PS5 players in Asia can now experience the Welcome Hub, now available in the region.
Revealed back in September, this is a customisable home screen that takes up one slot on the squares (like a game, app and links to the PS Store and PS Plus). It makes use of the empty space below the row of icons to immediate access to important system settings, or used as a dashboard to see information at a glance.
The Welcome Screen widgets are customisable, and can be increased and reduced in size, much like Microsoft’s old Windows 8 tiles as part of the Metro UI.
Handy widgets available including battery life of all connected devices and most importantly, a full view of the Console Storage Size. Owners of the original launch PS5 with their relatively tinier default storage space of 825GB (new PS5s (PS5 “Slim”) ship with 1TB SSDs, and the upcoming PS5 Pro will come in 2TB) can manage files quicker, straight from the Welcome Hub.
The Welcome Hub also adds another feature to the PS5 that has been missing until now: customisable backgrounds. The system includes a few preset graphics (including animated ones), and you can also use screenshots from games as the console’s background, just like how the PS4 had.
The Welcome Hub was rolled out in phases, with the US being the first region to had this go live. The rest of the features from this software update has gone live already which includes the ability to create personalised 3D audio profiles.