What Is -- PlayStation 4

Slim PS4

The PS4 was released with a fat version 2 tone look, then the Slim version seen above

and the PS4 Pro with 4K with 3 levels.

Play PS4 games and disc movies. Uses HDMI cable. Has USB plugs & Blue Tooth.

Download games from the PSN Store.

Has the redesigned Wireless Controller with new flat thumb stick design.
Added a touch pad to the center of the controller.

See this post for how to assign custom buttons. [link]

PS4 / PS5 Custom Button Assignments -- How To

home

Original PS4

PS4 Pro

PRIOR GENERATION -- PS3 Slim Console and DS3 Controller

NEXT GENERATION -- PS5 Console and Controller

PSN Store. Some games have a PS4 and PS5 version. You can play some PS4 games on PS5.

When you push up on your controller you can see movies and pictures of the game on the store.

It would auto start the first movie trailer when visit a game's page.

Old games

New games

Notable Games:

Tekken 7 -- [link]

Battlefield 4

Battlefield 1

Batman: Arkham Collection

Call of Duty games

Grand Theft Auto 5 -- [link]

Red Dead Redemption & RDR 2

Remade HD Tomb Raider games

Star Wars Battlefront 1 & 2

Titanfall 2

All PS4 Fighting Games -- [link]

Racing games

Differences between Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S -- [link]

etc... There was a few VR (Virtual Reality) "motion control" games, using the headset and or motion control wands. There are a large amount of PS4 digital games on the PS Network Store. Many are smaller side scroller and or kids kind of games reborn into the modern generation like games from the 80's and 90's were all side scrollers basically and so now they all have been reinvented with modern day graphics, so you can find 100 different similar games like side scrollers, or mini racing games, whatever it is sort an endless abyss for downloadable games and includes literally anything published with a box and disc. Except a few games that were delisted. Like Grid (Triple A Racing game) and its DLC.

Notable Apps:

You could download apps from the PSN and watch YouTube, Vudu, Hulu, Tubi, Fandango, Disney Plus, Netflix, etc...

Vudu (Walmart Movie App) no longer is available. Changed to Fandango, but that is also no longer available. You could rent movies, watch in 3 days, or buy them, and they had a free movie section updated at least monthly or possibly weekly. Had like 50 movies or 100 you could watch free. When you bought a DVD or Bluray from Walmart it might have a Vudu code to redeem it for your Vudu Library as if you owned it digitally like buying it from the Vudu app.

YouTube runs faster on the PS4 than the PS3 which it originally appeared on as an app with Netflix and some others on PS3.

There are numbers next to each category that I removed from this picture, such as there would be 10 games next to "All" (10) and 2 apps so a 2 right after "Applications" (2) in the side bar menu.

The PS4's Console Included XMB Features & Functionality:

This is the PS4 XMB when you go all the way up to see the background image and or navigate the XMB. The daily look is the lower tiles being higher. You can adjust what displays and how, as in most recent games played.

In the main menu xmb you can select options (the small button on the controller in the top right)(used to be "Select" and "Start" buttons on PS3 and before) and see installed add-ons and info.

The left button is now the "Share" feature to capture screenshots or video clips.
You can plug in a USB memory card, thumb stick, zip drive, and export the video to a pc.
Also an option to upload directly to YouTube.

The DS4 is now called a "Dual Sense" controller when before it was "Dual Shock." For the vibration function the PS2 and PS3 had in the controller. It is a wireless controller that you can plug in a cable to recharge it and use it as a wired controller, but it is still unknown if doing that turns off the blue tooth, as the menu to set it as a wired controller suspiciously still includes a blue tooth symbol. Meaning you can press the middle PS button to turn on the console.

The PS4 has a app options bar and various options of things to do with the PS4 from the individual features including the ability to message other players, and track other players, and form a party and chat when in game you can invite players into your game depending on what you are playing. Send messages. Form a group. So your entire Call of Duty team can be in a group chat instead of using the games chat feature they are in the PSN chat feature. I'd give the XMB and functionality of it all a high rating. It all works well. Evolution of the PS3 XMB. The PS5 has a similar "feel" in its XMB but is different has high and low XMB bar options.

This is a picture I found on the PSN and set as a background.

There are also "Themes" you can download. PS3 also had themes.

The PS4 "required" players to pay for monthly access to the PSN Network as a "PS Plus" Member. You can pay for a month, 3 months or a year. You get a few free games every month. If you don't renew you lose access to those games you added to you library before. You can't access older months games only the current month you start at your subscription at. See this post. PSN PS Plus -- [link]

You can put games on an external drive that is what the white triangle is showing it is on an external drive. It also shows the yellow cross to signify PS Plus monthly game or if you put the game into a folder on the XMB like "Sports" games could be a folder that when clicked would show all the games you saved to that folder.

I don't know what "PS5 Remote Play" is.

This category in the library are my PS Plus games added to my library from month to month.

I can click "download" on any of them.

You click on a game and get this.

Some have a bottom category "PS Store" so you can see what DLC you added.

home

The PS4 store has the older PS3 game listing format sometimes.

The deals are always happening on the PSN Store, and there is a lot of DLC for games and editions.

This is in the left "Notifications" option in the xmb menu.

Shows what has been downloaded and or is being downloaded.

The disc view on the title view in the main menu also shows this info of how long and how much is being downloaded. PS4 often let you download a portion of the game and start it before it is all downloaded and would limit certain features or characters to play in a fight game in-game playability. So the download bar could show how much to download until you can "launch." as in need 10GB to start a 80GB game.

When you put a disc in it also downloads the data to the hard drive.

I don't think you can just put a disc in and play it without any download taking place.

Updates also always happen when you install a game.

Overall a good console. Lots of games. Plays movies. You can watch YouTube videos. The slim console is almost silent in terms of fan noise and disc reading and using physical media "discs" is barely done much with all the digital games these days. Even at all with the data being installed to the HDD. The PS5 even was released with just a digital console.

You can plug in a hard drive of some sort HDD or SSD or (I think) thumb zip drive into the USB and offload games to external media to play them. Has a limit of 8 TB I think is the max. You can offload disc data or digital games to free up space on the internal console storage and use as many drives as you want. The consoles included storage capacity did eventually cause the issue of needing to delete games to play other games. Such as GTA 5 is about 120GB so with a 1 TB HDD that makes about 10 games you can have while other smaller games you have a hundred of them being only 1 to 4 GB in size depending. The only issue with all the external storage is you need to send the data to the PS4 to then put it on another external storage so you can't plug in 2 HDD's and send data from 1 to another without it first being redownloaded to the PS4. Making storage management to put all fighting games on one hard drive a chore that can take an hour to move it around.

I'd rather not pay a monthly fee for PlayStation Plus membership to access online features of games.

But Sony is a game developer as well so it all ends up making new games one way or another and they added a variety of things to a membership to make it interesting to check out every month even though the selection of free games has never really been games I had interest in.

Basically there is Battlefield or Tekken or racing games for its online multiplayer and then 1 million games you would never play (exponentially more DLC). And Sony gives you 2 or 3 them every month (and discount some DLC sometimes for the games they make available). Kids likely be entertained overall so whatever.

Sony added "PS Now" as a subscription based rental service to play certain games that you can't access without the Now subscription and included game demos of new games. Not even sure if it is still available they might have retired it and used premium tier PS Plus membership instead. Or they have both active still as some games can only be played with top tier PS Plus such as Crash Commando back from the PS3 you can't purchase. I own it on PS3 as well so its here on PS4 but I can't play it or buy it again.