If we could describe the PlayStation 5’s logo reveal in one word, it would be… underwhelming. Sony offered a first look at the upcoming console’s logo design during their CES 2020 Conference last Monday, but fans were less than impressed with the outcome. The next-gen console’s logo is exactly the same as its predecessors, PS4 and PS3, but with a 5 at the end instead. Same color, same font, same everything.
Now, to be fair, it’s not like Sony teased a totally creative, never-seen-before design. All that Sony CEO Jim Ryan said before pulling up the logo on-screen was, “I’m pleased to share with you today, for the first time… our new logo.”
In typical 21st century fashion, people took to Twitter to share their disappointment in the logo reveal. Some fellow designers lamented over the missed opportunity to revive old logos, like the colorful, layered PS design or the Spiderman-inspired font. Other Twitter users just straight-up made fun of the new logo and the way it was revealed. For your viewing pleasure, we’ve rounded up some of the best tweets about the PS5 logo.
10 Backwards compatibility
“Sony reveals that the PS5 has logo has backwards compatibility!” said one Twitter user. As PlayStation 5 watchers know, the console’s lead architect, Mark Cerny, revealed back in April that the next-gen device will be backward-compatible with PlayStation 4 games. This means that, for the first time in PlayStation history, gamers will be able to play their favorite PS4 games on the new console.
Backwards compatibility has never been Sony’s strong point due to the big differences in architecture with each console. However, the PlayStation 5 is expected to have a very similar design to the PlayStation 4. Perhaps Sony just wanted to reflect that simple transition in its new logo?
9 We did it!
Quite a few Twitter users speculated on how Sony developed the new logo, like this person, who shared a fake screen recording of “Sony’s lead graphic designer” working on the project. The video shows someone in Photoshop backspacing on the 4 and replacing it with a 5. The simple move causes that peppy “We did it!” song from the end of every Dora the Explorer episode to play.
This may be a joke, but as far as we know, it could really be how the design process went.
8 Copy, paste, go
Or maybe this is what really happened? Another Twitter user suggested instead that the design took just a few more steps to reach the final masterpiece. In this screen recording, the designer erases the 4 and actually makes a copy of the P. They flip the P upside down and reverse it, then add the finishing touch: an extra line across the top to make a 5.
A bit more complicated, for sure, but it’s better than just backspacing and replacing!
7 It’s so beautiful!
Perhaps voice actor Yong Yea had one of the funniest reactions to the logo reveal, as seen in this video he shared on Twiiter. The clip shows Yea clutching a PlayStation 4 and watching a live stream of the CES conference as Ryan announces the PlayStation 5’s logo. When the logo pops up on screen, Yea screams and bursts into fake tears. “Revolutionary,” he calls the logo. “It’s so beautiful. This logo is everything.”
After his totally rational, calm, totally legit reaction to the live stream, Yea says, “Yeah, it’s fine, it’s cool. It’s about what we expected.” True that.
6 Here, kitty
If you “pspspspspsps” at your PlayStation 5 like you would at your cat, will the console start purring at you? We have to admit, this Twitter user’s interpretation of the new logo is pretty funny and very original. Hopefully, this is an unexpected side effect of the console.
5 PS5 or SSD? You decide
Maybe we’ve been looking at the logo all wrong. When it’s flipped upside down, as Developer Digital discovered, it sort of looks like SSD. Coincidence? We think not.
Of course, part of the joke is that there’s no “speculation” about an SSD at all — it was already confirmed when Cerny spilled those exclusive details about the console in April. He didn’t too much about the hardware, but Cerny did boast that the PlayStation 5’s SSD has “a raw bandwidth higher than any SSD available for PCs,” according to CCN. In other words, game data will load much faster.
4 If anything, they’re consistent
At this rate, it wouldn’t be too terribly surprising to see the same logo trend continue. People are sending in their applications to be the next genius to receive a paycheck for this revolutionary design that only the most skilled professionals can figure out.
Simplicity and uniformity have been a part of the PlayStation’s design aesthetic for years now, so maybe we shouldn’t have expected anything different. Of course, we can only hope that Sony will take a cue from the feedback on the PlayStation 5 logo and move in another direction for consoles in the future.
3 It was a big decision for Sony
No wonder it took such a long time for Sony to unveil the logo. We can only imagine how the pitch meeting where they came up with this design went. But maybe, like the list of changes made, it was pretty short.
2 Pretends to be shocked
This GIF seems to sum the way fans reacted to the unveiling at the CES conference. Photos from the reveal showed attendees holding up their phones in anticipation of snapping an image of the new logo, only to find that it wasn’t quite as exciting as it sounded.
We aren’t really surprised, but we’re still going to fake it.
1 Still more popular than Xbox
As underwhelming as the reveal might have been, it still garnered far more attention on social media than Sony probably could have imagined. This side-by-side comparison shows an Instagram post revealing the PlayStation 5 logo, which had over 4 million likes, and a post revealing Microsoft’s upcoming Xbox Series X console, which reached just shy of 1 million likes at the time of the screen grab.
In fact, as ScreenRant reported, Sony’s PlayStation 5 logo reveal actually broke a record on Instagram. It became the most-liked photo that any game company has ever shared on the social media site. Well played, Sony.
