US, November 12, 2006 - With the PlayStation 3, Sony has at last brought a unified online experience to the PlayStation platform, with a single login, friend list, and shopping point common to most games. While we already detailed the online gameplay experience through Ridge Racer 7 (be sure and check out our Ridge media page for some burning online gameplay videos), we're sure you're concerned about how smoothly the PlayStation Store experience is, especially since you'll likely be spending lots of cash on game and item downloads once (most likely far, far in the future) you've gotten hold of your own system.

You've seen all the attractive screens showing the gorgeous interface that looks like a clear step up from Microsoft's Xbox 360 marketplace interface. The PlayStation Store is indeed easy on the eyes, especially if you've got a high-def television. Sony picked an attractive color theme and font set, making the store look professional (warning: this could be a trick to make you spend more money on useless Genji items!).

In addition to just looking nice, the layout of the shop is easy to understand. The main shopping window is on the left side of the screen. In its current form, it's split into four sections: new games, containing downloads of game demos and full games; game archives, containing downloads of classic titles; add-on items, consisting of micro-transaction items for games; and video, consisting of game and movie trailers. To the right of the shopping window is a what's-new section, which lists recently added content, and a focus section, which highlights a single piece of content.

There isn't really much to access under these headings at this point. At the time of publication, the PlayStation Store had the following items:

New Games
Mainichi Issho (free)
Ridge Racer 7 Demo (free)
Blast Factor Demo (free)
Blast Factor (840 yen)

Game Archives
Nothing available yet

Bonus Items
Genji item (free)

Video
Gran Turismo HD TGS trailer (free)
Afrika TGS trailer (free)
Genji movie (free)
007 Casino Royal movie trailer (free)
Open Season movie trailer (free)
Blu-ray disc trailers (free)

The game archives will probably be empty until later this month, when Sony adds the first PlayStation downloads for the PSP. Also, the Blu-ray disc trailers item is actually a folder which houses six downloadable Blu-ray disc trailers.

Click on an item, and you're taken to a full screen view detailing the content and pricing information. This screen gives a detailed description of what exactly it is that you're downloading, along with compatible resolutions, space required for the download and for saving (if you're downloading a game) and any warning messages.

In the case of free content, this screen houses a download button. Click on this, and after selecting the location for your download, the download starts up immediately. Alas, our worst fears (second only to the threat of nuclear annihilation from North Korea) have been realized: the PS3, like the early Xbox 360, can't multitask downloads. You're stuck waiting for the download to finish before you can take control of your system. Thankfully, the network was pretty fast for the few downloads we made, with a 200 megabyte download taking less than a minute. For game content, the PS3 also goes through an automatic installation process which takes just a few seconds. Still, we hope a download list is on the cards for the next firmware update.

If you're dealing with paid content, the download button is replaced with a button for placing the content in your shopping cart. Click on it, and you're taken to your shopping cart screen, which lists all the items you have in your cart, the total bill, and the amount of money you'll have remaining in your wallet following purchase. You can continue shopping, or proceed to checkout from here.

We tested out the paid shopping experience with the single paid item currently in the PlayStation Store, Blast Factor. Following the shopping cart screen, we attempted to purchase the item, but the shop warned that the IGN wallet was empty and asked if we'd like to add charge. Currently, charging can be achieved exclusively through credit card, and it has to be a Japanese credit card at that. Other options, including gift certificate and pre-paid card code entry, will presumably be added when such products are available for purchase.

The overall flow of the shopping experience at the PlayStation Store is smooth. There's some concern that the interface won't be able to cope with the oceans of content that will become available throughout the system's life. However, a flexible folder structure for the main shopping screen should ensure that Sony will be able to organize its content in various ways.

One of the nice things about the PlayStation Store, at least for those worried about overspending, is that it sends e-mails to you whenever you download anything. Following your download, you get a receipt sent to the e-mail that you specified when registering your PlayStation Network account. The receipt lists the items that you purchased, the purchase amount, and the amount of money remaining in your wallet. Of course, you can also keep track of all this via an option on the cross media bar that keeps track of your purchase history.

Despite smooth process to checkout, the PlayStation Store interface does have some big problems at this point. Most prominent is its unresponsiveness. Every button press makes the interface pause for a brief moment as it loads up new header images. Moving between the few items currently available was annoying enough; we can't imagine what will happen when the content starts filling up.

The store, which runs as a webpage using the PS3's web browser, seems more optimized at this point for the mouse than for controller use, something that will cause a problem for most PS3 owners. It's true that the analogue stick can be used to move a pointer around like a mouse, but this works as poorly as it has in previous console-based browsers. Your best bet for navigation is to use the d-pad, but with the current shopping interface, this occasionally requires scrolling through text descriptions, and guessing at which button you should push due to icons not lining up correctly.

A few other issues seem like mere oversights rather than problematic design decisions. The shop currently doesn't mark which items you've already downloaded. We kept on downloading the same Blast Factor demo over and over again. At least the store was smart enough to overwrite the original demo rather than creating multiple copies.

We've posted a video of the PlayStation Store in action. Unfortunately, we had to reduce the output resolution of the PS3 to standard def in order to capture the video. The store's content is easier to access when viewed in at least 720p, so keep in mind that you're not getting a look at the optimized shopping experience that you'll have if you have a high def television.