It was expected: store pick-ups are possible, store sales are not.

„In the interest of keeping our gamers, retailers, and staff safe amidst COVID-19, today we are confirming that all day-of launch sales will be conducted through the online stores of our retail partners,” said Sony Interactive Entertainment content communications senior director Sid Shuman on the PlayStation Blog. It doesn’t mean much on its own, so we’ll add that all the pre-orders have been sold, but those units can be picked up from the retailers – but to slow the spread of the coronavirus, in-store sales are blocked.

PlayStation Support‘s YouTube account posted a few videos. The first one is about the recommended settings, the second one is showcasing the PlayStation 4 > PlayStation 5 data transfer, and the third one is about using your account. Let’s see the new features via Sony: „You can customize the controller’s haptic feedback and trigger effect intensity (strong, medium, weak, or off).

You can control the amount of power consumed and the features PlayStation 5 can use while in rest mode. “Optimized Experience” always applies the latest updates, can turn on PlayStation 5 remotely using PlayStation App or Remote Play, and charges controllers after entering rest mode. “Lower Power Use” consumes less power (under 0.5 watts), but with some features disabled. It does not apply updates or charge controllers. You can also customize Rest Mode entirely by selecting which features to enable.

You can set “Game Presets,” which allow you to start new games with your preferred settings, such as difficulty, control options, performance mode or resolution mode, first-person or third-person view, subtitles and audio, and so on. These presets will be applied to games that support this feature, and applied differently depending on the game. You can sign in to PlayStation Network manually or via QR code. User profiles feature accolades in addition to trophies,” Sony wrote. The console also finally keeps track of your playtime for each game…

Sony confirmed to The Verge that the PlayStation 5 will not support external SSD storage expansion at launch. Therefore, using a fast enough NVMe M.2 SSD will only be possible after a firmware update that unlocks this feature (not many are on the market for now). The final video at the bottom also showcases how the DualSense‘s controller’s faceplate (the black part around the analogue sticks) can be removed. It means possible customization in the future, which is weird, seeing how Sony has shut down a third-party company that planned to focus on this.

The PlayStation 5 will launch on November 12/19, depending on your region.

Source: Gematsu, Gematsu, PSU, PSL

Please support our page theGeek.games on Patreon, so we can continue to write you the latest gaming, movie and tech news and reviews as an independent magazine.
Become a Patron!