If you’re noticing that your PlayStation 4 is a bit sluggish, you’re not the only one. Recently, players across social media are reporting increased delays when navigating the PlayStation 4’s menus.
Players are noticing slowdown on their PlayStation 4s. Complaints centre around lag on the PlayStation 4 when browsing media or simply moving through the home screen. The process seems slower and much choppier. Friends lists, profiles and trending media have increased load times as well.
Small issues are adding up to make for a clumsy menu experience. Testing on Kotaku‘s office PlayStation 4 showed a few specific areas of trouble. Home screen navigation was responsive until settling on a few sections. Browsing to general tabs like “What’s New” lead to sluggish load times and exploring individual game tabs was a challenge. Overview screens and trending media in particular lead to a significant amount of delay. This is what it looked like in action:
It isn’t great. Menus are taking a pretty long time to show up. The video (by SamuelHS) below shows how quick the menu was during beta testing for last year’s UI overhauls. It’s much quicker.
Some delay and loading is to be expected when using the PlayStation 4 but the current level of lag feels rather pronounced. Sections dedicated to media seem to have the most trouble; players navigating to trending streams or looking to check out Netflix seem to be having the most difficulty.
“This [menu] flow which used to be pretty instant has turned into staring at the loading indicators and watching the delay,” a user posted on Reddit in reference to the system’s media tab.
“It gets stuttery when it used to be buttery,” notorious snack eater Mike Fahey said.
It isn’t really clear what’s causing the slowdown. The last major update for the PlayStation 4 came early last December. It, along with two preceding patches before it, were meant to improve systems performance. They don’t seem to have given the system the kick in the pants it needs. Kotaku has reached out to Sony for comment.
This isn’t exactly the end of the world and most players will be able to soldier on in spite of the lag. Still, it’s there and doesn’t seem to be getting better. Hopefully, a future update will give the system a digital cup of coffee.
Comments
14 responses to “Some PS4’s Have Become A Bit Laggy Recently”
Yep, noticed this too.
Also, it takes a while for my internet connection to register on the main-page….Never used to happen.
Unprecedented levels of lag on mine here in England. I hadn’t be on her (my ps4) since around winter so it did as expected some pending updates after booting. Anyways – it’s now crazy sluggish. Probably be OK after amother reboot….hmm…maybe I should of done that before this essay..hindsights a biznitch.
I’ve noticed this too, mostly when on the ‘TV/Video’ tab, it often takes 15-20 seconds to load the apps. I’ve also noticed that anything involving the PS store or trophies is hit and miss, and often takes minutes to load a page. I’ve got cable internet and often when this happens will test on my laptop or phone and there is no network slowness.
I hope they fix it without forcing an upgrade to Pro
I’ve been getting the TV/Video tab load delay problem too. I use streaming apps often and it’s really frustrating.
Same with TV/Video, and I _have_ a Pro. Though I’m glad that it’s being reported on in news media. Should mean that Sony hopefully pay a bit more attention to the issue. It’s not a complex UI, I can’t see why it’d lag so much, unless they’re doing an internet lookup for every item under TV/Video.
*puts hand up*
Yes, particularly if something is suspended. Shifting up to the notifications etc bar can sometimes take a couple of seconds to register and finish the transition.
It’s the iPhone affect lol – allow your “updated” OS to be installed on the older model but make the older model slower because of it forcing people to upgrade lol
Even though @deek said it’s the same on their pro model.
hell YES!
the cynic in me says iphone 4s update syndrome
the optimist hopes its just due to backend psn stuff
I’m getting this on the PS4 Pro as well, when sync’ing Trophies if a game is playing. Also any links to the Store from a game and the More Info. section are really slow, taking many minutes to load. Have power up standby issues for my Pro as well using my PDP remote – sometimes won’t turn on. Have to use a Controller to get it to turn on.
Question, do you have a HDD or SSD installed?
Shouldn’t really make a difference in the it’s slower than it used to be.
Probably the most frustrating thing about the UI right now is the video section.
You can create categories for your library of games and various other apps, but all the video apps still sit in their own folder, and nothing can be pulled out of them.
I am fucking NEVER going to install the Foxtel Play app or the WWE app, but I’m assuming that some complete fucking asshole somewhere has done some sort of lucrative deal to guarantee that I can’t rip the Netflix, YouTube, Crunchyroll or Animelab apps out of that spammy morass of irrelevant shit to put them somewhere more prominent – or, god forbid, one-button entry.
After a decade plus of using Steam, this seems fine.
Yeah me too, but tbh it doesn’t really matter, i have actual problems to get wound up about.
has anybody else got bad lag in multiplayer on bops3?im in Perth but my friends in Melbourne also have it.Also on zombies I host and friends lag.This never happened until second last update then we had another was hoping would fix that but its just worse.
This needs patch and quick. when i try to share video my controls wont work. and when i try to use youtube the controls just stop working. when i come away from the youtube app works fine. i have even tried to rebuild the database which has not helped. i have no idea why this is happening but what is sony doing about it. ?
Almost a year later and this still hasn’t been fixed. It seems PlayStation gave up on addressing the issue since media hasn’t given it much attention.