4 PlayStation 5 features that (probably) won’t matter
UHD 4K Blu-ray Player
It’s nice that the PlayStation 5 has a UHD Blu-ray disc player, but it isn’t a major feature. More people than ever are streaming their video, and buying discs is fading. And if you do love your UHD Blu-ray collection, you already have a player.
8K
I hate that we are talking about 8K at all. This is a useless spec for televisions. You do not sit close enough to a TV to see the difference between 4K and 8K. Trying to render games at 8K is a waste of resources, and everyone involved here should know better.
Game-aware interface
One of the new features that Cerny talked about is an updated user interface that knows what is going on in your games. Here’s how he explained it:
“Even though it will be fairly fast to boot games, we don’t want the player to have to boot the game, see what’s up. Multiplayer game servers will provide the console with the set of joinable activities in real time. Single-player games will provide information like what missions you could do and what rewards you might receive for completing them—and all of those choices will be visible in the UI. As a player you just jump right into whatever you like.”
That’s a neat feature. Few people are going to use it. Gaming fans want to know what their friends are doing more than any of that other stuff. This is why Discord is so popular. It provides a fast and easy way to see what your friends are playing and have played recently.
PlayStation 5’s UI should emphasize that.
Choosing which game modes to install
Cerny also talked about how the SSD in the PS5 enables developers to more easily break games up into distinct chunks. The example he used is that you could delete the single-player mode after beating it so that only the multiplayer is taking up storage space.
I’ll love this if it works, but I’m skeptical. It’s going to require studios and publishers to support it. And as more games turn into always-online live-services, I’m not sure how many more releases will even have separate single-player and online modes. Maybe this will get some use in Call of Duty.
