The PlayStation 5 has been out in the wild for a full year now, those of us lucky enough to grab a hold of one have been experiencing the joys of next-gen power and the frustration of Sony’s baffling decisions. Those that haven’t managed to snag one are left wondering whether the elusive beast even exists. Anyway, here are my thoughts on the PS5 after a year with it.
Quality of Life
The PS5 hardware is truly amazing, it’s quiet, fast and really quite powerful. The PS5 software on the other hand is truly disappointing. This isn’t a criticism of PS5 games but rather the system software, which is worse than what is already available on the PS4. I previously stated in my review of the PS5 (I apologise for the shameless plug) that the PS5 OS should’ve been the same as the PS4’s, only faster.
Microsoft made the right decision to stick with the Xbox One OS for the Xbox Series because it meant that the console had many key features that wouldn’t otherwise be there at launch. When you think about it, it makes no sense to throw over 5 years of hard work down the drain to sell the gimmick of next-gen, especially when it comes at the expense of the consumer experience.
Instead of building on the excellent PS4 foundation Sony have opted to start fresh so that they could better sell the idea next-gen, as a result, we’re now almost a year into the PS5’s life cycle and the system is still missing basic features. Folders, themes, custom backgrounds, controlling the amount of content you see on your home screen…you can’t do any of this on PS5.
Even something as simple as the library is annoying, the design of it is fine, it’s similar to what we have on the PS4 just rearranged slightly. For some reason whenever you back out of the library it resets to default, so if you want your content arranged alphabetically you’ll have to manually do that each time you open the library. This might not seem like a big deal but without folders and the limit of content that can be displayed on the PS5 Home Screen, you’ll find yourself accessing the library a lot more often.
DualSense Nonsense
The DualShock 4 controller is one of the best selling video game accessories of all time and it wouldn’t surprise me if it was the best selling controller of all time. There’s a large number of DualShock controllers out there and a lot of them are being sold each month too, and yet Sony Interactive Entertainment doesn’t seem to want you to use it on the PS5.
You can use it to play PS4 games on PS5, it won’t work with any native PS5 games though, even cross-gen titles. Sony Interactive Entertainment claims that this is because the DualShock 4 doesn’t support any of the new DualSense features, which would be fair reason but there are two issues with this claim. The first is that you can disable all the new DualSense features from the System Settings and the second is that all native PS5 games can be played with a DualShock 4 controller when on Remote Play.
This tells us that the PS5 does have the ability to support the DualShock 4 natively, Sony just doesn’t want you to use it because they’d prefer for you to go buy the DualSense controller. Now you might be thinking “why would anyone want to use a PS4 controller on the PS5 when the DualSense is better?”
The thing is, whilst the DualSense controller is great it’s not really ideal for a lot of gamers for various reasons. I personally find the analogues to have far more resistance than the DualShock 4, which isn’t an issue most of the time. It’s only really noticeable on competitive and fast-paced first-person shooters like Apex Legends and DOOM Eternal.
Then there are all the Pro controllers for PS4 like the Razer Raiju and the Scuff range, all of which will essentially be obsolete on PS5, and finally, there’s the actual size of the DualSense. The DualSense is significantly bigger than the DualShock 4, which isn’t ideal for long sessions for those of us with smaller hands. Again, not a major issue but this wouldn’t even be an issue at all if Sony weren’t greedy.
Lacklustre First-Party Offerings
A lot of PlayStation fan(boys) are not going to be too happy when they read this but there really hasn’t been many great first-party tiles on PS5. I’ve played all of the first-party titles out so far except Sackboy: A Big Adventure and the majority of them have been disappointing. Part of the disappointment stems from the price, slapping a $70 price tag on a game will result in an increase in expectations and so far it’s hard to justify the price hike.
Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart and Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales are both really good games but both were also pretty short. In the case of Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales this was understandable because it wasn’t a full-price game, at least in the USA. Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, however, was a $70 game that could be completed in around 11 hours, this isn’t too far off previous games in the series but the $70 price tag did increase expectations and they simply weren’t met.
The Ratchet & Clank reboot for the PlayStation 4 was one of the best-received games of the PS4 era, it was slightly longer than Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart but it cost nearly half as much. Almost doubling the price of a sequel is certainly going to increase what you expect from it. The game itself isn’t bad but it’s not enough of a jump up in any area from the prequel.
Then there’s the remasters, Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered, Ghost of Tsushima Director’s Cut and Death Stranding Director’s Cut. These are three of the biggest releases on the PS5 to date and I can’t really justify any of them existing. “Director’s Cut” is just this gens pretentious way of saying remaster and given that none of those games is even five years old yet it’s pretty shameful.
Both the Ghost of Tsushima and Death Stranding Director’s Cut releases add some pretty significant content, which is available via upgrade paths or via an expansion, the PS5 version of the Ghost of Tsushima Director’s Cut expansion does however cost $10 more. For this, you get the standard improved performance and Japanese lip-sync, a feature which isn’t even implemented properly, as an exclusive feature because apparently, the PS4 version isn’t powerful enough to have it.
In the case of Death Stranding the Director’s Cut content isn’t available on PS4 at all and there’s nothing new that can’t be run on a PS4. It’s the same case with the Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade, which is essentially a bonus chapter and yet for some reason, it’s not available on the PS4. The two standout titles from PlayStation Studios are the Demon’s Souls remake and Returnal.
Demon’s Souls, which was the Brotaku game of the year for 2020, has sold over 1.4 million copies after almost a year on the market which isn’t really that great. By comparison, Bloodborne sold over 2 million copies on the PS4 within just 6 months. Returnal on the other hand has yet to sell a million copies, the last sales update had it 560,000 sold as of July 2021. Both of Demon’s Souls and Returnal are great games and both should have sold a lot more, they haven’t because of the price.
As much as I love those games, I can say without hesitation that neither of them is worth $70. It’s easy to say things like “it’s only $10 more” but for those of us that don’t live in the USA the $10 increase for next-gen games means that we’re paying between $90-110 for the base version of a PS5 game and there’s no game that will ever be worth that asking price.
Games like Deathloop, Demon’s Souls and Returnal are becoming less accessible due to the price, these aren’t titles that most gamers are going to jump on without hesitation, increasing the price of PS5 games means that gamers now have to pick and choose the titles they want to play, which isn’t a great thing given that the competition hasn’t increased prices and has their titles available on a subscription service.
The price increase, remasters of games less than 5 years old, gatekeeping of content for PS5 that can run on PS4 and charging extra for the PS5 version of games when other major publishers are including both the PS4 and PS5 versions of games in the standard editions of AAA games are a bad sign for the future of PlayStation.
Uncertainty
Going into the PS5 era it’s clear that Sony Interactive Entertainment wants to distance itself as much as possible from the PS4, everything from the colour change to the new PlayStation Store on browsers makes that intention clear. Whether this was to sell the idea of next-gen or to take a fresh approach, it’s not the smartest decision from PlayStation.
It’s created unnecessary problems for PlayStation, this obsession with selling the idea of next-gen has led to what feels like a barebones UI on PS5, a PlayStation Store experience on browsers that’s three to five steps behind what already existed and several anti-consumer moves like not being able to use a DualShock 4 natively for PS5 games.
In time I’m fairly confident that these features will be fixed, we’re already seeing minor improvements like the PS Store on PS5 having a new games section and improvements to backwards compatibility that doesn’t require you to have a native PS5 version to take advantage of the PS5 hardware.
The thing is, most of these are problems that shouldn’t have existed in the first place. Hardware-wise Mark Cerny has built something truly great, everything else however has been somewhat lacklustre.
Shaz from Pixel Swish: "The ROG Xbox Ally is another step towards Team Xbox’s 'Play Anywhere' strategy, and perfectly embodies the company’s future and how we’re all going to be playing an 'Xbox' in the future."
The funny thing about Xbox going more PC-like is that I’ve been saying this for over a decade and finally seeing it come to fruition. People use to hate the idea, but now are embracing it, and all I want is to be put on the payroll lol.
On a serious note, I think this is the best route going forward for MS. They don’t have to get out of the hardware game altogether. They can make their home console $300 entry & $600 premium home consoles and from there partner with other hardware makers for anything beyond that. Focus on being a publisher and creating a strong OS / Cloud option for other devices like desktop, handheld PCs, streaming devices, etc…
I honestly think they should also look into NVIDIA as well, with NVIDIA starting to make their own CPUs. Their CPU is already on par with AMDs best laptop CPUs of the previous/current generation which is more than enough, and a RTX 5000 / 6000 laptop GPU hybrid (DLSS 4 / DLSS5) could do wonders for them, and bring some much needed diversity back to console hardware.
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I don't know why you'd expect them to still develop new consoles at this point. Ditching all exclusives and putting the Xbox logo on a ROG Windows device is a pretty clear message.
This isn't a good thing for Xbox. It's a long winded goodbye.
For the same reason they still have a laptop hardware lineup even though they have Windows.
Having some kind of retail presence for visibility and marketing won’t really affect them in any way.
I still expect them to have 1 or 2 SKUs that they won’t sell at a loss but will continue the trend of selling way less than the competition (though its still selling millions), just like they have their Surface laptops even though they could happily coast knowing practically every third party out there (or the end consumer) will pay them for the Windows license
You realise thos indicates that their next xbox will be an xbox branded pc right? And will cost pc prices as a result. So look forwards to a 600 dollar and 1000 dollar version with vast performance differences, with the upper range having similar performance to the ps6 that will be like half its price. The 800 dollar rog ally x makes this abundantly clear.
I saw this years ago. I don't see how it took this long for people actually close to the industry.
I said this years ago, mind you I know nothing about computers, but I always thought Xbox would go more PC-like.
As I said, and always said, I know squat about PCs, so I thought Xbox would become modular. I don’t know if that’s the right word, but I thought they would build a basic frame/shell and gamers would be able to configure their Xbox how they wish, similar to PC and buy motherboards, sound cards and graphic cards. I don’t know if that’s practical or even possible though.
This was when they first entered the gaming space.
I think consoles are so cheap and punch above their weight is because everything is so tightly designed around each component. Opening up to multiple permutations with modules would probably make it more expensive to build, develop for, and manage. It's not impossible, but probably gets in that gray area where it's not much different than a garden variety PC.
Well to clear up my thought process on the matter, I figured they would every so often within a gen like a pro model system, give gamers the proprietary parts.
Let’s say the original Xbox they built it modular in mind, so certain parts they would manufacture newer slightly more powerful components. That way you can either stay with the original configuration, or swap out the parts you choose, building your own pro. Then when the next gen comes around a new even more powerful components that would put the system in the Xbox360 range. Then another half step to tweak your system to a pro of that gen.
I guess similar to how I see people here talking about new 4080 cards, I’m just making up an example, and every so often people mention nother with a number larger than the last indicating it’s more powerful.
I understand what you’re saying about how it’s much easier to just have a closed system, and much cheaper. It was just something I thought might happen when Microsoft introduced the first Xbox.
"First-person roguelikes like Gunfire Reborn and Roboquest can be quite fun when done well. Another such game is MythForce, which comes from Beamdog, the developer that brought Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 to modern platforms (while mostly ditching the co-op). MythForce features cartoon-like visuals and a fantasy theme, making it quite different from most of its peers. It will soon reach its "final form" via the upcoming Version 1.2 update," says Co-Optimus.
Today, SCS Software officially announced Project Coaches, the next evolution for Euro Truck Simulator 2, adding buses to the game.
My take after owning one for a while:
Pros:
-Good launch games that show off hardware
-DualSense is a significant upgrade over the DualShock
-Great performance
-Quiet
-Back Compat w/ most ps4 games
-usb-c port on the front is great
-3D audio is cool
-load times are fast
-good games coming in the near future
Cons:
-Physically and comically huge - even compared to my Series X
-Often lower resolution than Series X on multiplat games (a bit less gpu power)
-Stock SSD is an annoying size.
-Complete lack of dashboard customization - no organization or even wallpaper capabilities. Not super intuitive either.
-media capture share options are extremely limited
-cloud saves/capture saves, game versioning/upgrades etc are straight up brutal compared to Series X
-DualSense battery could be bigger
Ok ill bite mostly cause I'm bored. I know this seems cliche and specially on n4g but I want to say 1st that I'm more of an xbox player than ps5 that being said I was able to get a ps5 1st and it has been awesome alot of the things in ur opinion in mine have been great.
S9.breaking it down
Quality of life: honestly I never liked the ps4 ui so I'm good on this new 1 certain simple things take a sec to get used 2 but overall very satisfied plus alot of the old features I never used so no biggie 4 me I do missed the web browser but that's a me issue tho and more so to do with psvr on why I used it. The library I did notice that minor issue the yesterdayday when I was scrolling thru my library thought it was odd but I hadn't noticed it since march.
I will point out the speed upgrade for loads on games is fantastic (genshin impact) I hopped on the pro for my daughter and fast travel was not as fast as I'm use 2 now.
Dualshock: I admit I knew nothing of remote play that u can use the controller on any game that's interesting but helpful to know while I haven't used remote play in the future that info will come in handy I have a 5year old and the smaller controllers work better for his hands while the sense feels great in mine plus I Don't lik Mr. Sticky fingers on my red controller.
1st party: I disagree the games have been amazing there hasn't been an over abundance which is cool for me cause my gaming time is limited now but there has been been fair amount put out thru last year and the price truth be told I did not know I buy my games second hand or on sale I have those kids and it's a must when u hav to buy 2 to 3 copies of every game heck the returnal I got a week after release at the pawn shop for 30bucks which thinking about it I did know they were 70 cause I looked it up then and seen 70 to see if it was worth it and wondered why that store was charging more but figured they was trying to get over. But the price doesn't hurt the quality and I'd argue it's worth it but again I'm not paying full price.lol
Uncertainty: while I look at it wish it was a different color no biggie overall the system has far passed my expectations and then some so much so that I haven't opened up my X yet since I got it in July so the ps5 since the day it was sitting on the Meijer shelf in March has Certainly been a bright spot for me and I can't wait to see what else comes out.
To be honest this article is a complete rubbish. A friendly suggest to readers, don't waste your time to read this.
Some of this is fair, some of this is general issues ($70 is same on XB & Square is trying it on PC), and some seems more like "This just in: being an early adopter isn't the best experience".
And let's not forget, Xbox changed their user interface drastically so many times on both the 360 & XBO I kind of lost count. They would have been insane to try something new after literally just settling on one. I hated trying to navigate that thing; with as little as I used it, I felt like something always moved, or was in a nonsensical place. I do think Sony throwing out the entire UI design may have been a bad call, but I also think changing things can be good - some of the features, like putting trophy info front-and-center when hitting the home button, seem useful. Maybe they could have bolted that onto the current PS4 interface, but I can't say for sure sticking with the old would be the best call either.
I haven't bought a PS5 yet because I will use it mostly as an exclusives machine, and a few games aren't worth that price yet. By the time there are enough, the early games will be cheap (helping to fix the expensive game issue). And Sony is showing a willingness to bring titles to PC, so I am trying to figure out how hard they're going to lean into that.
I already was primarily a PC gamer, but I bought an XBO when Spencer said XB is important, it'll have exclusive games because that is important to the identity and to its gamers...and then a couple months later, he did a complete 180 and my purchase became worthless. I don't want that to happen again. So that's kind of a con, I guess, though I still can't run out to the store and buy a PS5, so that matters quite a bit less lol.