PS5 Users Are Divided Straight Down the Middle Over Turning Their Console Off or Putting It in Rest Mode

PlayStation 5 users are torn over how to treat their precious console between gaming sessions, with 50% choosing to turn it off completely and 50% choosing to put it in rest mode.

Sony Interactive Entertainment’s vice president of game, product, and player experiences, Cory Gasaway, told Game File that the Welcome Hub feature, which debuted last year, came as a result of discovering this even split in player habits.

“We gained a lot of insights about how players interact with their PS5 system between play sessions,” Gasaway said. “A small example is we had an internal hypothesis that far more people would put their console into rest mode than fully shut it down each time between their play sessions.

“As it turned out, it was actually about 50/50 between the two options for all our players. So, what that meant was for about 50% of our users, when they booted up, if they were in the US, they were landing on our Explore page. Those outside the U.S. would land on the page for the last game that they have played.”

The Welcome Hub was therefore developed long after the PS5’s release for these players who do not use rest mode, something Sony didn’t believe necessary until it looked into these stats. It arrived in September and essentially lets players customize their homescreen with different widgets and bits of useful information.

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelance reporter. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.