The PS5 Still Has One Unforgivable Flaw 6 Months After Launch

Sony’s latest, greatest video game console is hard to come by, but maybe that’s not such a terrible thing for consumers.

For one thing, there are still very few actual PlayStation 5 exclusives out there that you can’t play anywhere else. By the end of June there will be exactly three, and one is a remake of a PS3 game.

The two current true PS5 exclusives are Demon’s Souls (which is excellent) and Returnal (which is also excellent) but they’re not enough to justify a $400+ purchase. Graphical improvements over the PS4 Pro are nowhere near as noticeable as the leap from PS3 to PS4 or PS2 to PS3.

And while load times are faster, storage is tight and expensive.

But all of this is forgivable. This is, unfortunately, just the way of things when it comes to new video game hardware which always seems to launch with fewer games than you’d expect at a price-tag that is higher than you’d like to pay.

The flaw I’m speaking of is a bug that continues to plague the PS5 long after it was supposed to be fixed. Indeed, I wrote about this bug soon after the PlayStation 5 hit digital store shelves and I experienced it myself. It still happens with my PS5 today.

I’m speaking, of course, about the system’s broken Rest Mode.

When my console goes into Rest Mode it almost always results in an error when I wake it back up. Virtually every single time, it will repair the drives and inform me that the system was not shut down correctly. I never actually put the thing into Rest Mode on purpose because of this, but sometimes it will go into Rest Mode on its own despite having turned that setting off. I’m not sure how this happens, but it does. I think it’s when the TV is switched off without turning off the console.

I am not alone in this complaint. Over at Tom’s Guide, Rory Mellon has similar issues and reports on the many user forums flooded with reported problems (as well as plenty of PS5 owners who have never experienced them).

So far, this cycle of Rest Mode resulting in “not shutting down the system” properly and the repairing of drives has not resulted in any lost data or other major issues, but it’s worrisome. Given that the PS5 is buggy in various other ways (the gamepads, the audio, etc.) it feels like only a matter of time before something worse occurs.

Whatever the case, six months into the PS5’s life cycle you’d hope that a bug like this would be fixed. Alas, such is not the case. If you don’t have a PS5 yet, don’t fret dear readers. You can let the early adopters suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune for you instead. Bide your time. All will be well.