Playstation 5's new UI interface

After weeks of demands by the fans, Sony finally revealed what the Playstation 5 UI interface will look like. It comes with many added features that I think is great. These include:

An advanced trophy system that helps you find and complete objectives during the middle of the game, by bring up hints and locations during your playthrough.

A main user menu screen that doesn't exit out of the game. Basically the same as when you push the PS button while in game, but it doesn't leave the game.

Being able to chat with friends while still playing and even uploading a PIP (Picture In Picture) of them playing the same or different game while chatting.

And much more.

Anything thoughts on the new UI?

I'm liking it a lot from these early impressions, doesn't seem to be as laggy as the PS4 UI was at times. The trophy thing looks cool for the few of us who still care about those lol. The hint system seems really useful but as Jeff stated, only useful if the devs use it.

ATM machine.

I scrubbed through the presentation.

I hate it. I hate the modern UI design of "massive fucking tiles everywhere".

The XMB was damn near perfect and should have been a staple of Playstation UI design. Instead, we've got these awful enormous fucking tiles taking up huge portions of the screen. The Xbox One's interface is way worse. It feels so chaotic and disorganized, designed to slap you in the face with ads and promotions. I could go on about it but I won't.

@justin258: it must suck to hate basically everything designed in the past few years.

It genuinely does!

The best UIs are clean, intuitive, and informative. The XMB is what I usually point to as ideal - everything is organized by a heading and, usually, a subject under that heading (example: settings, video settings), and it does so without losing out on any elegance.

Modern UIs feel claustrophobic and overwhelming, and they're meant to. They're meant to make sure that something on-screen grabs your attention, whether that's continuing to play whatever you were into (this is fine) or dig into whatever ads, promotions, and/or sales are going on at the time (this is not fine).

I don't boil with anger every time I turn on my PS4 or Xbox or anything, I just always have to think about where I'm going if I'm looking to do something other than launch one of the last five or so games I played.

It seems fine, although you can see the clutter creeping in. I feel like you have to work for all that extra, "Stuff related to this game" to show up on the PS4 and I don't want it to degenerate into advertising space.

On the plus side, the time to completion counters are a nice touch. There's a part of me that checks HLTB whenever I agree to reviews and it's nice to see that in numbers on the fly. It might even incentivise people to get over the line with games they'd otherwise cast aside.

@justin258: The Xbone UI is pretty customizable. I just pin what I want, and that's the first thing that comes up when I boot the console. Yes ads suck, but I barely notice them at this point.

It looks clean, simple and fast. That’s all I want. I’m also glad that the store (from the looks of it) isn’t super slow like it is on PS4, it probably helps that it’s integrated into the UI instead of being a stand alone store app.

@justin258: Here's a thought experiment: Imagine the parallel dimension where the PS Vita UI became standard.

So...when you said Advanced Trophy System I thought you were making a weird, esoteric joke about grenade defenses in COD.

I haven't played COD in years; that is what Trophy Systems do right?

It would be reeeaaaal cool if anybody making a new console said the words "new accessibility options" with regards to their UI.

@alistercat: *Smirks* Unique USP.

One of my main issues with the current XMB is how BIG everything is. I have this big 50" OLED and my friends list displays like 5 people at a time. Achievements likewise are huge. This seems to have tiny boxes yet still the information isn't adjusted to modern age big TV's.

I still think it is wild that Sony is promoting all the big things that XB1 was showcasing at the launch of their console in the current generation - Snapping, video guides snapped next to your gameplay, achievement tracking, a camera with a microphone. Really makes you think that a lot of those original Xbox One ideas were way too ahead of the times.

I get why they have all these social features and the ability to quickly jump from one game into another. That said, it does highlight how limited the 825 GB of stock storage is in this use-case scenario where you're a gamer that tends to hop from one friendgroup game to another groupgame.

I'm also not really feeling the card system where a bunch of different stuff is part of the same directory. In the video, it took 9 button presses to get past all the achievement-cards and arrive at the screenshot they made. Now imagine if you have to blast past 60-achievement cards, some trophy cards and past 10 screenshots you made earlier.

being able to chat & see a pip window of someone else gameplay is pretty cool though. Also a big fan of the predicted timers on the achievements.

I think it's cool that there is something new. I'm definitely not going to be using 90% of these features since I'm just playing by myself.

looks like it still has the simple "here are your recent games, and over there is your entire collection" setup the PS4 had, which is good. But until someone gets there hands on this and moves about the UI and really digs into things, this left me with more questions and thinking this looks a little more cluttered then the PS4. Like the fact there is a lot of new things for trophies and how to get them, but no trophy list? not even in the main start menu? But it looks like some of those menu's can be customized like the PS4 so who knows. And its always hard for me to get an impression of a UI without using it myself.

I basically want consoles to rip off Steam at this point. not necessarily in terms of UI, but in the way they basically aggregate everything you would like to know about a game on the games page or store page, and a forum that can basically catch any questions you have. The more i can find and see about the game without having to use 3rd party stuff the better. So adding news about games is good and something i want. But the way guides are going to be developer made makes me think it will fall by the wayside when they don't want to pay a person to do the job that an achievement guide wiki will do for free, and probably better.

And the PiP will hopefully work with more then just watching a friends live stream, like YouTube or any video source like Netflix etc.

I think it looks fine. It's not great, but not bad either. I'm glad it looks different to what I've used for the last 7 years. Will have to wait and see how it is in everyday use. Hoping that it is similar to the Xbox UI where it is customizable and you can pin things you like up front...but I'm not getting my hopes up too high.

I would not call myself a "power user" of the UI systems. In my 5 years of owning a PS4, I've never joined a party, have sent less than 10 messages overall, and have about 4 friends on it.

I'm skeptical of the whole UI, I think the cards are neat, but a) how long until 3rd parties give up on them, at which point they will be half-assed or straight up useless. And b) the percentage and length work great for a level based 3d platformer like Sackboy, but how would that stuff look like for other games like Demons Souls, Atelier Ryza or even a Persona game.

Cards for things like Screenshots and videos are cool but I would rather just have a section for them all at once (and rhey probably do).

The home screen of the system is also really concerning, for me the tiles are too small, and there's just a ton of wasted space, and not enough information (unless it just wasn't populated in the video). When I go down on a ps4 to a games live area, I get a description, a breakdown of all my trophiea for the game, my most recent trophies, any dlc, and my friends activity with the game. Very little of that is shown here, instead the trophy count is just a 0% 0/27 count, there is a giant ad for the game with a price point for something I presumably already own, and thats it.

At the top there are a few icons but they really are missing a bunch, how do I check all my trophies, how do I see my friends list, how do I start parties, etc.

Overall I feel like they had an idea on what to do with this UI and focused entirely on that, and really missed the mark on everything else, but ultimately I launch games from it and thats really it, so as long as that works i personally don't care

I couldn't help but think of Microsoft's snapping when they showed that.

@avantegardener@alistercat PIN number

Yeah that part made me laugh out loud. Snap is back baby!

Otherwise it seems like a fine UI. I'm doubtful that all those hint and challenge systems will make it to most games, but it's a cool idea.

It makes me wonder how they'll populate that stuff. You can probably correlate time to trophy data at system level. Just use some memory flags and time spent in the game to match that up. Hint and challenge stuff makes me wonder if that'd be community driven.