While Sony was pummeling us with game after game in today’s PS5 reveal, you may not have caught the small tease somewhere in the middle of the show. In between each trailer, Sony was filling the void with ambient moving shapes and objects. It helped clearly denote where one game’s footage ended and the next began. But one of those filler segments was not just a random assortment of shapes and objects. It was what appeared to be the PS5 startup screen, giving us a quick teaser at the console’s UI while not actually showing us much of consequence.
MinnMax’s Ben Hanson captured the full thing in the tweet below:
So Sony snuck the PlayStation 5 boot-up screen into the middle of their presentation? pic.twitter.com/Zt8QfoWOGb
— Ben Hanson (@yozetty) June 12, 2020
The quick 13 second clip begins saying “See important health and safety warnings in the Settings menu,” the same message that displays when the PS4 starts up. The screen then reveals particles and a light source, perhaps powered by the consoles onboard ray tracing engine. “Press the PS Button on your controller,” the screen says, while a PS logo pulses in the middle and the particles glitter in the light. A tone plays—presumably the sound it will make when you end up pressing that PS button—just before the video cuts off and Sony moved on to the next trailer. The whole thing also has a soft ambient startup sound throughout.
It’s a largely inconsequential reveal, but its indicative of Sony being ready to start playing ball when it comes to really leaning into and talking next-gen. The games are out there. The console design is out there. The startup screen is out there. Sony’s got a volley of PS5 information and this is just the start. Perhaps unintentionally, showing the startup screen is also symbolic of this just being the start for Sony. Today’s PS5 reveal was merely turning on the console and pushing the PS button. There’s still plenty more to come.
After all, even though we know what the console looks like now, we’re still waiting on price and release date, which may be incumbent on the moves that Microsoft makes.
