It’s always exciting when Australia gets things that other countries get first, especially in gaming. When there’s some kind of video game, video game service, or even video game console that takes a hot second to come to our salty shores, it’s a real treat!
Just yesterday… hold on, just making sure I’m reading this right. Ah, yeah. Alright. Okay, so Australia has PlayStation Stars now. Cool?
PlayStation Stars when it was first announced really felt to many like it was part of an initial plan to do some kind of NFT garbage considering all that was really being advertised was ‘digital collectibles’. This was never confirmed, so take that with a grain of salt.
Ethan has a pretty sturdy rundown that was posted last week about what PlayStation Stars is all about, and the general gist of it is that if you spend money and ‘complete campaigns’, you can accrue points that allow you to buy PlayStation-inspired digital collectibles and eventually games, add-ons and PSN wallet funds if you’ve accumulated enough.
So these digital collectibles, what do they do? Simple. They spin around. They sit on your imaginary PlayStation shelf and when you want a closer look, they spin around. So if you liked it from the front, you could also see it from the back. If you wanted something like this in real life, you’d have to buy a rotating stand. Thankfully, it’s built into the code here. What a relief!
If you’re looking to join PlayStation Stars though, you may have to wait. While I got right into the darn thing and now have a rotating Star Gazer Telescope, there is apparently also a ‘PlayStation Stars waitlist‘ that could potentially require players to wait to get on the service. According to the website, those added to the waitlist will be given access ‘within or about two months from signing up’.
Also, if you’re an avid PlayStation gamer that thought your previous PlayStation trophies might have anything to do with this service, think again. This is all purely new stuff, where only completing campaigns and buying games (if you’re a PlayStation Plus member) will contribute to your PlayStation Stars points. Sorry!
Microsoft has had its own rewards system since about 2005 in the form of ‘Xbox Live Points’ before branching out into the wider Microsoft landscape in 2013, as has Nintendo when My Nintendo started in 2016. While I have no personal experience with Microsoft rewards, I was an avid user of the My Nintendo Rewards system and redeemed all sorts of physical Nintendo goodies in my time. That shit rocked and ruled.
When it comes to PlayStation Stars, I genuinely hope that it turns into something more, or is at least as rewarding as PlayStation users would like it to be. With rewards systems like these, there’s always the sell of ‘You Can Get Free Games Right Now’ with the fine print casually mentioning that you need a trillion points to redeem shovelware.
All that being said, I hope that when somebody sees my Star Gazer Telescope on my PlayStation Stars shelf, they know that I am a gamer that loves games. If they don’t, I don’t know what else I could possibly do to prove it.
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