The store was terrible, though. Their Cell “supercomputer” could play advanced 3D games, but couldn’t handle rendering a web store. Chalk it up to the amazing ability of web UI and JavaScript to make everything feel slow. They should have stuck with a native UI for that generation, I’d bet it lost them lots of sales. Practically unusable.
But I do agree, the blades UI design-wise was pretty good and achieved far more information density than the crossbar PlayStation UI. But when in-game I wouldn't describe any of the UI as speedy.
I love seeing bits and pieces of the original UI that were clinging on by necessity, namely the firmware upgrade screen. It was likely made immutable at the cost of UI updates.
I think FW update splash is not running the full OS and it only displays static image for simplicity, XMB never used static image as background.
Relevant PA: https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2007/03/02/joy-and-joy-un...
The PS4-alike redesign was definitely way way worse though.
Oh god, I didn't even think anyone could ever say such a sentence. After years with XMB on PS3 and PSP, the Vita's interface felt like a bit of a joke imho - I remember opening my Vita on launch day and literally thinking this is just wrong, I even googled if there's any way to change it to XMB interface.
It was easy to use, sure, but it was just....too much. And once you had several games it just became a complete mess. The menus themselves were ok though.
Playstation has some of the most immersive single player experiences available today, on any platform. For the older gamers, who can't stand playing multiplayer games, the PS5 has been incredible.
If I buy a console from them, every day they could decide that they deserve to wring even more money out of me, through more and more intrusive ads and dark patterns like described above.
If I buy a game from them, every day they could decide that I won't be able to play it anymore tomorrow, like they tried with Helldivers 2 and Linux users.
If I finish a game from them, when releasing a sequel they could decide that I won't be allowed to finish the story because players simply must log into their unnecessary social network which isn't even available on all platforms, like they did with GoW Ragnarok and Linux users.
Why should anyone accept this?
Idle pleasures trump most people's weak principles and self-respect.
A game console purchase is not a partnership, it's an I-own-this-device-so-you-fuck-right-off.
Can you even insert second hand disks into consoles anymore or is it all online?
I don't feel that this invalidates my previous point, though.
> Playstation has some of the most immersive single player experiences available today, on any platform.
Playstation is struggling hard, same as Xbox this generation. PS5 has like 3 exclusives, two of which are Fromsoftware RPGs you can emulate and the other one is probably some censored Senran Kagura rerelease (I genuinely forget what it is). Xbox doesn't fare much better, and both OEMs are scrambling to publish on PC after their own sales slump hard enough to justify laying off entire studios[0] or pulling games a week after release[1]. It's downright pathetic compared to the halcyon days of the PS3, and enough to make the PS4 and Xbox One years look at least... competitive. The two big console manufacturers are lame ducks doing their best to avoid each other, and fostering exactly the sort of lock-in they need to promote recurring service revenue and blatant advertising onto their users.
It's just a harsh fact of the gaming industry, right now. Everyone wants to be Nintendo, but nobody has the money to invest in their studios that they bought up during the last generation. Now we get Concord and Starfield as next-gen consolation prizes, lucky us. If the trend of studio layoffs continues, the AAA games industry is going to go anemic.
[0] https://www.pushsquare.com/news/2024/06/xbox-explains-why-it...
[1] https://ftw.usatoday.com/2024/09/concord-shutting-down-sony-...
The existence of a backdoor into a console where arbitrary payloads not always in Sony's control can be pushed is a huge deal.
Therefore, the existence of ads on a purchased platform is a canary in a coal mine for enshittification.
Right, I don't buy Sony products because they secretly installed rootkits on their users' machines which introduced security exploits, and then denied this fact, and then when forced to address it they just hid the rootkit better while also introducing a new rootkit that also harvested your personal information and introduced new exploitable security vulnerabilities of its own: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootk...
Don't be surprised at Sony's behavior. They're a sociopathic hypercorp, and just like all the other sociopathic hypercorps they'd grind you into a fine paste to make a dollar.
I can't be the only person who thinks Sony's interface design is just plain hostile. I've used a PS4 as a media machine of sorts for a long time, mostly for Youtube. I recall being able to pin used applications in the past but you can't do that anymore. You need to go to the media folder where you are presented with their current streaming offers and need to scroll down to YouTube or Plex.
It's a far cry from the awesome, snappy and easy to use Vita bubbles interface. Combined with forcing PC users to log in with their PSN account to play offline games and I'm simply not buying anything from this company anymore.