PS5's UI Will Let You See Game Missions, Multiplayer Without Launching Titles

Sony continues to gradually reveal new details about its next-generation console, now officially called the PlayStation 5. In an interview with Wired, the company opened up about the system's release window and some new features it'll boast, including improvements to game installation and user interface.

According to system architect Mark Cerny, PS5 will boast a "revamped" UI that will make it much easier to, say, see what multiplayer matches you can jump into or what single-player missions are available without having to load a game. As Cerny explains:

"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, 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."

As Sony had previously confirmed, the PS5 will also be ditching a standard hard drive in favor of a solid-state drive (much like Microsoft's next-gen Project Scarlett), which will dramatically reduce load times. That isn't the only way Sony will be improving the user experience, however. While game installs will still be mandatory on PS5, Sony says players will have more control over which aspects of a game they wish to install.

"Rather than treating games like a big block of data, we're allowing finer-grained access to the data," Cerny says. An example Wired mentions is only installing a game's multiplayer component, or installing the entire game and then deleting the single-player portion from your system once you've completed it.

PlayStation 5 is slated to launch Holiday 2020. There is still much we don't know about the console, but Sony recently confirmed that the PS5 controller will have haptic feedback, and porting specialist Bluepoint is working on a PS5 title. For more on the anticipated next-gen system, check out our roundup of everything we know about the PS5.