A video walkthrough of the PS3's menu

by Joystiq Staff { Aug 20th 2006 at 7:45PM }

Finally, a non-shaky cam/YouTube video of what the PlayStation 3 user interface will look like once you plug in the console. As you'll see, it's basically a ramped up PSP interface. We won't say much, but just let the IGN video speak for itself instead. Check it out here.

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)

Scott @ Aug 20th 2006 7:51PM

wow sony copies their own stuff to thats amazing
xbox360 guide button
wii controller
psp menu
what else?

Tim Sykes @ Aug 20th 2006 7:52PM

the interface is fine for a handheld, but for a full blown console its way to plain. What a bunch of lazy asses they cant come up with something new.

jOEfRO @ Aug 20th 2006 7:57PM

Sony wins this one, that interface looks really user friendly compared to the 360 one.

WamBam @ Aug 20th 2006 7:58PM

I sort of like the simplifed menu.

If this is like any of the other PS3 stories, then I'm sure they'll be tons of comments. Why do people like to argue so much about the PS3?

Lithium Mirage @ Aug 20th 2006 7:59PM

Most boring UI I've ever seen.

ArX07 @ Aug 20th 2006 8:00PM

Not that bad...I want easy access to all my settings and features and the PSP interface didnt let me down in that sense.

james f. @ Aug 20th 2006 8:02PM

I always kinda thought that the psp UI was a bit of an ipod nod/rip. Im surprised they are going so derivative and sterile again on the console. For 5 or 6 hundred bucks i would expect something a bit more WOW inducing. Way back when I fired up the PS2 the first time i thought it was soooo badass. After watching this it just looks so 2002ish. Of course this wouldn't be the first time that ps3 news has delivered that effect

And did anyone else noticed that the reviewer said "straightforward" so many times that it started sounding like a backhanded compliment.

Rasgueado @ Aug 20th 2006 8:03PM

Whatever... the interface looks fine. It'll do the job pretty easily but doesn't really do anything different. The only thing I'm curious about is the lack of a network menu... might just be because it's the debug unit but there doesn't appear to be a menu to show you the Sony Network service.

Dustin @ Aug 20th 2006 8:05PM

Man, this ia a very primitive menu. That is no where near the what the real one is going to look like. Like they said in the video, the gurilla videos as seen here: http://youtube.com/watch?v=1mq5job_en0
this video should be shown.
I want to see if you can pause the game, then go to the menu, start playing music, then unpause the game, like the 360.

Fan @ Aug 20th 2006 8:06PM

Looks really good. Simple and sleek.

There were more options on the E3 vid though. Like music, movies and the web browser. Were did those go?

datruth @ Aug 20th 2006 8:08PM

@scott
first of all your a retard. ok thats out of the way

now you say that sony copied:
xbox360 guide button
wii controller
psp menu

ok they did but lets take a look at sumtin

what nintendo copied:
cartirdges from atari
the start and select buttons
the power cords
the video game idea

what microsoft copied:
the "X" from the alphabet
4 controller ports from nintendo
rumble from sony
online from dreamcast
cords fro everything

ya that seems about right please tell me if i missed anything. =|

Dejital @ Aug 20th 2006 8:10PM

I can't read anything. Looks like Dead Rising all over again.

Lithium Mirage @ Aug 20th 2006 8:11PM

#10

Same place all the inputs and outputs on the back of the PS3 went.

Pip @ Aug 20th 2006 8:12PM

That is the worst UI I have ever seen. They expect people to actually use this?

They really need to take a look at Lives interface and copy that.

Seriously, that looks frickin terrible!

Shogan @ Aug 20th 2006 8:15PM

Well that's boring. That interface worked just fine on the PSP, but on a big screen, after plopping down $600+... I expected something more. This is just lame.

boots @ Aug 20th 2006 8:19PM

This is actually a lot better than the 360 interface. There's no need to show a huge blade when you are playing when you can simply show some really small icons. Then again, the interface might not be final...

Let's just hope it doesn't freeze like the one in the 360.

GSI @ Aug 20th 2006 8:21PM

-->"what microsoft copied:
the "X" from the alphabet"

HAHAHAHA! That was a good one...(honrary) star for you.

Hey Tone @ Aug 20th 2006 8:25PM

I really never comment ever, but I felt compelled to after watching this video.

As a long time videogamer, I have yet seen anything from PS3 that actually entices me. This GUI is beyond underwhelming for a 600 dollar console that is supposed to be "a super computer". Sony continues to give me serious reasons to consider not purchasing a PS3.

#1 reason - How is it going to be better than my 360...which, by the way, I have been enjoying for almost a year now.

JPRacer @ Aug 20th 2006 8:29PM

Wow... The 1st thing I do when I buy a new console is mess a little with the menu and change settings. I imagine people spending $500+ and be presented with this interface. My cellphone interface looks 10x better than this!

Will @ Aug 20th 2006 8:31PM

I like it a lot.

"Very straightforward... very straightforward..." Haha.

Reminds me of OS X. I wonder how far we can go with the customization options.

adebacker @ Aug 20th 2006 8:37PM

Even though I am not a big Sony fan, I think the interface is pretty slickly designed, sometimes simplicity is better. That being said I still like my 360 interface. The blades are cool and i like the animations and such.

Brad Lee @ Aug 20th 2006 8:44PM

"This is actually a lot better than the 360 interface. There's no need to show a huge blade when you are playing when you can simply show some really small icons." By boots

I'm not sure how to respond to this because I don't know if you are joking or not.

Do you honestly believe 360's 'huge blades' are less effective than PS3's 'small icons?' Do you really think leaving a good 3/4 of the screen unused is an effective menu system? Do you really think a half-assed blue gradient looks better than custom pics and game themes?

If you said yes to those three questions, then that scares me. I mean, all they did is port the PSP navigation menu to the PS3. That's pretty sad, considering how much damn money that system is going to cost you.

ben @ Aug 20th 2006 8:44PM

It seems to me like a lot of wasted screen realestate. Why not make the text and icons bigger so they're actually readable from a distance? I can just imagine having all this room on the screen and trying to squint at tiny icons to figure out what menu I'm under. I have no problem with this type of interface, but so much of the screen is wasted and everything is too damn small.

James Sorensen @ Aug 20th 2006 8:44PM

interface will be much smoother than the 360 one that chugs along in games...

this is a debug kit and the retail will have the lil waves in background, and no doubt cutom backgrounds and shit

PhillyRampage @ Aug 20th 2006 8:46PM

Anybody notice that they don't have custom soundtrack as an in-game option?

Captain Joystick @ Aug 20th 2006 8:47PM

Jesus Christ... you people are bashing the fucking interface. Get a fucking life, seriously.

bandit @ Aug 20th 2006 8:49PM

guys this user interface would be perfect if it wasnt for one issue. http://www.joystiq.com/2006/04/12/rumor-new-specs-on-the-ps3-os/ for an OS that takes up nearly 20% of the PS3s Ram and one whole SPE, I would have expected a HELL OF ALOT MORE. Thats re-gosh darn diculous. Again Im fine with the simplicity, its the fricking resource management that pisses me off. There is no reason this crappy OS should be using so much system resources. Sony really and truely has no Idea about software. For comparasions sake, If I can remember off hand the 360's OS takes between 32 and 16MB TOTAL and is run on a spliced into a single thread with other code. HOW in GODS name did sony 32MB of VRAM on THAT?!?!?!?!?!? 96MB TOTAL of THAT?!?!?!? WTF?!?!?!?!?

Arjun Chhabra @ Aug 20th 2006 8:49PM

"Why mess with something that isn't broken?"

Is clearly what Sony is living by, which makes sense given their previous victories in the console market --
from the DualShock to the XMB [which, fanboys, debuted in the PSX, NOT the PSP].

This debug version isn't expected to have all the bells and whistles that the final consumer version will -- I hope. But if this is what I see when I boot up my PS3, Sony, I'll be disappointed. At least until I pop in Sonic and forget about it all.

ben @ Aug 20th 2006 8:51PM

@23

If Sony is serious about online games, the interface and how you view things like your friends list is pretty damn important. If you're not interested in the PS3 interface then why are you even here?

Saint Fuzzball @ Aug 20th 2006 8:53PM

A thought: Snazzy menus with dynamic lighting and lots of shinys are fun and all but do we really want our video game consoles devoting memory and processing power to the menu we use to select a game? Wouldn't those resources be better spent on the games themselves?

Tristan @ Aug 20th 2006 8:55PM

Datruth from what I see you are a sony fanboy trying to stand behind sony. This is a pretty boring interface. There is no substance to it. The 360 has so many cool features to it. I wonder what happened to the interface from E3 maybe they had to drop it because it was going to use too much system power. Why wouldn't they put the one form E3 in it doesnt make sense. Must of had to drop it for some reason. We will see as Lezpig or Tokyo Game Show approaches. Sorry Datruth if I had got you angry in any way. I wasnt trying to start anything.

bandit @ Aug 20th 2006 8:59PM

saint fuzball, yes thats a nice theory except for the fact that this OS consumes MORE resources than the 360s, again I say WTF http://www.joystiq.com/2006/04/12/rumor-new-specs-on-the-ps3-os/

subnet6 @ Aug 20th 2006 8:59PM

I would prefer a more understated UI than whats on 360, however, this may be a bit too spartan. If web reaction to these videos is any indication, my guess is that this interface will be sharing bunk space with the boomerang controller on the next train to Whatwerewethinkingville.

hey alex @ Aug 20th 2006 9:04PM

I've never been crazy about the PSP interface and I'm disappointed Sony transplanted the same structure and functionality to the PS3. It's servicable, but also boring. I always thought they could have done a better job with icon graphics instead of single color icons.

Microsoft has a cool idea in blades, but curiously they bury some options in odd places.

I'm wondering how Nintendo's interface will fare...

Anyway, I was expecting MORE from Sony.

B @ Aug 20th 2006 9:07PM

It looks good plus user friendly,let's hope we dont get stuck we the blue screen however.

bandit @ Aug 20th 2006 9:07PM

Just to follow up on previous posts, and no Im not spamming, this justr truely pisses my off to see such unoptimized code, consume so much resources and then be crap anyway. Its like paying 50K+ for a Kia when you can get a Mercedes Benz for under 50K. anyway this is what I wanted to show, a comparision of 360's guide resources

via 360 fanboy:

"In the case of the Xbox360, this cost is approximately 2% of total CPU time and 6.25% of the Xbox360's total available RAM. Balancing these out, one could argue that MS has removed a total of 4% of the Xbox360's total available system power in order to provide these features and more which were not mentioned. "

makesevenupyours @ Aug 20th 2006 9:10PM

i like its simplicity and how it looks, and i agree it worked well for the psp.

eh...i dont know, its nice and all. i just prefer the 360 UI. but really, its not that big of a deal.

Cody S. @ Aug 20th 2006 9:11PM

User friendly doesn't need to mean basic and boring.

lordroba @ Aug 20th 2006 9:12PM

@1

"wow sony copies their own stuff to thats amazing
xbox360 guide button"

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that the PSP had a "Home" button that accessed the interface before the xbox 360 did. After all, it did come out more than a year earlier. Just thought i'd point that out :P

Kincyr @ Aug 20th 2006 9:13PM

@11

Microsoft didn't copy the rumble from Sony, Sony copied it from Nintendo

Tristan @ Aug 20th 2006 9:19PM

If the 360 is using 4% of its power and Sony is supposedly using 20% if it takes that amount of power to run that. How much power does the ps3 actually have. I know I'm going to be flamed for saying this but, I know that the cell wasnt meant for games it was meant for more of a prerendered video making and other things.
Heres a vid for that stuff/

It seems that Sony took a powerfull cpu and a good graphics card which will be on the pc market(well somethign equal to it) in a year or two and jsut stuck it in a box. Sony didnt have these things mad so they work well together and thats where they really screwed up. They should have taken the itme and got a cpu and graphics card that were co-developed so they would work well together. Sony didnt do that. They jsut took two good parts and put them together. Sony was lazy in that part. They should have taken the time to make better interface instead of stealing from themselves. Sony shouldnt have taken a cpu that IBM has taken a long time to make and just put it in a game console. The cpu isnt ready yet. Thats why they have to reserve a core incase one fails. If he cpu was ready they wouldnt have to do that. Sony has really rushed this system. I used to like Sony until they started lieing about games and the problems with their system. Yes yes I know most of you are going to be saying Tristan shut up you fanboy. I am saying again I like Sony until their lies started happeing. Go ahead start flaming

Ethan @ Aug 20th 2006 9:19PM

darn, I was hoping this video wouldnt make it to joystiq, since I knoew all of the nintendo/microsoft fanboys wouldnt understand. Its not going to be this plain people. This is for a dev kit, which is why it only has the game related things in it. THe actual PS3 interface will have a lot more features, like video photo music internet, and many many others. It will also have customizable BGs, and different things not included in the dev package.

Tristan @ Aug 20th 2006 9:22PM

It still doesnt make sense why they didnt put the actual interface in the dev kits. Wasnt the interface they showed at e3 off of a devkit. I just dont understand why the devkit doesnt have any of this.

Jason @ Aug 20th 2006 9:23PM

The interface on the PS3 actually looks like it functions like a crappy version of the new Windows Media Center interface... it navigates alot like it...

Really though... it's just an interface... it looks like it will have its issues just like the 360s does... and please... the themes in the 360 are a joke... just backgrounds and color changes??? How come the modders have already made a better version of the 360 dashboard for XBOX Media Center? They put out a SuperMan theme that looks AWESOME... now why can't the 360 have themes like that?

Tristan @ Aug 20th 2006 9:27PM

Heres the vid I forgot to show.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=gV_95-rmYNo

Tristan @ Aug 20th 2006 9:28PM

Heres the vid I forgot to show

http://youtube.com/watch?v=gV_95-rmYNo

Tristan @ Aug 20th 2006 9:30PM

Sorry for double posts.

Lithium Mirage @ Aug 20th 2006 9:31PM

#39

That's not what we're complaining about.
We're complaining about how boring, bland, and generally unoptimized processing-wise it is.

da juggernaught @ Aug 20th 2006 9:41PM

to tell you the truth a lot of things were copied between each competitor but only sony has copied all the innovative ideas. the rumble was innovative but it became a standard. now the xbox guide button was an innovation different from the psp home button. the psp home button stops the game to bring you to the home menu. its the same as just pressing select and going to the menu option. the guide button provides direct access in game to all your info pertaining to the 360 including all live elements. and only sony has copied the motion sensing and ok the psp menu is nice but as stated b4 its good for a handheld but not for a big screen especially if it doesnt scale to size. now i dont kno how many ppl dont really get the 360 dash, but if you cant find what your looking for in there then you really shouldnt be messing around with consoles. honestly im surprised that sony didnt copy something that would be absolutely useful and not just some add in to compete with nintendo and microsoft. they shouldve focused on a way to connect to pcs the way media center on the 360 does. if sony would do such a thing that can connect to any pc and share the files no matter what platform they would absolutely knock down the media center add in from the 360. again i dont kno the statistics of the use of such a thing but because i have so many videos and music on my pc its nice that i can see everything thats on my pc without having to go to my pc.

so i say this, if sony wants to make a name for themselves all they had to do is take away from the resources they used to develop the cell proc and create a way to connect to pc's. if they had done that it wouldve most certainly drop the price to a more competive range by the time christmas came. i dont maybe i shouldve taken kaz's job.

Cabbage @ Aug 20th 2006 9:46PM

I think there are good things and bad things about this interface. The interface is great for bringing up while playing a game. It doesn't distract too much, just lets you do what you need to do, the whole "immersion" buzzword. I'm not commenting on what the interface allows you to do, since that is likely to change on a home system, just the overall layout.

For outside of games, however, this does feel a bit like a cellphone. I realize they wanted to have the same layout for both in-game and out of game, and the more important one to get right is the in-game one, but they could make the icons a bit larger, etc. There will probably be custom skins for the whole thing, though, perhaps even homemade ones using the supposed Linux setup.

Maybe they want to make it so bland that everyone gets to experience Playstation's "Marketplace" clone when they look for something better. Maybe it will function the same but look completely different when it hits the home consoles. Maybe Sony haters don't need to worry about something they'll never see in real life anyway. Someone should make a background with Kaz Hirai and Ken Kutaragi's heads laughing hysterically with the word "Sucker!" coming out of their collective speech bubbles. There's still a lot we don't really know.

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