Memory lane: The ONE area where the PS5's physical design is better than the PS4's
By bigsocrates 7 Comments
Under my TV right now I have a PS5 and a PS4 Pro, which I keep hooked up mostly for PSVR purposes and because the PS5's hard drive is so small I've been playing indie games and other less taxing titles on PS4 just to keep from having to constantly swap. I also have a launch PS4, which has been sitting in a closet for the last 6 years since I got the pro, but that I want to pull out of retirement so that I can play PS4 RPGs on the small TV hooked up to my treadmill.
The problem is that when I pulled the old PS4 out and hooked up it wouldn't turn on. Or rather, to be more precise, I couldn't figure out how to turn it on. I needed to look it up on the Internet.
This PS4 was one of my primary gaming devices for three years and I've been using the Pro for six years beyond that, so I had a vague idea of where the power button was, but to my aging eyes it was completely invisible. I'd forgotten that the power button was vertically oriented on the base model and then moved to horizontal on the Pro and even though I knew the vague area to look in it was totally invisible to me. I can blame this on being an old man who hasn't used the system in a while, and that's definitely accurate, but this is not the first time I have had to look up how to turn on the PS4, and I was a much younger man when I was using this unit. Those tiny invisible power buttons have always been awful. I do understand why Sony used them, because they make the unit look sleek and sexy like this weird black monolith, but I wish Sony had just put them on the side or made them bigger or something. I cannot recall any other console where the buttons were so hidden.
I think the PS4 is a decent looking system and I think the PS5's visual design was a massive blunder, creating a massive and ugly device that only fits in to a very specific modernist aesthetic, but at least the PS5's power and eject buttons are prominent and easy to see if you need them, while still blending into the console from a distance. They got that right.
Here's hoping the eventual PS5 pro manages to have a design that's not ugly but that doesn't sacrifice functionality for appearance.
You can do it, Sony. I believe in you!
7 Comments