If you own a PlayStation 4 and use it to buy digital games, you’ve likely noticed that downloading games from the service has been beyond slow of late. While some may put it down to the monstrous patches for games like The Elder Scrolls Online and large digital releases like Drive Club clogging up the series of pipes and tubes that make up the internet, there’s a larger issue at play. And speed isn’t the only problem.
PSN is frankly, a bit on the terrible side, with slow downloads, a cumbersome party and invites system and a messaging system that just on the right side of being functional. It’s inexcusable, especially seeing as how we now have to pay to use the service – and at a retail price of over R700 a year for the privilege, it’s not particularly cheap.
It’s become a big enough problem that there’s a new Twitter campaign (don’t we just love those?) to petition Sony for a Better PSN. Yes, there’s a hashtag (#BetterPSN), and a list of requests which you can find here. (via PushSquare)
The requests are mostly of the reasonable sort – and though I personally don’t think bombarding people with twitter spam is the best way to do things, as long as people are nice and polite about it all I don’t really see any harm.
They’re for things like Better security, better CDN spread (which would result in better download speeds), refund systems, gifting, account name changes. All the sorts of things that should be in a paid online system.
I agree with most of the list, especially the bits about speed; It’s been especially slow in European territories, an issue which Sony is aware of.
We are aware of reports that some users are experiencing slower then (sic) usual download speeds from the PlayStation Store.
This has been reported to our network team for investigation. Please keep an eye on this thread for updates.
In Kotaku’s report on slow European speeds, they asked, rhetorically: “Can you imagine waiting 48 hours to download a game?”
If only they knew.
Last Updated: June 26, 2015
RinceThis
June 26, 2015 at 09:36
I have to say I hate the PSN system. The Xboxlive was a million times better. Even on your computer it was better. With PSN you can’t even search friends online (PC), wtf? Why? KAK
Alien Emperor Trevor
June 26, 2015 at 09:40
I don’t think anyone’s surprised you couldn’t find any friends. 😉
Hammersteyn
June 26, 2015 at 09:41
He found me and I pitied him
Alien Emperor Trevor
June 26, 2015 at 09:42
“Its’a me, Rince-io!”
RinceThis
June 26, 2015 at 09:43
You hurt me bro, deep 🙁
Hammersteyn
June 26, 2015 at 09:45
XD
Rock789
June 26, 2015 at 11:50
He tried to bribe me with favours… Of a naughty variety… o_O
Hammersteyn
June 26, 2015 at 12:03
hahahaha
RinceThis
June 26, 2015 at 09:43
Ok, great!
VampyreSquirrel
June 26, 2015 at 09:58
hahahaha
Hammersteyn
June 26, 2015 at 09:38
The party chat is a mess, I can almost never host one and joining one can be cumbersome but when it works it’s fantastic.
Ir0nseraph
June 26, 2015 at 09:59
We always have trouble with you 😛
PSN needs some work , like Xbox needed a dashboard update their new win 10 look seems to address most issues I had with it, I am not pushing Xbox just saying they do seem to listen to us customers.
Hammersteyn
June 26, 2015 at 10:03
They have to listen if they still want to sell Boners
Ir0nseraph
June 26, 2015 at 10:07
XD.
Some of the features listed on neogaf would be nice , especially secure payment Sony is lacking in that department.
David
June 26, 2015 at 09:45
I wouldn’t worry about Twitter spam. The #BetterPSN is sitting at under 100 tweets. Not quite the campaign of change, though it would be nice to have a better PSN.
GTV DAD
June 26, 2015 at 09:46
So nice when you download a game on PS4 and it states 99+ Hours remaining. That’s without the patch
Hammersteyn
June 26, 2015 at 09:47
I normally start my downloads before sleeping and when I get home from work it’s done. Now if that’s too long to wait then I dunno what to say.
Francois Knoetze
June 26, 2015 at 10:00
Have to agree. I do that too. never have an issue with downloads and usually my 10 meg line has the game on my system by early morning(swear there are cable elves involved bec lately when I download movies its on my pc in 30 minutes. No BS)
Hammersteyn
June 26, 2015 at 10:01
Running a 4MB and that’s more than sufficient. But i’d love a 10MB one day.
Admiral Chief's Adventure
June 26, 2015 at 10:01
*I’d
CAPITALIST!
Hammersteyn
June 26, 2015 at 10:04
More like Adventure Capitalist
Francois Knoetze
June 26, 2015 at 10:02
worth the price when you have the dosh dude. But mine was an auto upgrade form 4meg to 10 at the same price. It is still pricey though
Hammersteyn
June 26, 2015 at 10:03
It is, can’t wait for fibre to roll out nation wide though, maybe when I’m fifty
Admiral Chief's Adventure
June 26, 2015 at 10:05
Awesome, so I’m getting fibre in 3 years?
Hammersteyn
June 26, 2015 at 10:06
You’re 47?
Alien Emperor Trevor
June 26, 2015 at 10:07
If he is it’s a brilliant disguise. 😀
HvR
June 26, 2015 at 10:07
Haven’t you checked his bald head barcode pics on twatter?
Admiral Chief's Adventure
June 26, 2015 at 10:07
I thought you were?
Hammersteyn
June 26, 2015 at 10:09
You said “so I’m getting fibre in 3 years”
Admiral Chief's Adventure
June 26, 2015 at 10:10
Aye, and you said, “when you are 50” and “nationwide”
So, you being so old, meaning I’m getting fibre in 3 years plus minus
3 years
3
HL3 CONFIRMED!
Hammersteyn
June 26, 2015 at 10:14
O_o K
Admiral Chief's Adventure
June 26, 2015 at 10:03
What are you paying now, and with whom?
Francois Knoetze
June 26, 2015 at 10:05
Telkom. R870 Got it for really cheap in the beginning and once the special was gone the price hiked with R200.
HvR
June 26, 2015 at 10:04
FTTH WTF, 10MB cheaper than 4M ADSL.
No if I can only succeed in convincing the neighbors (Noah’s extended family) to buy in and actually get it.
Hammersteyn
June 26, 2015 at 10:05
But not yet available in my quiet mountain town
HvR
June 26, 2015 at 10:21
Since this is being driven by independent service providers do not think it will take too long, also Telkom will soon start bleeding customers so ADSL prices might start dropping.
Aries
June 26, 2015 at 12:18
Same here, but the mountain abit further away
Aaron Lucas
June 26, 2015 at 20:51
Jesus, that’s insane! How long did it take for some of the free W3 DLC? Just for comparison, since I live in US, was curious.
Hammersteyn
June 28, 2015 at 17:23
Haven’t downloaded yet. thing is, we’re pretty used to less than fast internet.
Aaron Lucas
June 29, 2015 at 02:04
Ok. Yeah I’ve heard some horror stories from other countries, where are you, South Africa? I’ve seen references to Johannesburg and Cape Town on this site, why I’m guessing that.
Hammersteyn
June 29, 2015 at 07:40
LOL, you should Google Load shedding
Sean Carbutt
June 26, 2015 at 09:55
Started the ESOTU update, the second one which is 15.8 gigs. This was 2 days ago. As at last night, I had about 5 gigs left to do and it was going to take another 25 hours? I have a 10 meg line which is working just fine, so how the hell can it take 25 hours for 5 gigs. But yes, it has been kak slow lately
Nikola
June 26, 2015 at 09:55
It could be a bit more user friendly but it isn’t that horrible, however the downloads as of late are really not great, taking me forever to finish downloading a patch for Batman!
Ottokie
June 26, 2015 at 09:57
You should try download the patch for Batman at night
Admiral Chief's Adventure
June 26, 2015 at 10:00
Hahahahahahahaha
Oh you!
Hammersteyn
June 26, 2015 at 10:00
Or for PC
*Runs
Admiral Chief's Adventure
June 26, 2015 at 10:00
That will take MONTHS
HvR
June 26, 2015 at 10:02
My service from Telkom has become so shitty that I do not notice PSN issues #silver_linings.
My biggest gripe was “correction of the price to equivalent US$ value” and then region locking content and not providing the same service everywhere.
AND NEVER GETTING BACK EVEN WHEN YOU GO THROUGH THE OFFICIAL CHANNELS. NOT ONE SINGLE BLOODY TIME.
Ottokie
June 26, 2015 at 10:05
…
Admiral Chief's Adventure
June 26, 2015 at 10:05
HAHA
Hammersteyn
June 26, 2015 at 10:05
Nooooo I had this one saved for the good the bad and the ugly XD
Ottokie
June 26, 2015 at 10:07
And to add to the irony I wanted to post this in the Batman topic…clicked wrong tab xD
Hammersteyn
June 26, 2015 at 10:09
Bwahahaha!
Admiral Chief's Adventure
June 26, 2015 at 10:07
The BAT framerate
Klipkop1980
June 26, 2015 at 13:58
Pretty much sums up my whole Bad Company 2 Multiplayer experience. I tried spending most of my time in the tank, but not even the extra weight kept me grounded.
FoxOneZA
June 26, 2015 at 10:11
But you can screenshot share! #NobodyCares
Hammersteyn
June 26, 2015 at 10:14
hahahaha
OliverRC
June 26, 2015 at 10:13
When looking at the PSN service from the outside as an experienced software developer it is extremely clear that the infrustructure both on the software and hardware side is a shambles.
Having been involved in developing large scale services it is often easy to see, even looking at something like PSN as a black box, when there are fundamental problems with their architecture.
My thoughts are that they are sitting on mountains of technical debt that has come about through years of tacking on new functionality to code that is poorly designed and written. I would hate to see the back-end design but I reckon it is pretty horrendous.
A couple things are pretty obvious. The software and it’s services clearly don’t scale and were never designed too. Apparently Sony is running only 2 datacenters and I think the only way they are trying to scale is by throwing bigger hardware at the problem. However that can only get them so far.
It is also clear that services are in need of a major rewrite. They just keep adding new functionality in seemingly a completely hacky way and the codebase has become increasing terrible and harder an harder to work on. I’ve seen this happen, and over time it takes longer and longer to add to code because of the componding complexity.
Really their services need to scale horizontally across multiple hosting locations all over the globe, this requires a very specific design and implementation to get this to work effectively.
My suggestion to Sony would be to start looking at a micro-services architecture that is designed for cloud computing allowing them to utilize distributing computing power as close to the end users as possible. This allows bandwidth and latency to reduced and allows heavily used services to scale dynamically to the number of users.
If you look at XBOX Live, you have a very strong software company (Microsoft) behind that product, which is heavily pushing cloud computing and the points I discussed above.
UlfricDormPorn
June 27, 2015 at 03:15
And it’s still not enough for Xbox to gain on the PS4. Maybe network connectivity isn’t that much of a priority for the majority of gamers?
BurninZ
June 26, 2015 at 10:27
haha 48 hours to download a game?? I would be hurling rainbows if it was that quick!! Life would be great!
Drake
June 26, 2015 at 11:19
While they are busy fixing those speeds:
– Fix the PS strore app itself on PS3 to be faster
– Fix the downloads list… seriously. Adding filtering and sorting can’t be that difficult…
– FIX THE PAYMENT SYSTEM! It’s been broken for weeks. Can’t buy anything on the ps store website with credit card, only wallet funds.
And remove from that suggestions list the names changing thing. Don’t know what people’s fascination is with confusing everyone else. One or 2 changes per account lifetime is acceptable. Not daily changes like people often do in services that allow that.
Rock789
June 26, 2015 at 11:48
So it’s not just me that noticed PSN is insanely slow lately… Thought it was my connection… Then tested my XB1 and it’s now actually capable of downloading faster than my PS4 (is the other way around usually).
I like what’s on offer on PSN – namely gaming! That’s about it… It is most definitely in need of quite an overhaul.
brendalaris
June 26, 2015 at 12:54
I agree with most of the list
Dawid Eduard Roestorf
June 29, 2015 at 08:58
As much as everybody hates PSN. My experience has been quite good with it, in general.
Yes, the party system is not the best. But having to set up a party on the X1 is even more of a mission. and quality is a lot lower than my PS4 parties. In the space of less than an hour on the X1, my friend and I got kicked from the party 3 times, and lost sound twice. Download of updates on my X1 does also take longer than on my PS4.
Would I like to have a better PSN. Hell yes.
Xbox 360 had the best party system, but given the current gen. PSN beats X1 hands down when it comes to playing with friends.
Bahlor
July 2, 2015 at 07:53
There is also a campaign website now. http://www.betterpsn.com