While news for the PlayStation Store seems to have been somewhat short on the ground of late, there’s an exciting new bit that should make up for the lag. Recently, Sony revealed that it’s got a major overhaul in the works for the PlayStation Store, featuring the newest of mobile gaming – among other things mobile – HTML5.

Additionally, SingStar fans got a bit of a treat in the process.

Reports from Sony’s PlayStation Blog from Eric Lempel, the VP of Sony Network Entertainment, say the new design has already started rolling out in part in preview form, with the full revamp to come October 23 in the United States, with Europe getting its shot at it first on October 17.

The first new facet of the PlayStation Store is its new search capability, which allows users to find the content they’re after with just a few letters. Considering that the PlayStation Store offers better than 20,000 pieces of game-related content, as well as over 100,000 videos (movies and TV shows are included in that count), providing a way to search more easily will likely prove welcome.

It’s said that the redesign is the result of two years’ worth of independent research and user feedback, so anybody who felt like Sony’s suggestion box was directly connected to the incinerator should find this news more than welcome. If the redesign seems a bit familiar, it’s because it is; the menus are designed to rotate in much the same way that Netflix movies appear on the Netflix app.

But users will also be able to sort by price, user ratings, online features and more to be sure that they’re getting what they want before they pay for a download.

Perhaps even better for the user community, the redesign was done largely in HTML5, which means that future updates for the app can not only come more readily; they can come in without having to update the firmware extensively.

Image via Shutterstock

To top it all off, there was also a report that the new store revamp would likely be joined by a bit of a new gaming experience. The SingStar viewer app was recently discontinued, and that’s got many thinking free-to-play, especially after a message appeared for some users launching the viewer that said "The complete SingStar experience will be available as a free download very soon!"

Things have not exactly been good for Sony in recent days. Lagging behind Microsoft (News – Alert) and Nintendo, the company has seen debilitating amounts of losses, the incredible loss of face that was the hacking about a year and a half ago, and plenty more. Getting back in the game is going to require plenty of work on Sony’s part, and a revamped PlayStation Store that’s easier to use isn’t a bad first step.

It’s going to take a bit more than that to keep the gamers interested after all the troubles Sony’s had, but it’s still a great place to start.

Let’s hope Sony can keep that momentum going and keep the video game console wars from becoming just a two-horse race.