Stalled downloads. Crashes while games are suspended. Occasional freezing. The PS5 has some great games, and it’s been fun to finally get some hands-on time with PlayStation’s future, but the next-gen console has had some weird issues.
Today, Sony offered a workaround for one of the most widely discussed issue, known as the download queue bug. Some players have found that when they select a game to download onto the PS5, it looks like the PS5’s about to begin the download, and then…nothing. The progress bar sits at 0% downloaded indefinitely, no matter how many times players try to start the process over again.
Previously, the solution was to do a full factory reset on the console, but that was extremely tedious and meant deleting a bunch of data, especially if you’d already transferred everything from your PS4. Now, Sony is suggesting players start up their PS5s in safe mode (turn on the console by holding down the power button for several seconds) and select the option to rebuild the database instead. This resolves the issue without deleting anything, though it still requires some leg work and remains far from ideal for a brand new next-gen console.
Sony didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
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Meanwhile, there are other ongoing issues that still don’t seem to have fixes. One of them is the system crashing when in suspend mode. Rather than turn back on, the PS5 will beep and go through an extended boot up sequence, saying the system is “repairing console storage” as if you had pulled the power plug out while it was running.
It’s unclear why this is happening, and what, if any, problems it might create for the console longterm. As a result, some users have suggested simply turning off Rest mode entirely in the settings menu and closing out of any game before shutting the system down.
Then there’s the issue of the PS5 sometimes defaulting to installing and running the PS4 versions of games, even when using a PS5 disc. It’s an easy problem to correct by manually switching to the next-gen version, but if you’re not paying attention you can end up playing the wrong version. Despite an official workaround for this from Activision, I’ve still had Black Ops Cold War occasionally default to the PS4 version.
More frustrating are the occasional freezes and crashes while in the middle of playing. I had Cold War freeze up on me a couple times when restarting missions, and Kotaku’s Editor-in-Chief mentioned Miles Morales freezing the couple times he tried to jump into different sections of the game using the PS5’s activity cards.
It’s hard to know how much those freezes are console problems versus issues with the particular games in question, but it’s left the PS5’s first week out in the wild feeling a bit jankier than I’d like. Hopefully those rough edges continue to get sanded down in time.