Playstation 4 (PS4) Stuck on Game Main Menus (cannot play any game) - How to Fix

David A. Wheeler

2020-01-02

Here's a potential problem: you have a Sony Playstation 4 (PS4) and you can move around the console menus, and select a game to start the game main menu, but then cannot actually play the game (you're stuck at the game main menu / game title screen / "press X to play").

The solution that worked for me was to shut down the controller:

  1. Get to the game main menu / title screen, where you are stuck
  2. Hold down for a few seconds the "PS" central button on the DualShock Controller until you see a menu.
  3. Select "Sound/Devices" (move up/down with the direction buttoms and press "X" to select)
  4. Go all the way down and select "Turn off device"
  5. Select "DUALSHOCK 4"; yes, you're intentionally turning off the controller you're using!
  6. Press the "PS" button on the controller to turn it back on; that will start the game.

This involves some sort of subtle defect in the controller; I've tried another controller which didn't have this problem. You should probably get the controller replaced if you can, but this is a useful work-around.

Here are some other techniques you can try, but they didn't work for me:


Feel free to see my home page at https://dwheeler.com. You may also want to look at my paper Why OSS/FS? Look at the Numbers! and my book on how to develop secure programs.

(C) Copyright 2020 David A. Wheeler. Released under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike version 3.0 or later (CC-BY-SA-3.0+).