With the PlayStation 5 finally launching this November, many gamers are saying goodbye to the PlayStation 4 consoles that have been on the market since 2013. Some long-requested upgrades to functionality and player convenience have been just a few of the improvements immediately available to early adopters of the PS5.
While the PlayStation 5 has introduced a multitude of improvements for gamers going into the next generation of video games, there are several key features and memories from the PlayStation 4 era that will be missed and remembered fondly.
10 Will Miss: Premium Themes
Premium themes were an easy way for PlayStation 4 owners to customize and personalize their system hardware. The PlayStation store housed an entire section dedicated to this feature, offering hundreds of options for players interested in changing the way their home screen looked. Just about every major game offered a personalized theme in conjunction with a release.
These themes often served as preorder incentives, giving the console interface unique sounds, music, and icons to match the game that hailed from. While the PlayStation 5 interface is sleek in its own way, this is one change that has left more than a few gamers disappointed.
9 Won’t Miss: Load Times
Those lucky enough to get their hands on a PlayStation 5 during launch season will notice that load times are seemingly nonexistent in the next-generation hardware. A more powerful SSD unit means that games can be loaded far faster than ever before. Even when swapping games, getting directly into control takes less than 30 seconds in most cases. Even with games that had shorter load times like Ghost of Tsushima, players would be left waiting to reach their next objective when commencing fast travel and loading cutscenes.
8 Will Miss: More Compact Console
While the PlayStation 5 continues to astound players with its capabilities, it is factually the largest home console to ever reach the market. Outclassing even the massive original PlayStation 3, gamers will struggle to find a place to place this massive game system in their entertainment centers.
While the PlayStation 4 may not be as powerful, the compact size of both the original release and the PlayStation 4 slim made for easy placement in most gaming setups, something that will be sorely missed with the latest Sony console.
7 Won’t Miss: Party Lag
Creating and joining parties on the PlayStation 4 could often serve as a tedious process. Unlike the PlayStation 5 where parties can be saved indefinitely and rejoined seamlessly, parties needed to be recreated every time one was closed in the last generation. Creating parties would also take users out of their games or apps entirely, forcing them to stare at loading screens as they manually selected the people they wanted to invite. With the Control Center on the PlayStation 5, the party system has been revamped entirely for the next generation of gaming.
6 Will Miss: Special Edition Consoles
The PlayStation 4 sported some unique and stylized special edition consoles across its seven-year life-cycle. Each iteration of the PlayStation 4 console received several special editions that launched alongside highly anticipated games, such as Spider-Man PS4 when it released in 2018. These consoles were often paired with unique controllers that could only be acquired in the bundle. While these consoles may no longer be the most lucrative technology on the market, they serve as collector’s items sure to fetch a significant sum in the future.
5 Won’t Miss: PlayStation Store Problems
On the PlayStation 4, the PlayStation Store was a separate app on the console. When users wanted to browse the online marketplace, they had to boot the app up for each use, which was a slow process with the lagging interface of the PlayStation 4.
With the PlayStation 5, the PlayStation Store is directly integrated into the console, meaning the load times and trouble players often experienced when searching for purchases the last generation will be nonexistent. Players are able to scroll over to the store and immediately start searching for games that they can download and play without delay.
4 Will Miss: Nostalgic Interface
No matter how beautiful and fluid the new interface on the PlayStation 5 is, it will take players some time to acclimate to the different design Sony decided to use. PlayStation 4 allowed for a simple setup that cataloged games and apps even at launch.
While the setup is a bit antiquated in 2020, it was a simplistic take that allowed players to navigate to games far easier than the PlayStation 3’s setup allowed. The interface evolved to include dynamic themes and the Game Hub, which allowed players to check on their friend’s activity when they visited this section.
3 Won’t Miss: Loud Fan With Taxing Games
Towards the end of the PlayStation 4’s lifecycle, games began to push the system far harder than when it was originally released. Even in the most powerful iteration of the PlayStation 4, the PlayStation 4 Pro, games like God of War caused the console to heat up exponentially. This, in turn, caused the console’s fan to output at a level so loud that players would often have to turn the TV volume up to drown out the noise of the fan. With the PlayStation 5, the fan output is far quieter with even more powerful games.
2 Will Miss: Stellar Exclusive Catalog
Sony’s past generation console has one of the best gaming catalogs that Sony Interactive Entertainment has had across its 25-year tenure in the gaming industry. Boasting some of the highest-rated games on all of Metacritic, PlayStation 4 owners were often treated to multiple award-winning games each year. While all PlayStation 4 games are in fact playable on the PlayStation 5, limited storage will often dictate which games players prioritize on the next-generation console.
1 Won’t Miss: Slower Downloads.
With new games taking up more space on the PlayStation 5 due to technological improvements, download speed is more important than ever. One of the biggest complaints by users of the PlayStation 4 was the console’s inability to download games at a reasonable pace. The console would often fragment internet download speeds, making simple updates sometimes take hours. Both wireless and wired connections suffered from this issue. With the PlayStation 5, download speeds are no longer throttled by system inability, both downloading and updating games with ease.
NEXT: 10 Best Action JRPGs on the PS4
