaps Sony is getting ready to get rid of regions all together?
I'm thinking we're going to see region-free games on PS5 and this could be the start of that.
But I'm not very sure how all this works, so I may be 100% wrong here.
The PSN sales have been almost identical for US and Europe regions for the past six months or so. I consider these moves a part of the “globalization” plan they were talking about in the past. But there might be something else behind the curtain.
Maybe console design reveals like the dualsense
@Sam-Bridges Games already are region free. I can buy a game on my EU account and play it on my US PS4.
PSN is all over the place at the moment. Announcing PS+ late, announcing one game early and making it available for download early, closing comments on blog posts, it's a mess!
@Quintumply Besides the titles/sales differences, there's been the occasional region delays,(& outright bans with draconian laws like here in the aussie colonials) too. Dunno if they'll be bothered to even note that on a US centric site....albeit the EU blog has had zero interactivity with posts even asking questions for some time.
The store new releases might be having a tad more unity though with the IARC classification being adopted. For ages devs have needed to get PEGI etc.,at additional cost-indies have been waiting on this for a couple of years on psn. Think its happening august??
@PSfan4Life22 @Neolit Oh well, I didn't know that, thanks for the heads up. I never noticed it, to be honest.
You couldn't log into the EU Blog the past few days either. Not a single comment on a post since last Friday.
@Mintie exactly what I was thinking.
They prob got the regional sites ready to go live on Wednesday/Thursday (depending on where your located).
We have seen many of times where someone has published an article way to early and spoilers are leaked because of this.
Makes perfect sense to me for them to make this "temporary" move.
@get2sammyb
Here you go:
https://blog.playstation.com/2020/06/01/welcome-to-the-new-and-improved-playstation-blog/
@lacerz Thanks, we've updated the story.
@PSfan4Life22 not exactly as the US had different titles in their sales. The name of the sales may be the same but content is different.
Good and about time too. The EU blog has been an absolute shambles for years. Jawad Ashraf was the last decent, helpful person there and he left in 2014!
@Cartmanbruh Why would they?
what??! this is stupid! there is still region difference between each region, especially when it comes to release dates so I don't know how this is going to help people from uk or eu WTH are they thinking doing this? i always follow the eu blogs for a reason instead of international regions because of the differences and this will not help, i am truly disappointed! 😥
@Cartmanbruh this will just liquidfy the uk and eu market even further, we are already buried compared to the US market with delays with release dates, this will not help 😣
@skaarj217 that would be a total mess up for other regions especially with the current abandonment of the eu and uk blogs, this will be hell!
@InsertUsername I think because they sideline the EU market, despite the EU being the biggest. We have different release dates for games and prices how will they incorporate it into one blog?
@Cartmanbruh Europe isn't that much bigger than North America and don't see why it matters either way as both are pretty much on par with sales. I will say Sony dominates Europe by a lot over Microsoft, so I doubt they'll forget about it. Lol. How they incorporate that into one blog is anyone's guess. I'd imagine they figured out a solution otherwise, they wouldn't have merged them together in the first place.
I don’t like this move. The blog is actually the North American one. There’s an ESRB rating at the banner of Ghost of Tsushima, despite the Merging. And the time shown in the comment section is PDT. It’s not right. They should differentiate.
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