Anna Daniels
The PlayStation 4’s design really turned heads when it was first unveiled. Those sharp angles. That sleek, black color. Sony built a really cool-looking machine — the kind you’d be proud to put in your entertainment center. Sony made its name in the world of electronics, so perhaps it’s not a surprise the company would put out an attractive video game console. It did come as a surprise, though, that Sony flubbed a few other design decisions in the process.
Think back to when you first unpacked your PlayStation 4. You probably got everything all plugged in and set up. You turned your TV on and made sure you were on the right input. At that point, you pressed the power button, right? Or maybe you pressed the eject button. The two buttons looked exactly the same, save for some tiny little icons that ants needed to squint at.
Then the PlayStation 4 Pro came out a few years later and Sony somehow decided the console would look just as sleek as the base PS4 if it got a little fatter. While the base PS4 looked like two slim panels stacked on top of one another, the PS4 Pro came out looking like the tech equivalent of a world record breaking hamburger. It was ugly.
The PlayStation 5 presents an opportunity to do something new and interesting with Sony’s console design. Microsoft is certainly going for it with the Xbox Series X, which doesn’t look like any console anyone’s ever seen before. If Sony wants to stand out in the next gen, it needs to push design boundaries in that exact same way.
Written by: Looper
