The PS5 interface remains a mystery. Although we’ve seen the PS5 console, DualSense controller, and a number of games, we don’t know anything about the PS5’s navigation system except for one screen.
However, a recent patent from Sony could give us an idea of the menu layout of the PS5. This time Sony wants to seamlessly integrate games, music, and videos into a menu that controls all aspects of the system.
The information comes from the Patent Office in the USA, and as you would think, the text is dense in a pretty way. Don’t try to read everything without a little caffeine, but the basic breakdown is as follows: Sony claims that most game systems subject users to too many different types of menus depending on what they play and see or listen to.
“By executing one of the programs, a user may want to run another program in parallel or start another program instead of the current program,” the patent says. However, entering instructions to run programs (e.g., an instruction to end execution) and entering such menu screens are generally clearly entered separately in terms of the user interface.
Therefore, when running parallel programs or when changing programs, a user must use a different user interface to perform these operations. On the other hand, there is a great need to develop uniform user interfaces with which various operations can be carried out in order to give a new user-friendly impression.
It’s a sip, but the basics are pretty easy to follow: game systems have radically different interfaces for different utilities, like playing a game or listening to music. This leads to friction losses when a user tries to switch between these utilities. The Sony patent provides a unified interface that users can launch from anywhere in the system.
Although the patent does not specifically mention the PS5, it looks very different from the PS4. The Game Launcher is fundamentally different from the music player, which differs fundamentally from the overlay of the music player during games. A unified interface would facilitate the use of these different elements and accelerate the switch between them.
(It is believed that this patent could enable technology similar to the Xbox Series X’s fast recovery feature and allow users to suspend multiple games at the same time. The patent does not specifically address this idea but would suspend it and make it easier to resume your application. In general, everything is possible.)
It should be noted that this patent is not just an application; the patent office issued it on June 23. Therefore, Sony can now integrate this technology into its devices. Will it be a PS4 update? A note about the PS5 interface? An ambitious project that Sony is abandoning? We’ll know by the end of the year.