PlayStation Quietly Adds New PS5 Home Screen Feature

PlayStation adds a helpful new feature for some PlayStation Plus users.

By Tanner Dedmon

PlayStation users noticed this week a new feature gracing the home screen of users' PlayStation 5 consoles, one that makes it much easier to play games on the go or simply from another device other than the one their consoles are hooked up to. The feature in question is one that deals with playing games via the cloud, however, so it's more of a niche boon for those who are subscribed to the highest PlayStation Plus tier and who want to play their games that way as opposed to a new PlayStation 5 feature that everyone will benefit from.

Whenever you look at the PlayStation 5's dashboard now and browse through the games that you most recently played, you'll notice a new icon next to some games if they can be played via PlayStation's relatively new cloud streaming feature. The icon itself looks like a PlayStation controller sitting in a cloud with the big PlayStation Plus off to the side. If you see that, you're set to stream that game, assuming you've got the proper subscription. This feature was first spotted by Push Square after it went live for PlayStation 5 owners in Europe as part of the gradual rollout of the cloud streaming perk, and it's a feature that should be seen elsewhere, too, once the cloud streaming feature is fully available in North America as well.

PlayStation Plus Cloud Streaming

That tier of PlayStation Plus that you'll need is PlayStation Plus Premium, so it's not a feature that everyone will be able to capitalize on given that that's the highest tier and that cloud streaming is still only useful to some. Adding to its nicheness, cloud streaming support is not available for every single PlayStation game, but it's supported in most of the digital version of games that people would probably want to use it for right now.

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Back when the cloud streaming feature was announced, PlayStation listed out broadly the kinds of games that could be streamed via the cloud. Those include PlayStation, PS2, PS3 and PSP games as well as any PS4 or PS5 games that are included in the PlayStation Plus catalog. Any PS5 game trials also work with cloud streaming, but the situational part is that only certain PS5 games are supported. Both Marvel's Spider-Man and Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales can be played this way, for example, but Marvel's Spider-Man 2 is not currently supported.

For those who like the idea of on-the-go PlayStation gaming but don't necessarily need PlayStation Plus Premium, you'll have the PlayStation Portal to look forward to very soon. Scheduled to release on November 15th, this new PlayStation device is a handheld option for playing the PlayStation games you own without being stationed at a TV or monitor. It requires a constant Wi-Fi connection to work, however, so it's not quite as versatile an option as something like a Steam Deck, but it's an option regardless. 

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