The PlayStation 5 UI Has Been Revealed

In a surprise State of Play this morning, Sony revealed exactly what the PlayStation 5 UI looks like and what the User Experience will be.

Just like we heard earlier this year, the UI has been completely redesigned, with a cleaner look and a number of new features that aim to make the experience truly next-gen. One of the new features of the PS5 is the Control Center. While in a game, pressing the PS button on the controller will bring up the Control Center, giving you easy access to just about all of the features of the system without taking you out of the game.

Activities are another key new feature of the PS5 User Experience. Activities are shown in the Control Center as cards, with each one giving you a glimpse at something for you to do in the game that you’re playing. Through Activity cards, you can jump right into a specific level in a game, keep track of your progress in a level, see things that you might have missed while playing, and more. During the State of Play, this was demonstrated with Sackboy: A Big Adventure. Several cards were shown, with some of them highlighting levels that had not been completed yet and how much longer it would take to complete them based on the player’s personal play style. For added convenience, you’re able to put the cards on the screen, picture-in-picture style, or even pin them to the side of the screen so that you can keep an eye on them as you play.

PlayStation Plus subscribers will be able to take advantage of a special feature called Game Help. This allows them to watch a video or look at screenshots in an Activity card that shows them how to accomplish a task that they may be having trouble with.

Parties have also gotten some new functionality on the PlayStation 5. When a friend creates a party, a notification will appear allowing you to join without leaving the game. Once in the party, you can Screen Share your gameplay with other party members, allowing them to watch you while they continue to play their game. In addition, you can also jump into games with your friends directly through the Control Center, allowing you to join them in a matter of seconds. This was demonstrated in the State of Play with the player switching from Sackboy: A Big Adventure to Destruction All-Stars seamlessly. When this happened, no message came up saying that Sackboy: A Big Adventure would be closed, so it’s possible that you can have multiple games suspended at once.

We got a brief look at the PS5’s Create feature during the video as well when the player took a screenshot and shared it to the party. Screenshots and videos are able to be captured in 4K on the PS5. Voice dictation is also available as well for messages that you choose to send.

Last but not least, we got to see the PS5 home screen. It’s a far cleaner and pleasant screen to look at than the current one on the PS4. There are separate screens for all your game focused applications and your media applications, but today we only saw the game screen. Hovering over each game causes the background to feature art from the game, and it also brings up different Activity cards related to the game.

The PlayStation Store now has its own dedicated tab on the home screen that’s built directly into the system, so you no longer have to open the store as its own separate application. While we didn’t get a look at the full store during the video, we do know that the store will be faster thanks to the SSD, as well as more personalized.

With the reveal of the UI, we now know just about everything there is to know about the PlayStation 5. The past few weeks have given us a teardown of the system, information on how backwards compatibility works, and hands-on impressions from Japanese influencers and media. There are still some things that we don’t know much about, such as what exactly the Create button on the controller will be able to do, but we have a pretty clear picture of what we’ll be getting from the console. Those details are sure to come in the next few weeks as the console’s launch is right around the corner.