Disgruntled at Sony

Hello,

I have been a Playstation gamer for years by now (PS3 and PS4). I have been always happy with my PS4 (still am), but I'm starting to get a bit disgruntled at Sony for their lack of interest in the community or their requests simply because they feel comfortable as market leaders.

So many requests regarding the UI and just makes things more convenient and simple are being ignored (as it seems from the 3.00 system update notes). I'm not talking about changing PSN ID or region (while those would be nice, I don't really care about them; my PSN ID doesn't affect my experience for instance), but more about the simple things such as, for instance, showing a trophy's description after one gets it so that I don't have to - everytime - pause the game and press the PS button to then be taken to the trophy section and only then to see the description, then double-click the PS button to return to game. I understand that nothing is "a simple edit" when it comes to system modifications, but such a thing is only logical for new consoles. One can count numerous other small tweaks that would make the experience on PS4 much better and/or make it more personal, such as (copied from the internet):

** Display the controller battery status on the dashboard near the clock
** Customizable UI backgrounds and themes
** Allow the ability to pause downloads/uploads and sort their priority (these are doable but are a huge hassle as they require workarounds; paused downloads resume automatically when in rest mode unless you fail them and priority is set by doing some brain acrobatics to pause and unpause downloads in the correct sequence)

.. you get the gist.

And what's sad is that the PS4, as a console, has so much potential! It just needs some care and attention to improve further and keep pace with the competition. And what disappoints me further is that Yoshida himself (and I bet others on the PS team) are gamers, and I would expect them to understand us gamers and understand our basic wants and needs.

What adds salt to the injury is that, given the PS4's lack of interest in revamping the system OS and UI, their lack of exclusives in the near future (not that I blame them for it, exclusives come and go), abundance of exclusives on X1's side, X1's huge and apparent efforts at improving their game and revamping their OS and UI and pricedrops/bundles, friends/acquaintances are recently migrating from PS4 to X1. While I'm not fully dependent on playing online games with friends, it's nice to have the ability to do so as a means for virtual social gatherings. Now, however, I'm becoming the sole PS4 owner within my social circle.

I'm not saying the Playstation 4 doesn't play well, it's an amazing game console. I'm also not saying we are not getting new features, but the last time we got something that mattered was with update 2.50 which was a while ago (can't recall when exactly). I don't expect them to overhaul their OS, or to tackle all the "little things" in one sudden update, but it would be nice to get gradual updates that fulfill some of our logical requests, or the doable ones of those at least (I mean, I'd love backwards compatibility for example - the PS3 I used was my friends so I no longer have it - but I understand that it's not doable, for instance).

It's a shame that the #betterpsn movement just faded into the dark.

What do you think, do you think that Sony is really slacking off in terms of supporting their community's gaming needs? Or do you think otherwise?

~ Deut

Display battery status - Pointless, hold PS button for 3 secs and look at bottom left I think.

Customise UI - I don't want to learn a new UI every update and I don't care, its a gaming console, not a "look at my new UI console"

Themes - Yeah I want to sit on my ass staring at all the pretty visuals and colours (I'm being sarcastic if you didn't get it).

@GTR12: Well, I respect your opinion.

But (1) those were just examples (which I obviously agree with, but there's also other things to improve) and (2) you've got nothing to lose by such additions (you can keep or use everything at their current default, such as keeping the default theme or holding PS button to see battery) while others have something to gain (such as myself, a person who actually likes a "pretty" user interface).

@deuterium: i personally think it's silly, you can hold the power button for a few secs and you can see it. I don't have any issues with the UI

The Xbone UI isn't great, I have had one since launch. I wouldn't want Sony to change the UI based on the current Xbone UI. The upcoming new Win10 UI I have no comment on because I haven't tested it yet. The PS4 UI is kind of barebones, definitely, but it's snappy and speedy and it's the best UI of the current gen so far (I like my Wii U UI which is reminiscent of the Wii UI, but the damn loading between settings and options is too much of a pain). That could change with the Win10 UI Xbone, but who knows. IMO, they will roll that out and take at least a year of updates to polish it to a respectable level.

BTW, Gamespot.com talked about the Xbone UI/OS and like other websites, they weren't impressed. The Xbone UI looks pretty in pictures, but it's a different story when you need to change something simple in the options. I've had my Xbone since launch, so I've obviously gotten used to the UI, but that doesn't mean it's good. In fact, I still don't know how to remove "followers" that I never wanted. Gamespot.com reviewed the Xbone UI after a full year of it being on the market with the Xbone anniversary special. Sure, the Xbone UI is pretty in screenshots, but using the Xbone UI is a different story. The incredibly slow installs are just another issue on Xbone that I won't even go into:

That's not to say Sony can't improve the PS4 UI, because clearly they can. I just wanted to denounce the Xbone UI as an example you used as something they should modify towards. One of the reasons the Xbone UI keeps getting revamped and updated is because the UI was shipped in a very rough state, lacking features, and it needed repairs.

I never got to sort my downloaded games on the PS3 in alphabetical order so I'm not really surprised by any lack of ideal customization with the PS4. Pity though as so many little things would make the experience that much better.

I can't do that on any of the home consoles (Wii, Wii U, 360, Xbone, PS3, PS4) and it's something I wish I could do with the amount of games I have (hundreds upon hundreds). I agree it would make the experience that much better.

You know something I've noticed that I don't like about the PS4 is that the screenshot icon shows up in screenshots. They need to fix that fast. It's pretty annoying. And they should let you view your trophies offline and watch your purchased movies and TV shows offline. And make it so that the console automatically connects to your Wi-Fi if your Ethernet is unplugged. Also make the screenshots PNG quality or at least high quality JPEG shots. The current quality is very poor. Same with the 720p video capture.

The trophy description pop-up would be nice to have and, not trying to copy Microsoft so much, but it would also be nice to have a percent complete for each trophy.

@The_Last_Ride: I understand that that option may not be useful to you, but it could (and would) be useful to many others. I, for one, just hop onto the PS4 and start playing (honestly, even if it take a 3 second press to see the batter status, I don't think of it), only to then find my self in the middle of an online game with the "low battery" warning. How much more convenient it would be to just have a tiny battery icon on the corner of your home screen? And again, as I told @GTR12, you don't lose anything by such an addition, many others benefit.

@SolidTy: I'm not saying "let's have a UI like X1's", but they are putting effort into improving it and I think PS4 should also do likewise. I love the PS4 UI, but it needs some improving (as you agree). Since you are familiar with the X1, you can notice how every month after an update you automatically notice the "tiny" new features here and there. PS4 should do likewise and keep those new features coming.

@shrek: Could that be a bug? It doesn't show up on mine (I'm looking at one right now). And I agree with all your points.

I agree, I nominated that as something that needs to be changed on #betterpsn. And I don't care about "copying Microsoft". If MS does something better, learn from them and improve on it.

@deuterium: There's no point in having a redundant icon on the home screen, also how would you propose they show it if you have 7 controllers connected?

Having them all show on the home screen is gonna look messy.

@GTR12: Each controller is accessed through one profile. Each profile could have it's one icon. Anyways, you're focusing too hard on the small picture and one example instead of looking at the bigger one.

No I'm not, if I have my friends over and we decide to play FIFA 3v4 or whatever, we are all using 1 account to play, how would you display every controllers battery status on the home screen?

you can just check the battery in the breaks? I don't see the problem

@deuterium: they do pop up in yours too. You have to hit the screenshot button after the screenshot icon appears, and it'll show up in the screenshots.

Sony as a Japanese company gets pretty complacent every time they are on top. It gets tiresome. Nintendo does it too. But nobody tries so hard to make that wheel go round as Sony does. They do a lot wrong, but they do listen to the community. There are community projects they listen to and even start up themselves... #BetterPSN, PS+ poll, Shenmue remake project, ect. So they hear us. Their problem is they ignore us a lot of times, lol.

in my experience of sony products they've never been great at user experience, it's not just a console thing. but yeah there's definitely room for improvement in the ps4's ui and what you can and can't do as a user