On.PlayStation - A Precursor to PlayStation Stars
In this video I wanted to talk about a rather obscure program that was called On Playstation, which was shut down just prior to the launch of the PS Stars program in 2022. It was a pretty obscure program that I was fortunate enough to have participated in and there’s not a lot of information on it, partially because it was supposed to be a small program and I think mostly because the name is just awful for any sort of SEO and word of mouth. Whether it was stylized as two words “on PS” or on.playstation, or OnPlaystation with no space, it was inconsistently named and really did not make it an easy thing to search for.
Basically, On PlayStation was a rewards program intended for retail workers to expand their knowledge of the PlayStation ecosystem. And as far as I know, it was an active program in Canada and the US only. Basically by reading and watching PlayStation content which was usually just stuff pulled from PS Blog and completing quizzes based on said content, you could win prizes and PSN store content.
But again, this was mostly intended for retail workers and I think was mostly a grandfathered program going back to the PS3 generation, when they still used to have game-demo units in brick-and-mortar stores. It was an incentive for interested retail workers to become more knowledgeable and helpful in regard to PlayStation content and be able to sell and promote the brand’s products more effectively. I’m not totally sure how many people were actually in the program but I’d say it was in the high hundreds or low thousands.
Anyone could sign up to the site but to actually participate you need to be verified. Say for example you worked at Best Buy or Gamestop, you would be able to apply to be verified as a relevant retail worker by sending in a paystub or employment letter or whatever to PlayStation. Then once you got approved you could start gaining points by going through the content and quizzes on the site. The content usually revolved around new first-party titles and larger third-party games, as well as whatever new hardware was being released at the time like controllers or peripherals. The quizzes would ask things like age ratings, general features of games and hardware, or trivia like release dates and so on. It was nothing too difficult cbut they usually did limit the number of tries you could use on each quiz so you couldn’t just click things willy-nilly. The interface was pretty poor as well so it was quite a pain when you got things incorrect too.
The earlier version of On PS offered credits as rewards for completing content, the credits could then be redeemed on limited amounts of physical or digital prizes. I managed to get this cool Order 1886 mug back then, as well as a physical copy of Minecraft PS4. If I remember correctly it took a LOT of work to get enough credits for anything worthwhile.
Then around 2018 is when the program got a revamp and moved to a new backend on the Zunos learning platform. This new platform offered points for completing quizzes and reading content almost the same, but instead of a redeemable store of physical and digital rewards, they ran digital-only lotteries for any members who had a certain amount of points or had completed specific quizzes. Usually giving away a couple hundred copies of the latest first-party game or PS+ subscriptions. I won a lot of games over the years, stuff like Spiderman Miles Morales, Sackboys Big Adventure, and even GT7 more recently. As well, I haven’t had to pay for PS+ for about 3 or 4 years because of this program.
When they finally announced the program was shutting down in the summer of 2022 it was still unclear what exactly PS Stars was at the time so it was a pretty disappointing announcement overall. Only in hindsight a few after PS Stars fully launched did the potential relationship of these two announcements click together in my mind and I’d guess that the OnPlayStation team was absorbed into PS Stars, which has been much more successful and accessible than OnPS ever was. I especially love how PS Stars rewards you for just playing games as you normally would, rather than going out of your way to click around an app doing grindy quizzes in the hopes of having a chance to win rewards.
Anyways that’s all for this video, hopefully, that was an enlightening little look at what I believe was a pretty unknown piece of PlayStation history and a sort of predecessor to PS Stars.
–
https://on.playstation.com
https://onplaystation.zunos.com/SignUp/Register?k=68a07a45-8016-429d-b4dd-32930444f60d#/form