evan23

I have had a backlog for so long I don't remember what it was like to not have one.

On a positive note, I am reaching a point in my life where I am starting to have a little more time to play games.

As for me, I have mixed feelings. I like the convenience of digital and I like all the things you can do with physical media that you can't do with digital media. I also like being able to capitalize on both digital and physical game sales.

I have a mix of both and I am pretty happy with that situation. A digital only world would cause to miss out on a lot.

@elvisfan1 In this case I think it is less about removing features and more about not having enough time to implement them yet.

It just feels more like an early beta than a finished release.

@DM666 Isn't "Other" the OS and system cache?

I am sure they will get it fixed eventually but the PS5 interface has a lot of bugs at launch. While I can see how this one could have slipped through since it doesn't always happen, many of them are more obvious and must have been noticed.

It seems pretty clear that Sony wasn't ready to release this UI.

@Arugula You can also make the microphone muted by default in settings so it is only enabled if you manually unmute it.

It sounds like I am the only person who does this. I hate having live mics around me unless I am actively speaking to someone.

For my hands, it is better than any Sony controller I have ever used, it is just more comfortable to hold for long periods of time.

On top of that, it is filled with fairly cool technology. Although I think the haptic feedback is worthwhile, the adaptive triggers are definitely my favorite addition.

@get2sammyb I am with you, I think it is OK overall. To be honest, I am not really sure what people are expecting.

It really isn't the best selection for me personally but I don't think it is bad overall. I will probably try JC4 at some point.

For those that are complaining about overlap with PS Now keep in mind the vast majority of Playstation owners don't have PS Now.

If your choice is to subscribe to all the big subscription services like PS Now and EA Play you probably aren't going to get as much value but I don't really think that is the target audience for PS Plus games.

Although, I don't agree with it, I understand why someone might be in a position where they would pay an absurd premium to get a next-gen console.

If you pay £99 for a £30 charging station you either have so much money you don't care about it or are terribly stupid.

I mean, it isn't even remotely needed to enjoy the console. It is just a convenience accessory.

@carlos82 I think there are situations where it could make sense.

For example, lets say you play the game but you don't let your children play it for whatever reason.

I know there were times when my children were younger where I had to be nervous that they would come in and see something they shouldn't. That is much more of an issue with nudity/sex than with violence. With violence/murder/mayhem/etc, it usually takes more than a brief look at the screen. With nudity/sex you may not want family members exposed to that.

Either way, I don't see having a choice as being a bad thing.

Coil whine is something that generally bothers me. However, I don't hear any from my PS5.

I have my PS5 out in the open in a climate controlled room. Maybe my fans just aren't spinning as much as others are.

While I don't have any plans to censor myself, I don't see anything wrong with having an in-game option to disable it.

@Robinsad I think you are interpreting that information wrong.

Amazon is the one of the largest and most advanced logistics operations in the world.

In the US alone they ship over 15 million packages per day and it isn't isn't uncommon for them to get massive spikes in volume on holidays or promotional periods. They have systems that handle and manage all of that volume. That system is capable of handling the additional volume of the PS5 launch without special handling.

I still don't understand why this issue with PS5's seems to be so much more prevalent in the UK than in the US. The only thing I can think of is that the week later launch provided more publicity and so more people were aware of how valuable the PS5s were and what day they were shipping on.

@hookedWORM17 "The only reason Amazon took off in the US is because he found a loophole in tax law that allowed him to not charge sales tax from out of state purchases."

Ahh....what? Up until the recent law changes almost no business charged sales tax for out of state purchases. That wasn't really a loophole. That is just how nexus used to work with sales tax. You only had to collect sales tax in states where you had nexus. In theory, the consumers should have been reporting and paying use tax on those purchases but almost nobody ever did. That is why they changed the law.

@Wormold Sounds like a great plan but it requires 2 things that not everyone has.
1. Friends
2. A friend who secured a PS5 and is willing to let you use it.

@TheRedComet That does sound like a cable issue. You could try dropping down to 1080p/60 and see if that resolves it.

Also, hopefully your new location allows for a shorter cable because a longer 2.1 cable requires fiber and those cables are not cheap.

@Masquerade I am not sure I follow how you see this working. It seems like Sony shouldn't be providing private customer data to Amazon.

Just because Amazon sold something to someone it doesn't give them a right to anything after that. Even if it was stolen they shouldn't really be able to acquire that information from a privacy perspective.

I would think the only way you could actually get that done is if the authorities got involved, took the serial from Amazon and then got the personal data from Sony using whatever legal mechanism that would require. From there, they could investigate it.

Unfortunately, I don't think the local authorities care enough to do that in most places.

@Masquerade They surely do but how could they trace it? I mean, wouldn't Sony have to be the one to do that?

@antdickens First of all. Let me say that it really sucks you weren't able to get your PS5 on launch day. I hope you can secure one soon if you haven't already.

The one thing in your article I am less sure of though is this statement:
"As a programmer, I know for sure that it isn't a technical limitation for one of the worlds biggest tech superpowers."

While it is certainly true that Amazon has a technical team capable of building a system that supports this functionality, that doesn't mean that their systems currently support it. Further, it isn't likely something they could toss in place quickly as the controls around the those systems are likely to involve some significant testing and red-tape. Being bigger rarely makes you more flexible.

@S1ayeR74 No doubt about that. The software side of the device is definitely still a work in progress.

@Jmatt_021 HDMI-CEC power seems broken on the PS5. I had to disable HDMI-CEC on the PS5.

If you need the control from your other devices you either need to live with the power issue or disable it altogether.

Your TV may have settings to stop it from powering on/off with the PS5.

I noticed that early on and solved it by leaving the drive empty except when I am playing a disc-based game. Since I have had plenty of digital games to play this hasn't been an issue for me.

Also, compared to most of the other PS5 issues this one is pretty minor but the drive is loud enough to be distracting, especially if you are watching something or playing a quiet game.

Even once this is fixed, the management of mixed PS4/PS5 titles is a mess.

When you own the PS5 version of a game with a PS4 version available, it adds the PS4 version to your library even though you can't actually play it. I am guessing this is because the DLC is cross-gen but it seems like games you have DLC for but not the actual game shouldn't be shown in your library.

Additionally, if you bought a PS4 title with a free PS5 upgrade digitally specifying the correct version is an awkward and non-obvious process.

@Hoodie718 I think what they have done with those games is modified them to remove/reset the frame rate and/or resolution limitations.

I agree it would be great if that was done for more games.

That being said, I don't think that is what "game boost" refers to.

@Ry-Simsta The people who deal with issues like this and even their supervisors have no ability to do anything like that.

You would have to somehow get in touch with someone fairly high-ranking at Amazon and I have no idea how to do that. That being said, if you find a way, please share it.

@Ry-Simsta Not sure how it is where you are but I am seeing packages getting lost in transit for a week or more regularly. Many of those have shown up but some have not.

Either way, either your package will eventually arrive or Amazon will refund you. There is little chance of them doing anything else.

You may want to start the search of trying to secure another.

@thefourfoldroot They are in the activity cards. If you click on the activity card for an area there are videos for each puzzle piece/artifact. But it only shows the ones you need so if you already have them all....

@Nakatomi_Uk It is a bit different this time due to backwards compatibility. They can provide PS5 owners PS4 games instead of having to give out the PS5 games.

@Hoodie718 I don't know if all the games in the collection use it but doesn't "Game Boost" just mean they aren't locking the clocks back to PS4 levels?

They sell it like some revolutionary technology but it seems more like marketing to me. The games with "Game Boost" run faster because they are running on faster hardware while the games without game boost are locked to slower clocks.

I can't guarantee that is true but, if it is, it would explain why some bc titles load faster on xbox. It is because those titles are getting the benefit of the faster cpu's ability to decompress the textures on xbox but are locked to slower clock speeds on ps5 so only benefit from the ssd.

PS. In no way is this me saying one console is better than another. Please don't take it that way.

@Ashkorsair I had the same feeling with the controller for the first few hours but after the adjustment I really like it. It fits me ergonomically better than any other controller I have tried but it does feel odd at first.

@zupertramp As someone who had a preorder canceled a week after placing it, I think having a backup order isn't a terrible plan.

Given that we got some good games this month I am not holding out much hope for next but you never know I guess.

@Scarla88 I agree, Bugsnax will be the only PS5 game and a Yakuza game would be cool.

@NEStalgia "if I were spending that kind of money on a gaming device I'd get a monster PC....and not have to deal with backorders and scalpers."

Except for the fact the all the high-end GPUs you would need for a monster gaming PC are also in high-demand and being grabbed up by the scalpers

Err...when I was comparing last week to this week I was trying to compare the PS5 launch in some parts of the world to the PS5 launch in other parts of the world. I wasn't trying to compare the PS5 to the series X/S. Although, it is funnier the second way.

I have one and I am enjoying it. That being said, there are quite a few software related issues at least some of which probably should have been fixed pre-launch.

I would describe it as imperfect but full of potential.

As for the acquisition itself. I was lucky to be online and watching when the pre-orders dropped by surprise. I still spent hours going through checkout multiple times before I managed to secure one.

@themightyant It is easy to contact Amazon and probably pretty easy to get them to refund you. However, getting them to actually do anything beyond that(like get you in line for another PS5) isn't likely

It is interesting that this seems to be a much bigger issue with this weeks launch than last weeks.

I am not sure what it means exactly though.

@Atreus97 Both.

The market for video games in a pandemic is the highest it has ever been. On top of that, supply issues are problem for the same reason.

@hypnotoad Congrats!

My amazon order was in limbo all day until delivered. Glad to hear yours shipped the day before.

@Zeke68 I was curious so I did a little more research and it seems like you are right, some TVs do have issues with VRR+HDR. Yet one more difficult to find information on spec about modern TVs. sigh

@Zeke68 I suppose a TV could make a decision to do that but VRR shouldn't disable HDR if the TV has full bandwidth HDMI 2.1 ports.

@nessisonett To be clear, I am not saying that Sony should not add support or that nobody uses 1440p.

I was just clarifying that the number is probably quite a lot smaller than 6.7% of users. I would be shocked if it wasn't less than 1%.

That being said, it is probably still a lot of people in absolute terms.

@nessisonett That is true but 6.7% of steam users using 1440p doesn't mean 6.7% of Playstation users do.

1440p is a great resolution for a gaming monitor. But most PS5's are hooked up to a TV so we are talking about a small fraction of that 6.7%.

@Slippship Well, I think once you do get it you will find you have a console with a ton of potential and cool features but also a console in which the UI severely lacks polish and has some obvious missing features.

It is not something I would describe as a failure, it just feels.....unfinished.

@Slippship So you don't even have the console yet but you don't think others should criticize and it is fine the way it is?

So many things:

• ALLM - This is super convenient and it should be able to be implemented
• VRR - A must have in my opinion
• Better library handling for disc-based games - The behavior of browsing your library and disc-based games is quite odd. It adds the games to your library even if they aren't installed if you own any DLC. When the games are installed, if you try to launch them, it doesn't really know what to do so it tries to get you to buy the game instead of just asking you to insert the disc.
• Better library handling for games available on both ps4 and ps5 - This is just a mess.
• The ability to remove "Explore" - I hate this with a furious passion.
• The ability to reorganize the section at the top - At least provide the ability to pin things in place and remove things that aren't needed.
• Offload storage of PS5 games to external storage - It is absurd that you can't do this.
• More control over HDMI-CEC - It is basically on or off. I would love to be able to control apps over CEC without having the console turn-on when I switch to it's input.

While this is certainly a bit of complaining, it is likely that all of these could be implemented in software.

My profile settings are locked down and I mostly play single-player games so nobody else really sees my trophy list so buying a game so I can get an easy trophy serves little purpose for me.

I feel like it would just cheapen the trophies I actually worked to achieve.

Well.....the PS4 had weak launch exclusives so this shouldn't be surprising

First, I think the new art style completely destroys what made this game interesting in the first place. It has been turned into a sub-par look-alike.

That being said, the expectation that they would issue an update re-doing the entire art-style of the game seems somewhat unrealistic at this point. They would have to remake the game again.

So, all they really can do at this point is fix the technical issues.

On the other hand, blaming the pandemic for a poor quality product is totally unacceptable from my perspective. They chose to release a game knowing it was full of bugs. They could have delayed the release until it was of sufficient quality.

Issues like this are why I never criticize a video game for delays. I would much rather see a delay than a crap product released.

Even if you put aside all the amazing things this controller can do, it is still a fantastic controller. While I found it a bit alien at first now that I have some time with it I don't want to go back to other controllers. It feels great in the hand, the weight is in all the right places. Really well done.

As a side note, I have a pro-tip for those who haven't played Astro's Playroom yet. If you mute the mic, you don't have to blow on the controller.

If I never have to blow on another controller again I will be happier for it. You would think that they would have learned the lesson from Nintendo that people don't want to blow on their device/controller.

@Wazeddie22 I would wait on FFXV for a week if you have other things to play. That speedup is worth it.

To all those whose PS5 launch date is next week, I hope you are able to secure one on Thursday. Over here, a lot of people who pre-ordered are still waiting on delivery.

Good luck to all!