Quick Look: The PlayStation 5 User Experience

This is the content I like to see.

Why is PS3 a platform to select from? Is there digital PS3 library compatibility?

This is the content I like to see.

I think it's for PS Now games?

this seems more like the start of a new UI that they're less than 25% of the way done with.

Seems to confirm my worries. This seems like a direct step back from PS4, as Brad says, things are more buried than they need to be. It could be fixed in the future, of course, but this needed to go through more testing. Not the biggest deal though.

This isn't as bad as they were making it out to be. Yes it could use some work but it's not broken.

Hell yeah, THPS 1+2 Phil Fish, hell yeah.

Oh, with that Game Presets section, does that mean subtitles can be on by default? No more searching through all the sections of settings (assuming the game doesn't ignore it) to turn them on? Cool

"Game base"? That could not be a more abstract tab name if they intentionally tried. Why not just............. "Friends & Messages"?

I never really interact with cloud saves, but oof about burying the friends list like that.

The interface looks neat but seems a lot of stuff is missing or not well designed. The Transfer thing is terrible. PS5 games should be storable on external drives.

@brad I don't think you should excuse them for the way they handle save files. It should be seamless. These things are connected to the internet. Every other service you use syncs your data. I have a PS4 Pro which i am probably gonna put down the hall as a secondary device. It's not just you guys who have this issue.

The new menu sounds are so much better than the PS4. I like that there seems to be almost no ambient music as well.

Any idea if there will be a day 1 update, or is this it?

I much prefer the PS4 trophy list, this looks like an inconvenient slog.

They must have had feedback on stuff like this already surely?

@brad Why does this content appear to be dropping frames pretty regularly? Is this PS5 performance or an artifact of the capture situation? Thanks.

The hour long capture thing has been around for a long time. It's a shame Brad didn't notice that on PS4.

To me, the interface looks cluttered with big text I don't want to see, and it's missing things that seem obvious. I don't understand why they couldn't start with what was working on PS4, and then build and improve on it. There's nothing about this that's better, and some things are worse

It’s weird that I heard all this gloating online from certain groups that the PS5 UI is running at 4K while the Series X dash is only at 1080 - and yet everything still seems so bloated. There’s all this needlessly dead space around the icons and when they do enlarge you get 4 boxes per screen with text that runs off. This sort of UI kind of makes sense on a 27” monitor but it’s terrible for 50”+ inch TVs. The PS4 XMB had similar issues with how little information it relayed to you at a time but the new ones seems to lean into this design choice even more.

I keep asking for this and like the switch, Just let me boot right in to the games library instead of the dashboard with a lot of dead space in it.

Yeah the fact that holding the power button doesn't take you to power settings anymore sucks.

Also, "Time To Brad" in this video is approx. 19:15.

@taylorwmartin: Not broken, but the horizontal trophies are just stupid. Vertical is way better.

What's the checkmark next to Brad's name? It appears right to the PS+ icon.

Agree with all of this, it makes terrible use of space in a lot of places. Why doesn't it show more than eight games on that bar? Not like they're using the space to the right of it for anything else.

Another example that you didn't see in this video is that full-size notifications on the home screen pop up smack dab on top of the icons for user profile, settings, and search. I've had cases where I logged in and had it pop notifications for 45 seconds where I couldn't even see those controls to use them until it finished. Meanwhile there's a giant notification-sized empty space right underneath them!

I know this is a lot of nitpicking but all these little irks add up, and you want your sleek new console to have an equally sleek interface.

I was surprised about how cloud saves work on PS4 and PS5, I never bothered with them as I only played Sony first party games and when I was done I removed the disc and that was that.

I played a lot on Xbox and the cloud saves just happen as your loading into a game. No fluffing about searching for them to download. Hopefully that's something Sony can improve on in the future.

Confirmed by Digital Foundry:

There's no way to move PS5 games off the SSD

Wait. There is no option for themes or custom wallapers?

@bakumatsu said:

It’s like the first gen of PSP or iPhone all over again!

Yeah this is gonna get a lot of extra TLC in the next few months.

It's a verified account icon, similar to those on Twitter.

The Arrow pointing down. He said.

He pulled a Brad!

Sure doesn’t look great..

Bummer.

@taylorwmartin: yes i agreed.

hows this video looking at a UI have a "time to brad?" what the

Seems like a handful of minor nitpicks that will be patched within the first year of the console's life, or whenever the UX designers and engineers can get together in a more direct way after a large of amount of post–launch feedback has been digested.

The PS4's launch UI was weirdly barren and was lacking features compared to the PS3's, but by now has become better in almost every way with more features and usability than ever.

I actually like that things like betas or demos would be under a single game's entry, it always bothered me that that Destiny alpha for instance was always just floating around in my library forever. For Jeff and others it is just something to get used to. However, the way they handle the PS4/PS5 versions in the example of Bugsnax and the lack of patch note options is really dumb. I've liked reading the Spelunky 2 patch notes for instance. But again that can be mended sooner than later hopefully.

The general aesthetics of this interface are beautiful though (more beautiful than the initial PS4 period), it just needs an array or tweaks and fleshing out of features here and there.

4:50 They have The Switcher. Damn, Nintendo didn't use it so they Sony dove on it. Cold.

@brad We love you. Never change.

I feel a lot of the stuff they are moaning about are things I like, for me they are completely off base with how I feel about it. I like game tiles rather than on PS4 where I have multiple tiles for demos, betas, full games, trials etc...

I never liked the playstation icon row since ps3, it's too small