With less than one month to go before the launch of the PlayStation 5, Sony today has finally given us our first look at the PS5 user interface.
One of the new features is called Control Center. Activated with a press of the PS button on your controller, the Control Center gives you quick access to your notifications, seeing who's online, controller settings, checking the status of downloads, and power controls.
The Control Center also contains a row of on-screen cards. These can include news stories from game publishers you're following, recent screenshots and videos you've captured from games, and something called "Activities".
Activities are different levels and challenges in a game that you can instantly jump into from the Control Center. These Activities can give you info like how much you've progressed in a level, how much time the PS5 thinks it'll take you to finish, and key objectives to perform.
Some objectives offer "Game Help", a benefit for PlayStation Plus subscribers that can give you hints and even video for help solving an objective, all without leaving the game. Some hints can be shown in a picture-in-picture mode or pinned to the side of your screen.
Tapping the Create button on the PS5's DualSense controller will bring up a photo interface that you can use to take up to 4K screenshots and video of the on-screen action to share later. The PS5 is always capturing recent content to help you save big moments, but this UI also helps when you compose a shot yourself.
The screenshot above shows the PS5's new Home screen. This is what you'll see when you start the console up when its powered off or when you want to choose a different game to play. Each game will have a hub that'll show Activities, video clips, stories about a game, DLC, and more.
The PS5's Home Screen will also include a section to the left of your games called "Explore" that'll have official news from PlayStation as well as from the games you're following.
And then there's the PlayStation Store, which is now completely integrated into the system rather than being a standalone app.