Over the last handful of months, we’ve been privileged to get a pretty decent amount of information about Sony’s upcoming PlayStation 5 console which is slated to release on November 12th, 2020. Where we learned about it’s ridiculously fast SSD, it’s game-changing immersive controller, and it’s absolutely gigantic heatsink, one thing that Sony curiously left out was the PlayStation 5 UX, or User Interface/Experience. Thanks to the power of the internet, that all changed late last night where Sony uploaded a 14-minute video on to their worldwide YouTube channels explaining the ins and outs of the new PlayStation 5 interface. Let’s take a look at some of the things that stood out to us.
First, the PlayStation 5 UX is gorgeous. You can tell that Sony really spent a decent amount of time making sure that their UX looks as crisp and clean as it could on not only 4k displays but 1080p displays as well. Once the system is booted up you’re greeted with a screen asking you to push the PS button on the new DualSense controller, once doing so, you’re presented with your user accounts, and then it’s off to the races.
Once you’ve logged in with your user account, you’re presented with a screen that shows a number of “cards” as Sony is calling them which relates directly to the game you were playing before going into rest mode. From this screen, you can immediately jump back into the action of your game or you can take a look at the Cards presented to you. Among these Cards are special Cards called “Activities”.
Activities will show you tasks needed to complete to ensure that you as a player, complete the level in its entirety. One of the things that I immediately noticed, and that Sony pointed out is that there is an estimated completion time near the bottom of the Activity Card when opened. This is a personalized estimate of playtime it would take to complete the task at hand. Definitely cool if you ask me. From certain Activity Cards, you can even jump to that position in the game which really shows off how amazing the load times are for PS5 titles.
Another tidbit of information that Sony shared about the PS5 UX is that you can join voice chats with your friends while you’re playing any game, and they don’t necessarily need to be playing the same game as your friends. You can also do a picture-in-picture of a friend’s share play while you’re playing your own game so you can watch what they’re doing while you’re enjoying your game.
The next bit of information they shared is probably one of my favorites and that is that the PS Store is now baked directly into the OS for PS5. It’s no longer a stand-alone application that takes forever to load. Gone are the super slow days of the PS Store trying to chug along.
The PlayStation 5 is slated to launch on November 12th in North America and most of Asia. The User Interface of the system looks amazing and I personally can’t wait to finally be able to get my hands on the system, if only I could get a pre-order in somewhere. But that’s a whole different story.