PS5 UI feels like a solitary experience

[headspawn]

And Microsoft got a ton shit for it pre launch. When people are looking forward to a new generation, they want to see new stuff, and Sony gave them that.

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Then you get the console home and a few days later it's not new anymore, a new coat of paint ain't all it's cracked up to be.

FWIW I prefer Xbox's direction here and the fact that we can watch the OS evolve over this new generation, that's seems a lot better than simply saying "oh that's different" for five minutes on day one and then wondering why stuff is backwards and standard features have disappeared.

 

[MeBecomingI]

I love the UI. It's simple and fast and everything is where it needs to be. Similar to the Switch UI. I can't stand the Xbox UI. It's so messy, ugly and slow.

 

[Temperance]

entering the full party chat room to view messages feels over complicated. Maybe I'm doing it wrong but it feels unintuitive.

 

[OdjnRyu]

How does everybody feel about those "activity" cards? They feel like extra fluff to me and I'm not interested in ever selecting them.

 

[AIan]

It's a mess! Getting to the trophies for every game is such a chore now, it's deterring me from wanting to complete them. Really dropped the ball on it imo. Hopefully it gets an overhaul in a couple years.

 

[Chromie]

This one?

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Whichever was the UI before the final update on X1X, I HATED IT. It was so damn slow.

 

[Hetz]

The ps5 ui is the worst console ui since the Xbox one launch

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Totally agree. What a giant step backwards. I miss easily seeing what my friends have been up to....and the store is an absolute train wreck.

 

[manzoman96]

I feel like so much of the functionality was stripped out. Not a big fan of the UI. Also not a big fan of the autoplaying music on the games. It didn't bother me on ps3 because they were tucked away in their own section. On here they are the main tiles.

 

[Replicant]

PlayStation UIs are always a step back from the previous gen until Sony slowly drip feeds them back to what they were.

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It's baffling to me that they spend years and years working on OS's just to throw away most of that progress with a new console.

 

[Harris Katz]

All I want back right now is the "long press" function on the PS button!

 

[AtomicShroom]

We're approaching the 6 month milestone, which usually means a major firmware update

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Except this is Covid times, where most everything gets delayed. I'm not expecting it any time soon.

 

[PLASTICA-MAN]

Where is the voice assistant to control it? I hope the next update will add it. Hvaing a controller with a mic and not having this day one is a real blasphemy.

 

[arsene_P5]

I love the UI. It's simple and fast and everything is where it needs to be. Similar to the Switch UI. I can't stand the Xbox UI. It's so messy, ugly and slow.

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On Series X the UI isn't slow at all. Need recipes on that one. Everything else you said is different taste/opinion.

Then you get the console home and a few days later it's not new anymore, a new coat of paint ain't all it's cracked up to be.

FWIW I prefer Xbox's direction here and the fact that we can watch the OS evolve over this new generation, that's seems a lot better than simply saying "oh that's different" for five minutes on day one and then wondering why stuff is backwards and standard features have disappeared.

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This.

 

[Melchiah]

How does everybody feel about those "activity" cards? They feel like extra fluff to me and I'm not interested in ever selecting them.

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They were really handy when I was platinuming Astro. Loved them, and hope other games use them in a similar fashion.

 

[KAMI-SAMA]

PlayStation UIs are always a step back from the previous gen until Sony slowly drip feeds them back to what they were.

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and then repeat

 

[Vilam]

There's so much that I hate about the PS5 UI. No idea what they were thinking with it.

 

[arsene_P5]

They were really handy when I was platinuming Astro. Loved them, and hope other games use them in a similar fashion.

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Yes, I think cards are great, too.

 

[Darknight]

I would love somebody to give me a good reason why the context menu is different between the home screen and the library view when you bring it up on a game. I really don't get the line of thinking here that makes it have to be different between these two places. Why are options like check for updates, eject, disc, etc all stuck to the home screen but not the library view?

 

[Epcott]

Yes, that UI is a mess, too much junk on topics I don't care about... from Fortnite stuff to GTAV rally cars.

But the store is much worse... you can't even browse by publisher (I tried last night just to find the EA games covered by EA Play and haf to resort to using my phone).

 

[RPGam3r]

This is the problem when console makers rebuild the wheel each time.

 

[Kornflayx]

I genuinely had to google how to shut down the PS5 because it didn't enter my mind to press the home button again when I was in the home screen.

 

[Ruck]

Only thing that bugs me besides the lack of themes is how the press/hold PS buttons are functionally backwards from PS4. It seems like change for the sake of change. Only takes like a day to get used to but still, why even bother?

Edit: to people saying have to press the home button twice or can only turn off the system from the home menu, that's not true. Just press the button once instead of holding it to bring up the bar with friends etc and power is on the right

 

[Papercuts]

I've grown to hate the three dots of doom that just have an insane variety of options under them.

 

[Shoshi]

It's horrible and I though about creating a thread listing every bad thing with the UI but I stopped listing everything and will wait for the first major update.

 

[NoWayOut]

I think the PS5 is an amazing piece of HW, but when it comes to user experience, most of Sony's decisions are mind boggling to me. They took one step forward and two back.

 

[EricTheGamerman]

I don't really get why people dislike the PS5 UI so much. I've never found it difficult to navigate and it's smooth and quick moving. Like I would prefer if Sony had kept the XMB from the PS3, but its miles above the barely functional PS4's slow as molasses model.

 

[Darknight]

I don't really get why people dislike the PS5 UI so much. I've never found it difficult to navigate and it's smooth and quick moving. Like I would prefer if Sony had kept the XMB from the PS3, but its miles above the barely functional PS4's slow as molasses model.

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It's pretty clear why people dislike it. It has a lot of missing features from the PS4 and it was already behind the Xbox One in functionality so that made it worse. On top of that, they made it so that in order to do a lot of things, it takes more steps than it used to. The combination of missing functionality and needing to do more to get the same thing done is why people dislike the UI so much.

 

[Nesther]

It's a mess! Getting to the trophies for every game is such a chore now, it's deterring me from wanting to complete them. Really dropped the ball on it imo. Hopefully it gets an overhaul in a couple years.

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Really? The most relevant ones are a short PS button press away for PS4 titles, and right next to the activity cards for PS5 titles.
Long press and once right for the full trophy list.
Is that more cumbersome than on PS4?

 

[Doctor_Thomas]

I feel like it's NEARLY there in terms of base functionality.

Holding the PS button to bring up a menu like the PS4 would be a massive help... but, for my money, it works....

However, "working" is all you can expect, I think they need to hit up a big FW update soon just to start getting all the additional functionality back.

 

[Shoichi]

I absolutely dislike the PS5 UI. It's so clunky. Even though the PS4 one was so slow because of a regular HDD it at least was intuitive.

holding the logo is like a standard across the industry of getting to the button to put the system into rest/turn off

 

[BizzyBum]

My main complaint is being greeted by Fortnite news 90% of the time I turn it on. (is this for everyone, or did I somehow follow Fortnite news? I never played Fortnite on my PlayStation ever so I doubt it)

 

[Papercuts]

My main complaint is being greeted by Fortnite news 90% of the time I turn it on. (is this for everyone, or did I somehow follow Fortnite news? I never played Fortnite on my PlayStation ever so I doubt it)

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You can unfollow the game to stop that.

Trying to figure out how to UNFOLLOW the game is a trip I will let you experience for yourself.

 

[THEVOID]

This is the problem starting from scratch each generation. It'll take 2-3 years so it's on par with the last UI. Such a waste of time and resources.

 

[Hyun Sai]

It's TERRIBLE. Not intuitive at all, and it takes more actions to give the same results than previous UI. Likely designed by a team not playing games or engaging in group chat/friends.

 

[BizzyBum]

You can unfollow the game to stop that.

Trying to figure out how to UNFOLLOW the game is a trip I will let you experience for yourself.

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Amazing how I somehow was following Fortnite when I never played it on the PS ecosystem. lol

At least I know how to unfollow games now.

 

[nib95]

When I first bought the PS5 and was predominantly playing new single player PS5 games (Miles Morales, Astro's Playroom, Demon's Souls etc), I was really impressed by it.

It was beautiful, crisp, really fast. The Activity Cards let me see specific trophy progress, even jump straight into trophy tasks in seconds etc. Taking screenshots and videos was also effortless, editing them in UI easy and fast etc.

But then after I'd beaten most of those games and jumped to Warzone, that's when I realised how unintuitive so many aspects of the UI were, namely around the social side of things. Eg how it handles parties, sending new messages, finding new players you'd just played with to invite etc. It's just altogether overly complicated and despite being fast in the actual functions and transitions, there's just too many layers to things, or things are not always where they should be or you expect them to be.

In any case, Sony does this pretty much every gen. It's just a case of waiting for those updates to bring functionality nor layout back up to snuff.

 

[Calvin]

It is god awful. A measurable step back in every single way since the PS4, and the worst console UI since the very first iteration of the Xbox One UI. It is hard to navigate, not logically laid out, it changes button functions and locations that many of have completely memorized from 7 years of the PS4 in a way that makes no sense. The store experience is so bad its comical. That doesn't even include the UI-adjacent issues with game upgrades, etc.

 

[Eugene's Axe]

Damn Sony definitely lost Era.

 

[Chadtwo]

Goes to show how different the priorities can be between players. The absolute last thing I want to see is a bunch of information about what people other than me are up to.

The PS5 UI is missing a ton of features and functionality, but the feeling of privacy and the cleanliness of the aesthetic is what I'd call its strongest feature. No bull shit - just your games and what you want to do.

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this is basically my thoughts. I don't do much social gaming (and when I do it's not through Sony products typically) so for me a streamlined list of games in one tab and media in the other is ideal

 

[Mocha]

Best ui and ux, it feels snappy and easy to navigate once you get the hang of it.

The designs are very modern too, I went back to my ps4 and it's just so ugly to look at now.

 

[The Benz]

I think it's quite good for the most part. The thing that bothers me most is the oddly placed shutdown menu as I still have trouble remembering where it is at times. The capture gallery confuses me too as there doesn't seem to be an option for it anywhere on the main menu? I end up having to press the PS button and digging through my recent activities to bring it up. I cannot for the life of me figure out why they would change the spotify controls either. It was a million times more convenient to navigate on the PS4.

 

[ShadowGP]

Feels "static" to me. Really miss the What's New tab and the way parties used to work.

 

[WadiumArcadium]

I like it for the most part, but I do miss the What's New section as well. It was nice to see what other people were playing and what platinum they were going for.

 

[APOEERA]

PS5 UI is easy to navigate for the most part, but Sony really lost me with PS5 trophies pretty much 'breaking' the trophy system. If I login to my PS4, none of the PS5 trophies show up due to the large box now being used for the trophy image. Not to mention I have to scroll sideway instead up and down for the trophy list.

Being able to see my trophy profile from any system (PS3, PSVita, PS4) was/is awesome.

The only awesome thing about it is how fast the UI is and seeing recorded videos when trophies are obtained is incredible - I still rewatch getting my Platinums to Demon's Souls and Astro's Playroom on PS5 often.

 

[RoboPlato]

I'm so glad all that obnoxious social stuff is gone. No matter what privacy settings I put on that stuff I would get random people arguing in the comments on my screenshots and it made everything slow and cluttered. It will not be missed

 

[terawatt]

Hopefully they fix the trophy stuff, the rest doesn't bother me too much.

 

[TitanicFall]

It's bizarre how few updates their have been since launch. No one should have worked on that UI and walked away thinking that they nailed it.

 

[Dark Ninja]

Honestly as long as things load up quickly im fine with it. Same thing with the Switch I dont want the ui to bog down my experience getting to the games or loading up the online store.

 

[AIan]

Really? The most relevant ones are a short PS button press away for PS4 titles, and right next to the activity cards for PS5 titles.
Long press and once right for the full trophy list.
Is that more cumbersome than on PS4?

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I don't like how:
1) it's horizontal on the PS5 not vertically stacked like it was for the PS4
2) to unhide trophies you have to hit the options for the trophy then go all the way to the bottom to unhide it (on the PS4 it was on the press of a button). I also miss when the individual trophies covered the entire screen rather than just a pop-up window...

 

[Lithium Flower]

I hate how easy it is to accidentally stumble across spoilers for a game thanks to the trending broadcasts section. Thanks, Sony.