Notice anything different?
Today, we’re quite ecstatic to unveil the new look of the PlayStation.Blog. As the site marches towards its 4th anniversary in June, the patchwork, add-on look of these pages began to resemble the Weasley house. Also, we were tired of being unfavorably compared to our more attractive, cosmopolitan European sister site.
Unlike commercial sites, we didn’t redesign to serve you more ads, or because we have an in-house art staff that we have to justify. We redesigned the PlayStation.Blog with your requests in mind. How do we know what you’re looking for? You’ve been voting with your clicks.
Over the past year, we’ve been analyzing where readers click on the site and, as you can see, items like PlayStation Store update posts and recent stories light up like a Christmas tree. If you only decorate your tree with white lights, that is. When we coupled this info with traffic patterns, Google searches, and other data, it was pretty clear what types of things Blog readers like yourself are looking for when you visit. This redesign addresses these needs.
So we’ve added prominent, permanent links to PlayStation Plus and PlayStation Home content. We’ve overhauled the search box with autocomplete. Our biggest recent releases now “live” at the top right of the site. And huge news won’t get pushed down the page nearly as quickly as it used to.
Conversely, with the old design many things weren’t as easy to find as they should have been. You’ll now find it easier to give feedback on posts via Twitter and Facebook (both of which had a fraction of their current userbase when we first launched the site). Related content will appear at the bottom of a post, and a string of features can be found in a scrolling “red box” belt right in the middle of the homepage.
We also know that the average reader owns a wider, higher-resolution monitor than when we first launched in 2007, and so we’re taking advantage of that additional real estate, and you can expect more and better takeovers of the site, like we did with UNCHARTED 3’s launch.
Now, we realize that this new design will take some getting used to, and some of you will probably hate it outright – at least at first. Many of you said as much when we inverted the color palette from black to white last year, though those complaints died out very quickly as we all adjusted.
Still, for those who really loved the old site, if you look closely, you’ll notice the things that *didn’t* change. The font, colors, and sizes are all the same. Comment replies remain an attention-grabbing red. Of course, the PlayStation news content you visit us to view will all still be here – you just won’t have to look as hard.
Over the course of the redesign process, we began to compare the new site to [lady with the hat]. Even if you don’t care for the flashy new hat, the old girl you know and love is still underneath.
Please let us know what you think. As always, we’ll be reading.
Sincerely,
Jeff, Sid, and Rey
Your PlayStation.Blog team
guess it like a lot of other things PSN has done… if you like it fine.. and if you dont “tough ****” and I dont like this
The new blog looks great!
You all did an a AMAZING job on this redesign. It’s perfect. Sony needs to take notes and apply something very similar to the regular PlayStation.com. I don’t even go there anymore because it’s so white and so terrible looking.
you should add a thumbs up or down button like on youtube just so you know if you gave a good point or not
The blog redesign is fantastic! I like it! Like changes in mostly anything in life, I can get used to that in a little while. The new layout seems to be crammed for now, but I’m sure it will be sorted out soon.
I Love this. Its actually more vivid and makes you think that it is made by Sony. The only problem is…. It slows my browsing down.
love it!
I like the new look, but am soundly amused that Sony decided to get rid of the reader ratings meter. Absolute cowardice.
Nevermind, those ratings are useful if one accounts for the skew due to the gaming population’s kneejerk “if it’s not relevant to my interests, it sucks” reaction.
Wow, really loving this new layout and style. Nice work, design and web team! :)
I read all posts via RSS feed. So I just saw this in my feed…. I like the new design scheme, the colors, more images & older content can get some more eyeballs. That’s cool. I like that when you are 1-level deep on the site, like on posts, that they have random headers on it, linking to other stories.
Ratings are important? Try changing the icon’s to something that still blends in, but not a square. I def overlooked it before I saw Jeff’s comment about it. In fact, I overlooked that entire pull off. But now that I’ve seen it, I will know its there.
I’d like to see the Share posts on a single line, unless there are others being added. In the “See Also” section, time code can be shortened to H:M, we never really track seconds. Looks a little funny to me.
“ADD YOUR OWN” for the comment section may need a spice added. I am not sure what, but something. I think the RED CAPS need to not have caps. I overlooked it… yes, I know, it is big. Its something about CAPS.
Yea, I notice that I skipped over a lot of things that had all CAPS.
I like the footer tho! Your PS3/PSP Update images have white corners on a dark background.
Scroll/Slider is awesome.
All Love. Snow.
Great job!….You accomplished your goal!
Just wanted to add… anyone who doesn’t like the look of this new blog… just head on over to the newly revamped Xbox equivalent run by Major Nelson, and be very very happy and relieved.
i dont like it,i dont think i be coming here alot any more