Alright, this system has been out for 3 solid months and I have to say something. Let's start by saying that I'm fortunate enough to have located one, though admittedly, I did sink 60 hours into the endeavor. Now, it's one thing to outrage on things. I will at least offer solutions to my various greivances with the system. SONY is likely working on some of these, but it's been 3 months already and the Playstation 5 irks me daily!
Physical
The hefty console has some unique aesthetics that have been talked about ad infintum, and the removable panels at least give you control over what color you want the system (I'm not quite ready to paint mine). I actually took mine off to take advantage of the dust ports that were designed to vaccuum out dust. The ports are beautiful and sturdy, though the front USB-C and USB-A ports are too close together. The pic on the right is my USB-C wireless headphone (Steelseries 1) dongle blocking both ports.
Solution: more space between the front ports.
The clicky power buttons blended in with the console's finish last generation too. I don't play games in the Serengeti Sun, so I often can't find the eject button.
Solution: White buttons, or an overall console aesthetic of the Playstation colors that were discarded this generation: grey, pink, blue, green and red. The same solution for the controllers that got rid of button colors (boooo!).
Software / UI / UX
In addition to above, I've previously talked about removing the color of the face buttons Square, X, Triangle and Circle removes one layer of information to the player and is a negative point to accessibility. Some of the other User Interface tweaks ultimately make the Playstation 5 User Experience one that favors sexy marketing over accessibility.
Tiles! The Game Library and Playstation Store both display this way, with a range of legibility. Can you guess which game is selected? The answer is probably easy, but my PS5 is set to 'High Contrast,' I have the system font set to Large (the default size is more like the prices being displayed), and my phone camera applied its own contrast. Browsing on a light background often makes it difficult to see what you've selected. Solution: a more elaborate border around selection or an alternate way to display/browse the store.
Logic and Organization! One of my favorite things about the PS5 UX is that the Playstation Store has been better integrated into the console. The tiled lists load super quickly, and game info when selecting the game is neatly organized and the 3 colums make great use of the space on your tv. I had THREE models of Playstation 4 and all of them had overly-loud video when browsing, and the Store app on the console itself often stopped loading game thumbnails or simply crashed after looking at details of 5-6 games. This is gone with the PS5. However, until February 2021, there was no way to display PSN Store Sales. This has been fixed with an added Deals tab, but was frustrating and ultimately hurt the User Experience. Solution: Hey, SONY solved this!
The Home screen is just a poor use of space. The bottom part is media relating to your game: clips, news and social stuff. It's all mashed up of the various games you're playing, though. The 11 tiles you see are all you get. The first 3 and last tile stick, but the game icons you see are based on your most recent played games. SONY has taken away the ability to have folders and organize your games. The last icon there goes to your entire game library (pictured below). The Media tab shows you all the streaming apps, which is to be expected. The surprise here is that for content creators like myself, the Playstation Capture app to look at screenshots and video is not in the Media tab. Also the name changed. PS4's 'Capture Gallery' is now called 'Media Gallery,' which is generic and drives the point that it's not found in 'Media' even more of a facepalmer. Solution: put the damn app into the Media tab, pin it to the tiles, change the name to something more explicit. SONY solved this last generation and created these new problems.
With no folders and only the 7 most recently played titles, I have to go to my library. My Library is creeping up to 400 titles that I can sort by platform (PS3, PS4, PS5), alphabetically and by date installed. Solution: Bring back folders!
Game Base is an absolute mess. This is what it looks like with large text. The overlapping text of squishing my three online friends into one is a glitch that occurs in all text sizes every 5th press or so. This is a poor use of screen space: there's enough room to stretch this out and not be in Ellipsis Town. Additionally, the first displayed names include people you met online who may or may not have been good players or cursed you out over the mic or something else. Friends is relegated to what you see: second priority TO STRANGERS and not even able to display more than three at once, even without the overlap error currently happening. Also, for voice chat, you have to form a party with them that stays around for your occasional game chat text to them. But to actually talk, it's another step to start a chat. However, your Parties stay intact until you close them, another step. Additionally, a lot of games still default to joining chat now that the controller has a built The changes to Game Base tell me that whoever is calling the shots at SONY has a vision that conveniently ignores the verbal abuse and other harrassment that happens between online gamers. Solution: bring back single-invitation voice chat, and prioritize my actual friends over strangers. Use more screen space to display more friends and at least tell me all the information that I could see in the previous generation WITHOUT ELLIPSES.
Also, the disc version currently has an obnoxious problem where every inserted disc spins up loudly every 30 minutes regardless of what game you're currenlty playing. I'll be playing the all-digital Apex with the Overwatch disc in my drive spins at full speed for a solid 15 seconds, pointlessly wearing on the drive and making the console loud enough to hear through my headphones. Solution: firmware update, or by just ejecting discs every time you're not playing them.
Lastly is trophies. The home screen uses Game Cards to hop you to small events in the game directly from the screen, such as Capture the Flag match (10 minutes) in a Call of Duty game or Complete a Race (5 minutes) in another game. Game Cards can also function as help guides for certain events if the programmer has added them! Game Cards are actually a HUGE step forward in terms of accessibility! Occasionally, these cards are trophies. However, if you want to see your full trophy list, it's no longer a long press to access it right away. On Ps5, you have to long-press the PS button, highlight your game on the Home screen pictured above, press down and right twice to select the trophy list of the game. If you're a reader who doesn't care about trophies, fine. You might think I'm being dramatic over the extra input to get where I want. However, this is an inconvenient step backwards. Solution: do it like the PS4 did it; have a Trophies folder/link on the Home screen that is one button press to display, not hidden away from people who care.
So basically, the Game Cards and integrated PS Store are the only good additions to the Playstation 5 interface, and almost every issue could be solved by reverting back to the Playstation 4's interface.
BONUS Gripe: No themes! You are stuck with the black/grey backgrounds (great contrast!) and whatever backgrounds (not always great...) on the PS Store that are chosen.
I have a feeling some of these changes are coming, and the most positive thing I have to say about the Playstation 5 is also the most important: the system runs every single game I've thrown at it without errors. Miles Morales for PS5 hard crashed the game, but the other 30 PS4 and PS5 titles have had no errors at all, run extremely well and look better than they ever could on the previous generation. The backwards compatability is flawless. I'm guessing that's far and away the hardest thing to get right, and SONY gets a 100/100 there.
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