The PlayStation 5: A Console with Potential, but Room for Improvement

It's easy to see that the PlayStation 5 is an m.2 slot, making it possible to install a special hard drive into that slot. However, the slots themselves are not yet turned on, and hopefully, this will be addressed by the summer of 2021. There may be an official Sony version of an expandable hard drive or third-party M.2 drives available for purchase, allowing users to increase storage capacity.

Another significant issue with the PlayStation 5 is controller drift. When holding up a game controller without touching the analog sticks, the pointer on the screen can move on its own. This problem occurs because the same face components are used in most controllers, including springs and potentiometers. These parts wear out over time, leading to the drift issue. Nintendo had a similar problem with the Joy-Con controllers, and Sony has stated that the Dual Sense controller's components should last between 200-400 hours of use. However, heavy-duty gamers may experience drift issues sooner.

Despite these issues, one aspect of the PlayStation 5 is particularly impressive: its controller design. The new controller is a significant improvement over previous models and offers a more comfortable gaming experience. It's worth noting that everyone on every platform with every kind of gamepad complains about control drift problems. However, some users have not experienced any drift issues with their Dual Sense controllers.

The PlayStation 5 is also facing another major issue: its availability. It has been almost impossible to buy one for over five months into the console's launch period. This is due in part to component shortages and supply chain issues. The shopbots that often purchase consoles at restock events are contributing to the problem, as they then resell them at inflated prices. President Biden has even gotten involved, signing an executive order to investigate supply chain issues.

Another significant issue with the PlayStation 5 is its size. It stands at over 15 inches high and 10 inches wide, making it difficult to fit into standard living room media console hardware. The Xbox Series X is not significantly smaller, despite having a more compact rectangular shape that fits into most spaces. Sony needs to consider alternative designs or accessories to accommodate the console's size.

Finally, one area where the PlayStation 5 shines compared to its competitor, the Xbox Series X, is in its value proposition. Xbox Game Pass offers an enormous catalog of games for a reasonable monthly fee, including cross-compatible titles between PC and Xbox. The combined console and PC version costs $15 per month, making it an attractive option for gamers. In contrast, PlayStation Plus offers fewer games at a higher price point, although it does include the "PlayStation Plus Collection" with popular titles like God of War. Despite this, Sony's cloud gaming service, PlayStation Now, is not as well-received as Xbox Game Pass, and its separate subscription model may not be as appealing to users. Overall, while the PlayStation 5 has some issues that need to be addressed, it has potential for a successful console.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: eneverybody loves playstation 5. it's a fantastic console still sold out all over the place but it's not perfect i've talked to gamers and these are the top five things ps5 still gets wrong number one is expandable storage or the lack thereof when you set up your ps5 you end up with about 700 gigs of free space to install games and that sounds like a lot and it is but a lot of modern games are 40 gigs 50 60 gigs some are 80. if you even top 100 so you're really not gonna have room to store a ton of games on a ps5 and you're going to end up sooner or later probably sooner deleting games to make room for new games then when you want to go back you have to re-download the game and of course nobody wants to be using up that much bandwidth or waiting hours for a game to install but why wouldn't you just plug an external hard drive into one of the handy ports on the back of the machine you can do that but you can only store and play ps4 games from there not ps5 games interestingly enough there is a slot inside the ps5 that you can get to actually pretty easily it's an m.2 slot so you can put one of those special hard drives into that slot but the slots not turned on yet hopefully this summer we hear it will be turned on and there will either be an official sony version of an expandable hard drive or maybe you'll be able to buy third-party m.2 drives and stick them in there another big ps5 issue we keep hearing about is controller drift now what is that that's when you hold up your game controller without touching the analog sticks but the pointer on the screen where the cruiser moves by itself that is because something has gone wrong with the control stick almost every controller uses the same face components in there it's a spring it's a potentiometer they're all pretty much off the shelf parts uh very similar to what you find in arcade sticks and frankly they wear out after a while nintendo had a big problem with joy cons with controller drift and they ended up having to replace a bunch of those the guys that i fixed it who do all those great tear downs they figured out that the parts used in the dual sense controller on the playstation 5 should last from between 200 something hours and 400 something hours of use but if you're a heavy duty gamer playing very stick intensive games you might actually hit that fairly soon and of course people are having some drift issues even before that but i'd note that i have not had control of drift problems with my dual sense controllers and i think the new controller is frankly the most impressive part of the new ps5 design and also everyone on every platform with every kind of gamepad does complain about that problem you want to know what another really big problem with the ps5 is it's still almost impossible to buy one five plus months into the ps5 era every time there's a restock at a store everyone goes online at the same time the website slows down or crashes or you can't get one into your cart even if you click buy in the first second now partially that's because the shopbots keep buying up the very limited supply and then trying to resell them at inflated prices and of course there's also a component shortage that is making it difficult to get enough consoles onto store shelves or onto store websites for everybody to buy and nobody thinks that problem is going to be solved until at least the summer of 2021 even president biden has gotten in on the act signing an executive order to investigate supply chain issues with things like semiconductors which is at least partially responsible for this ongoing shortage another thing that drives people a little crazy about the playstation 5. it's huge it's the size of a small winnebago i can barely fit it onto the screen with me it's about 15 plus inches high 10 inches wide 4 inches deep and it's just not going to fit into most standard living room media console hardware if you want to put it down on its side it still takes up a lot of space almost like a vintage you know early days dvd player and you have to hook up this this awkward stand to the bottom of it at the same time ironically the xbox series x is not actually that much smaller they're both about 440 cubic inches but the xbox has a much more compact rectangular shape and it just fits in more spaces my final issue with the playstation 5 is less something that it has or doesn't have but something the other guy has and that is xbox game pass which everyone has decided is frankly a really fantastic value whether it's ten dollars a month for the console or the pc version or 15 a month for the combined console and pc version plus the xbox gold plus ea play it's a really huge catalog of games and some of them are cross-compatible between pc and xbox and they even have access to cloud gaming to that xcloud project microsoft is working on that works on some devices and is coming to a lot more once they get a browser-based version of it going now playstation of course has playstation plus which is similarly priced and gives you a couple of really interesting games every month and actually has a nice back catalog of games called the playstation plus collection and that has god of war and a few other really good games in it but it's nowhere near the 300 game library that game pass has sony also has a cloud gaming service it's called playstation now but it's an entirely separate subscription and people don't really talk about it all that much i'll admit it took me a while to even come up with five decent things that the playstation 5 still needs to work on that's probably a good sign for this console's long-term life cycle and between this and the new xbox series x this is definitely the least buggy console launch i have covered going all the way back to the sega dreamcasteverybody loves playstation 5. it's a fantastic console still sold out all over the place but it's not perfect i've talked to gamers and these are the top five things ps5 still gets wrong number one is expandable storage or the lack thereof when you set up your ps5 you end up with about 700 gigs of free space to install games and that sounds like a lot and it is but a lot of modern games are 40 gigs 50 60 gigs some are 80. if you even top 100 so you're really not gonna have room to store a ton of games on a ps5 and you're going to end up sooner or later probably sooner deleting games to make room for new games then when you want to go back you have to re-download the game and of course nobody wants to be using up that much bandwidth or waiting hours for a game to install but why wouldn't you just plug an external hard drive into one of the handy ports on the back of the machine you can do that but you can only store and play ps4 games from there not ps5 games interestingly enough there is a slot inside the ps5 that you can get to actually pretty easily it's an m.2 slot so you can put one of those special hard drives into that slot but the slots not turned on yet hopefully this summer we hear it will be turned on and there will either be an official sony version of an expandable hard drive or maybe you'll be able to buy third-party m.2 drives and stick them in there another big ps5 issue we keep hearing about is controller drift now what is that that's when you hold up your game controller without touching the analog sticks but the pointer on the screen where the cruiser moves by itself that is because something has gone wrong with the control stick almost every controller uses the same face components in there it's a spring it's a potentiometer they're all pretty much off the shelf parts uh very similar to what you find in arcade sticks and frankly they wear out after a while nintendo had a big problem with joy cons with controller drift and they ended up having to replace a bunch of those the guys that i fixed it who do all those great tear downs they figured out that the parts used in the dual sense controller on the playstation 5 should last from between 200 something hours and 400 something hours of use but if you're a heavy duty gamer playing very stick intensive games you might actually hit that fairly soon and of course people are having some drift issues even before that but i'd note that i have not had control of drift problems with my dual sense controllers and i think the new controller is frankly the most impressive part of the new ps5 design and also everyone on every platform with every kind of gamepad does complain about that problem you want to know what another really big problem with the ps5 is it's still almost impossible to buy one five plus months into the ps5 era every time there's a restock at a store everyone goes online at the same time the website slows down or crashes or you can't get one into your cart even if you click buy in the first second now partially that's because the shopbots keep buying up the very limited supply and then trying to resell them at inflated prices and of course there's also a component shortage that is making it difficult to get enough consoles onto store shelves or onto store websites for everybody to buy and nobody thinks that problem is going to be solved until at least the summer of 2021 even president biden has gotten in on the act signing an executive order to investigate supply chain issues with things like semiconductors which is at least partially responsible for this ongoing shortage another thing that drives people a little crazy about the playstation 5. it's huge it's the size of a small winnebago i can barely fit it onto the screen with me it's about 15 plus inches high 10 inches wide 4 inches deep and it's just not going to fit into most standard living room media console hardware if you want to put it down on its side it still takes up a lot of space almost like a vintage you know early days dvd player and you have to hook up this this awkward stand to the bottom of it at the same time ironically the xbox series x is not actually that much smaller they're both about 440 cubic inches but the xbox has a much more compact rectangular shape and it just fits in more spaces my final issue with the playstation 5 is less something that it has or doesn't have but something the other guy has and that is xbox game pass which everyone has decided is frankly a really fantastic value whether it's ten dollars a month for the console or the pc version or 15 a month for the combined console and pc version plus the xbox gold plus ea play it's a really huge catalog of games and some of them are cross-compatible between pc and xbox and they even have access to cloud gaming to that xcloud project microsoft is working on that works on some devices and is coming to a lot more once they get a browser-based version of it going now playstation of course has playstation plus which is similarly priced and gives you a couple of really interesting games every month and actually has a nice back catalog of games called the playstation plus collection and that has god of war and a few other really good games in it but it's nowhere near the 300 game library that game pass has sony also has a cloud gaming service it's called playstation now but it's an entirely separate subscription and people don't really talk about it all that much i'll admit it took me a while to even come up with five decent things that the playstation 5 still needs to work on that's probably a good sign for this console's long-term life cycle and between this and the new xbox series x this is definitely the least buggy console launch i have covered going all the way back to the sega dreamcast\n"