First Look: PS4’s New UI Revealed

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First Look: PS4’s New UI Revealed

With just hours to go until PS4’s debut in North America, it’s time to take a closer look at PS4’s new UI — it’s a slick little piece of work dubbed the Connected User Experience. Sony Network Entertainment Vice President Eric Lempel gave me a full tour, showing off PlayStation Store’s speedy response time (even mid-game), live game broadcasting via Twitch and UStream, and social feeds that show what your friends are buying and watching. But that’s just a start: Check out Eric’s video tour below.

Another new feature worth calling out is Play As You Download, which enables PlayStation Store users to start playing supported games after downloading a portion of the game’s data, leaving the rest of the game to download in the background.

With PS4 debuting nationwide tonight, many of you will have a chance to get plenty of hands-on time. Try it out and let us know what you think in the comments!

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52 Comments

  • please add customization options like wallpaper or at least where you can change the color. i love the blue but it sucks that you cant change it to lets say, red.

  • These features are epic, waiting patiently this will be 1 of the greatest days for me. PS4 day 1 shipping I’m out!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  • Things I would like to see down the road

    1) a patch to turn off the light on the remote as most TV’s are mirrors.
    2) Allow us to overlay music on shared videos via Music Unlimited

    Question

    Does “Live from PlayStation” allow us to watch friends gameplay even if they do not start Twitch or uStream? AKA is it a part of the Playstation system.

  • There was a PS4 video a few months back that showed a guy playing in his garage, and it looked like he had a custom sub-group on his friends list. Is this possible? With the increase to a possible 2,000 friends, filtering through them would be less than desirable, just like the current download history list. If I have multiple clans across different games, it would be very beneficial to have them sorted at all times. Am I able to make a group within my list for my Killzone clan, and another group for my Battlefield clan, my real life friends, etc.?

    And yea, please add wallpaper support in the future as well. Everything else looks very smooth, and it’s a great improvement over the XMB. Thanks, Sid, Eric.

  • that dude is wicked boring but the interface does look sweet. looking forward to no lag when accessing my messages in game. hope it will play psn games from my ps3 account..

  • you should be able to group your friends in to categories . that’s stellar idea.

  • I love a lot of this and I can’t wait to get my PS4 in a couple hours, but I was hoping the store would be… different, but oh well. Still love it.

  • Thank you for finally showing off the PS4 PS Store, though I’m surprised the design is mostly the same as the PS3 store. I thought it would something more extravagant

  • Does anyone know if we can “share” video and pics straight to PSN for our friends to see in the “what’s new” area without requiring facebook or twitter accounts?

  • it does seem .. cluttered. like there’s information in boxes all over the place with no clear design hierarchy.
    (much like this sony blog)

  • Wish you had show more of it. Oh well, less than 24 hours and I don’t need this video anyway.

  • @10: That’s the “in” design today. I don’t like it. Many have adopted that and it’s lame. I like uniform design.

  • It looks really good and snappy i am satisfied :) i am on my way out now to pick up my PS4 at 12 at my local Gamestop i wish everyone a happy new gen gaming #GreatnessAwaits

  • New UI looks pretty good. Love the increased speed on mulitasking and psn store. just hope the web browser is better than ps3, so i can use it to access online guides during gaming. :)

  • Looks great. Really hope Youtube and Google + support is added soon (don’t want a FB account).

  • Welcome back Mr. Eric Lempel!

    But yes please add customizable wallpapers and dynamic themes!

  • Would really like a customizeable UI, different color backgrounds, ability to change the background music with preset ambience, or your own. Customization should take precedence with the UI. I like it, don’t get me wrong, but I also like the idea of being able to customize it whenever I want. I guess it’s a show-off feature. :)

  • Please for the love of all, do not load every single game I play into a single horizontal menu!

    Otherwise, looks good. Agree about custom wallpaper and the like.

  • Saw earlier on you-tube cant wait.

  • People I’m sure there will be wallpapers and themes down the road. Remember the PS3 didn’t get themes and wallpapers at launch

  • Beautiful.

  • Awesome but here are a few suggestions…

    1. Backport these changes and enhancement to the PS3

    2. Create a video and audio chat service that allow chatting between ps4 and with ps3, psvita, android, ios, mac, and windows

    3. Bring video unlimited to android, ios, and pc

    4. Allow upload to YouTube

    Thanks.

  • Greatness awaits in just over two hours!

  • Can we get a panel on trophies that shows us how many of a certain Trophy Rarity we have?

    Organizing games that have been downloaded or do I have to search for them?

    Voice commands to launch downloaded games or jump to their information page?

    PSOne Support?

    PS2 Support?

    PSP Support?

    DLNA?

  • I wish there were some more customization options, but not bad for just starting out! So very excited…will be seeing this for myself in just a few short hours….

  • I really need and answer from somebody @PlayStation,

    Movies that we have purchased on PS3 (I have 23) wll we be able to back them up and have them on PS4 or even re-download them?

  • The UI looks absolutely amazing. However, I think the folks behind the Cadillac User Experience (and the lawyers at GM) might take umbrage with its name…

  • Christian Jones, male model, may want to check on the security of his account because someone else entirely is broadcasting Knack with his name.

  • My biggest pet peeve about the PS3 was endless swirling icons. This looks a lot better, but I still saw swirling icons. This console has eight processor cores and 8GB of memory. Nothing should swirl for more than half a second.

    Glad to see the store loads instantly instead of taking 30 seconds, but it still looks like a confusing mess. Gigantic image-based layouts that waste screen real estate and make it difficult to figure out where to click (and what will happen when you click). The menu sections still have vague, incomprehensible titles and a complete lack of a “Latest” section to show you the newest additions to the store. I used to love coming to the store every week to see the latest stuff. Now I don’t even bother checking. The original PS3 store was still the best. All the latest stuff in one section, with folders for lesser stuff like wallpapers or avatars. Quick, easy, intuitive.

  • So super excited with my new PS4. Downloaded new 1.50 and now has been 30 mins looping unable to sign into PSN so I can start playing on my ID. This is so not good.

  • Could you guys maybe update the PS Vita UI so it looks more like the PS4? Maybe update the PSN Store too :)

  • Super Irritated. Just got my midnight release, and as I work out of town and live in hotels, tried to connect it to wifi at hotel.

    With the PS3, you have to open the web browser first and “log in” on hotels wifi webpage before you can log in to PSN.

    With the PS4, you have to be logged into the PSN before it will let you open the web browser. So I’m unable to connect mine, catch-22. I can’t log into PSN, as it gives an error. I can’t open browser, because I’m not logged in to PSN.

    When I do a connection test, it passes, because it can grab an IP address, but it’s blocked from going further.

    Someone please tell me there is a work around, as I’m tempted to return the thing.

  • its not even allowing me to play

  • Looks to me like Sony is trying to hard.

    What I don’t like:

    1) Movies in the cloud. You know Sony, over 60% of the US has no access to High Speed internet. hopefully you can download them.

    2) 2 Big “Music Unlimited” and “Video Unlimited” buttons taking up prime real estate. The PS3 has enough icons you can’t remove, but at least they are hidden in a category.

    3) Information overload, way to cluttered. I wonder what it looks like if you have no friends list or facebook account to like to.

    4) The whole interface looks like an updated Roku menu.

  • using ps4 to send this ._ its smooth Ireally like it the browser is waaaay better

  • playing around with it right now.

    things I liked:
    – the OS menu setup just like the XMB, only the presentation’s stacked instead of a cross-ish thing.
    – Store’s way more responsive than I expected. Still hope there’s a way to show more games per page though.
    – Sixaxis control for the keyboard is surprisingly good. But can there be an option to adjust its sensitivity? As in adjust the horizontal and vertical sensitivity separately?

    things I hope can be added:
    – an option to sort the icons in the menu maybe? I would’ve liked the Library on the left-most end, or at least near the games that are downloading.
    – option to use the touchpad for navigation. either to scroll left-right, and/or up-down. This was the number-one application that I hoped it would be used for.
    – a way to prioritize certain items for download. (or maybe i just hadn’t found it yet?)

  • This is awesome, I didn’t pre-order but I’ll be getting this console when I start working again. I love how the features of the PS4 is social networking based, I just wonder if your profile can be more personalized.

    Like for example I don’t like how in the PS3 “About Me” section can barely fit a single thought let along a blurb about yourself. The other thing is allowing sub-accounts to become master accounts, that’s more of a design aspect than an OS thing.

  • I forgot to mention it would be cool to have social networking aliases section, to let people know about your YouTube channel or Twitter accounts.

  • Is it possible right now for sub accounts to brodcast their own gameplay? I made a dummy account a loong time ago and have been using the sub account for all my stuff. In the parental controls there doesn’t seem to be anything that’d allow for my sub account to brodcast gameplay.

  • If I’m seeing that video right the UI already needs a cleanup. All the games you have installed are presented in a long line you scroll through linearly? It just seems cumbersome. Other than that, once again I ask to please bring DLNA and Suspend/Resume in an update ASAP.

    I checked out the launch event at The Standard in NYC last night, it was awesome! Very well done, didn’t buy one because I was expecting Amazon to bring my BF4 bundle today. Amazon dropped the ball and my “release day delivery” isn’t arriving until next week, *sigh*.

  • Please add an option to change background!! It would be awesome if I could use my live Afrika background from my ps3, or at least be able to change the color!

  • Hey, how about showing the PS Vita some love? Can we get the OPTION to change to this AMAZING UI? Because, Sony, you are showing the PS Vita about 5% love right now, we need you to step your game up severely, from the beginning I believed you’d do what it took to make the PS Vita sell, but you have not, you are letting the Nintendo 3DS DESTROY you, it’s to the point where I’m glad I kept my PS Vita box and AR cards intact because I’m about to sell that crap, that’s what the PS Vita is, CRAP. I look at the DS and I’m like, “Wow, there’s a WHOLE rack of games for sale, I wonder how much PS Vita games there are, wanna know? 1 Row, just one, and that’s like 5 games. That is terrible, you guys aught to be ashamed of yourselves. Start listening to your players and customers, they will help you build a better gaming experience and help you make money. (Because we know that’s all you care about)

  • Incredible, it really is! But PLEASE, let us be able to change our PSN ID names !!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Otherwise I would create another PSN user to play at PS4 however with no trophies and previous data at all !!!

  • Love the new UI. Very fast and easy to navigate. My only complaint is the large icons scattered amongst my games. It would be nice if it had separate rows for different categories. Such as top row be strictly games with the What’s New Icon in front as it is. Push down arrow and go to second row with TV/Video, Live from Playstation, Video unlimited. On down to the third row with web browser and so on. I just think it would look cleaner and not have to scroll through what will one day be a huge collection of games to find TV/Video when I want it.

  • I do like the rarity trophy feature but I am dissapointed in many aspects with the new console.

    I cannot add an external drive/ flash drive
    I cannot change the background
    I cannot play music from existing library
    I cannot play movies ( like Ps3) unless i have a dvd

    There are a lot of upgrades as in game quality ( Killzone), the PSN network auto updates, and controller. otherwise although the new features are great, having some of the old features mainly external drive support and media from the flash drive would be a software update away…

  • Please add Google + and or Youtube support. I really have no interest in uploading videos or posting screenshots to Facebook.

  • An option to put in the “power save” section later: instead of turning off, putting the console in sleep mode after a set time. This way we don’t lose our game and the system consumes less power.

  • Is there a video chat on PS4? I know there’s a party chat.
    Thanks

  • Oh by the way, LOVING MY PS4!!!!

  • Everything great. But please need CUSTOM WALLPAPERS and COLORED BACKGROUNDS PLEASE. I Hate the Blue background sick of it already. Thanks Please update this asap.

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