Sony Appears to Be Dabbling with Written User Reviews on the PS Store

Absolutely terrible idea! They must never have seen the mess that is metacritic

They would need to include playtime with each review to atleast differentiate between legit and fake reviews.

This has been overdue for years. It's one of the few things I like about the Xbox store. Yes you always get troll/garbage reviews but you find a lot of helpful ones too. Much better than a 5 star system that tells you nothing. Every store front with any worth allows written reviews. Sony needs this.

Going by how awful they are on the Xbox store i can't see this being a good thing.

I'm fine with it as long as it somehow only allows people to leave a review if they can prove that they've actually purchased and played the game.

There are far too many fake reviews out there as it is from trolls.

As long as the reviews are from people who have genuinely played the game then I honestly don't mind and will value their opinion (good or bad)

I hope they only let people who bought and play the game for at least 3-5 hours to give review.

@Boxmonkey Metacritic is a mess because outside critics, any users who doesn't own the game can give their review. That's why we've seen trolls 0/10 score.

I'd love to have an excuse to think critically about games I love and practice writing. Then again, people are going to write some vapid, frustrating ***** and I will definitely be tilted by some takes...

Yes please! People against this are crazy. The fact that I have to on Steam, a competing platform to find out if a game is real or shovelware is insane. This needs to be implemented 10 years ago, later this year is the next best option.
I want to see if a game is good by looking here reviews. This will be a huge boon for indies.

I have an 'invite' to review Hogwarts Legacy - I would note that I have a lot of hours in this game (but no platinum as I havent bothered with a couple of trophies).

Whilst I was surprised to receive the email yesterday (as I didnt realise Sony were doing this), the choice of game makes sense.

@PuppetMaster @Member_the_game @Ultrasmiles
I wonder if this is the case for all?

"can the PlayStation community be trusted with such awesome power?" I don't see why it would be a problem because after all we trust you guys with the reviews. No difference really.

In theory, a good idea.

In practice, most people suck, and it will be mostly trolling nonsense.

To be honest, I only ever treat 'reviews' (written or video) as a guide to a games content, the actual opinion of the viewer doesn't really strike a chord with me. I'll base my decision to purchase on what I can glean about its content, structure and appeal - the only real 'opinion' I will place any faith in is my own when I actually decide to play it.

Seems a bit off that Sony decides who gets to review a game. I’m sure they’ll have criteria like “within the top 5% of hours played on the game” or something similar, to ensure they get mainly great reviews.

I agree with what everyone else is saying here that there needs to be a minimum playtime requirement and maybe even a trophy or two.
When the next game that comes out that is the ''Internet Devil of the Week'' I want to know that you've actually played it before giving me your opinion on it.

They should only allow people to review games once they have got, I don't know, 80% trophy completion, or something like that.. Platinum might be a bit much, although at least then you'd know the person had played the game obsessively! But just allowing people to review games openly brings the trolls who will review bomb a game just because they don't like the hero being a woman, or gay, or something equally stupid!

It works well enough on Steam, it can work here as well. I think it's a good idea. Obviously should be limited to people who actually have the game in their library. Beyond that, a time minimum is tricky.

Some games legitimately only take about 1 to 2 hours to complete, like A Short Hike for example. I do think there should be some sort of minimum, but more in the region of 15-30 minutes than the 3-5 hours I've seen suggested here. That should be enough to deter a lot of trolls.

@Bingbongboyo Some games have obnoxious platinum requirements that even top level players cannot achieve. Final Fantasy 9's jump rope minigame for example.
But I do think that having at least one gold or a handful of silver would be fair.

@Bingbongboyo I'd say even 80% is too much, because then you're more likely to only get opinions from people that liked the game enough to continue to (near) completion. And then you have the opposite problem where the review section is an echo chamber of support, kind of like a game's subreddit.

@Frmknst

What a strange comment.

Are you seriously telling me that you've never, booked a holiday, ate at a restaurant or bought an expensive item (just a few examples) without first reading a couple of reviews to get other opinions on whether it's worth your hard earned cash??

If you haven't then fair play to you for living life on the edge lol

But reviews done properly and not by trolls can be extremely helpful to many people, certainly doesn't mean there something wrong with them for wanting another persons opinion before committing themselves and potentially wasting their money

I got an email from Sony asking me to review my physical version of FF7 Rebirth a couple of days ago after I finished my playthrough. I don't know if the criteria for being invited to leave the review was completing the game, triggering a certain trophy (I.e. reaching a particular section of the game), or based on tracked hours played (I put 115 hours into the game)

I do read the user reviews on the Xbox store to get an overall general idea of a game that I'm debating on buying, so it can work.

@Ainu20 I personally think 15 minutes is way to short even if a game is a hour then you still didn't really play.

I got one of these emails asking for a Helldivers 2 review, might actually do it now I know its for the actual store

@Flaming_Kaiser I think 15 minutes is enough to leave a perfectly valid review of a game like My Name Is Mayo. That seems like an extreme example, but these games exist and deserve reviews just like anything else. Just to illustrate that it isn't that simple.

Seeing as how play time is already monitored, they could easilly reserve reviews to those that have genuinely put some hours in.

As long as they do the above, Im all for it. Some people will always be idiots, but the majority tend to want to be helpful and leave their genuine experiences, and that can only be helpful for anyone navigating that huge minefield of titles..

@Ainu20 15 minutes would not even get you to the game in many titles, so as a time, thats simply not achieving what we all want - posts by people who have actually played the game.

To allow for short games, maybe the time should be set at 10% of the expected completion time, which publishers will need to provide with the titles submission?
A 50 hour title will therefore rightly require 5 hours or more, but a little 2 hour title might only need 12 minutes or so.
This seems fair to me. What do you think?

As an Xbox mainer prepare for reviews like "Your mam's a spam butty and my dad still didn't come back with the milk". Or reviews titled "dog" and the actual review just says "dog". Yep. That bad.

Bad idea. The steam reviews are full of hostile ***** and things that are not even related to the game.

@Ultrasmiles It can be faked too, you judt let thr game run in the background while you watch TV.

Its like steam reviews, you know when theyre fake or not.

I hope they open up the written reviews for Concord

After hearing about Ubisoft, user reviews would be a great thing

It would need to be carefully moderated or at least require a player to have purchased the game or played it for a few hours.

Reading (and downvoting) some of the pathetic ‘reviews’ on the Xbox store, particularly for Game Pass games is depressing. For every new release, there seems to be a crowd of toddlers who won’t play the game but will flock there to give it a 1* review and call it ‘woke DEI trash’. I know that Microsoft removed some reviews after an indie developer complained, but generally it seems to be a free-for-all and I really don’t know why they continue to allow it.

This is already a greatly flawed system.

I got an email about reviewing Fortnite. Only realised when going to do so that I actually never downloaded Fortnite on my UK account, so I simply “Added to Library” and it let me review. If this is possible for other games its going to be a nightmare.

Anyway, I reviewed the game, and then read some reviews afterwards, and the nonsense 1 star reviews shown exactly why this will not work.

@Titntin It's a good suggestion, but no minimum will ever be perfect. Some would argue 5 hours isn't nearly enough in a large, epic RPG. Persona 5 for example may take up to 10 hours to get past what is essentially a massive tutorial.

Wathever they decide, they should definitely include the playtime next to each review verdict, like Steam currently does. It doesn't help with aggregate scores, but at least it provides context to each individual review.

i think its a good idea i like the reviews on the xbox store and you can only reviews games you own not just anything

they wont be able to include playtime next to reviews as that would require getting the playtime counter to actually work properly.

Good, I always trust steam users reviews score compared to reviewers, it will be nice if there's users reviews on psn too.

@trev666 Yeah, it's really nice to see steam user reviews playtime so we know if the reviewers played the game seriously or not. Psn playtime is not too accurate compared to steam.

I think it will be a mistake. The PS Store will become a minefield with so much review bombing that will occur. I will ignore it.

It's a great idea, Steam reviews are one of the best things in the games industry, and also one of the few feedback systems out there that makes publishers listen and put things in effect quickly when there's issues with their games.

@trev666 Well then they'll just have to fix the playtime counter. Can't be rocket science.

dont do it sony have you seen the game reviews on Xbox! full of idiots talking about their Nan

This is definitely a must have, but tie it to a certain amount of minimum time, or amount of achievements to ensure some fairness.

Cool.more reviews is welcome.word up son

@Ainu20 Agree mate, the 'time played' should definately be indicated next to a review 😊
Your right of course in that no set time will ever work for 100% of titles. I picked 10% of playtime thinking that would work for the majority...

Yeah I received an email requesting that I make a small write a small review of Helldivers 2.
I have over 500hours in the game and like 96% in terms of trophies. However it wouldn't let me actually review it and instead ask me to choose an edition. Like ratings, physical owners are left out it seems, are at least unless it's bugged for some games.

@LifeGirl yes, very true. I've got a number of games that I'll never get the platinum due to some of the trophies being ridiculous!

@Melee_Ace yes, that's a good point. It would sway the reviews the opposite way.

I first read that headline as Sony editing user's reviews! Did not know written user reviews weren't a thing on the PS store. They are everywhere else right?

You'll obviously get some absolute nonsense reviews, but the genuine ones tend to come through and are worthwhile imo.

@Bingbongboyo That's insane, you could beat so many games not be able to review it. Just let someone purchase it and review it, maybe include time played like Steam does.

@Ultrasmiles I 100% agree with this. I've always loved that feature on Steam that shows you how many hours the person has played. It definitely gives it a bit more credibility.

@freddquadros Okay, so we have some review bombing on a few big games easy to find info about, great, you protect you persecuted AAA games!
Now what about all the indies that don't reviews from sites like this or might be cool or might be shovelware? This isn't for games that get review bombed, this is for smaller games that we attempt to find Steam reviews for, because it's great that I have to go on Steam before I buy a game on PlayStation.

Calling the Playstation store authoritarian is ridiculously tone deaf and infantile.

Also, this isn't a good idea. People are stupid. Metacritic is a shining example of this, as are Steam's reviews. Ok, Steam's reviews aren't on the same page as metacritic, but there's 10 stupid reviews for every 1 decent review.

Steam also seems to think I care what YouTubers think.

@Ainu20 I believe 15 minutes is to short for a normal game in 15 minutes I just started maybe you finished the intro. But with my name is Mayo you can review it in 5 minutes because it's just not nothing nut there in nothing more then clicking.

@Jaz007 Well, when I want a review I use google and find it.

The sole benefit of this will be reading funny reviews for terrible games. I still read Steam store reviews for entertainment; the Gollum game reviews are a good time.

Signs of pclauncher,yikes!

They need to make it so people who have the ps subscription like gamepass can't review unless they play it or get ready for an Xbox review experience people one starring agame because it pixel art or Japanese 😭 Microsoft need to sort it out 🙄

It's about time. It's kind of shocking how long it has taken to include such a basic feature for a modern store front. It should have been done years ago.