During Sony’s massive Future of Gaming showcase, people saw a glimpse of the PlayStation 5’s user interface (UI) with the official boot-up screen greeting the audience in the middle of the showcase. Many were surprised at the sudden tease and have grown to appreciate the little chime that coincides with the boot-up animation. Shortly after the showcase, Sony’s Vice President of UX (User Experience) Design Matt MacLaurin provided additional details about the entire operating system of the console on his LinkedIn page. MacLaurin left multiple comments saying people will see the UI “soon” and that the UI is a “100% overhaul” of the PS4’s dynamic menu.
MacLaurin went into the more technical details of the UI, claiming it uses a “whole new visual language and a complete rearchitecting of the user interface”. He made other bold claims about the UI, saying that the team is “obsessed with function” and that the PS5 could load the entire OS in milliseconds. Throughout his comments, MacLaurin stressed that the UI design philosophy applies emphasis on functionality and practicality. He considers the PS5 UI to be more “pragmatic” than the PS4 and offers new design concepts. As of right now, the UI team is currently tweaking the entire system before Sony decides to fully showcase it, but MacLaurin ultimately believes the reveal is not far.
While MacLaurin gave no hints of what the UI would actually do, players can hopefully imagine that they won’t need to beg Sony for basic features as much as they had to do in the early years of the PS4. Given MacLaurin’s ambitious claims, we might not see the familiar XMB format that graced the PS3, PSP, and, to a lesser extent, the PS4. That being said, Sony’s goal of leveraging the capabilities of the PS5’s SSD could translate to an incredibly fast UI that would accomplish a lot more than players expected. A feature I could easily see is multiple game suspensions like we have seen in the Xbox Series X earlier this year. Fortunately, we won’t have to wait much longer to see the whole thing in action.
