The PlayStation 5’s First Major Software Update Comes Out Tomorrow

By Moises Taveras  |  April 13, 2021 | 2:05pm
Photo courtesy of Sony
Video Games News PlayStation 5
The PlayStation 5’s First Major Software Update Comes Out Tomorrow

Tomorrow the PlayStation 5 will receive its first major software update since releasing last fall. Laid out in detail at the PlayStation Blog this morning, the update will see a lot of additions being made to the PS5’s capabilities and changes to the PlayStation app.

The most prominent addition being made is the expansion to support external USB storage, which will allow you to transfer already downloaded titles onto an external USB drive. Because PS5 games prominently utilize the system’s internal SSD to power them, you will not be able to play games directly from the USB storage, but you can quickly transfer a game to and from it. You also may not download a game directly onto your USB storage. This feature is purely for storage and mostly to free up space on the PS5’s precarious internal storage.

The Share Play function on Playstation is also getting expanded, allowing now for cross-generation Share Play. This means that PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 4 players in a party can now share their screen and even hand off control to their friends across generations, so a PS4 player can now experience PS5 games through Share Play and vice versa.

There’s also now a “Request to Join Game Session” function, which shows joinable sessions and parties and serves as a shortcut for inviting people to and joining games. Considering how unintuitive the PS5 feels in this regard, I’m looking forward to the shortcut.

A host of other PS5 features are getting touched up, like the Game Base, which will now allow you to quickly toggle between active parties and activity and your actual friends list. You can also quickly disable in-game chat and have the ability to adjust players’ individual volume in parties. These are just some of the tiny tweaks coming to the PS5 tomorrow, which you can read a full rundown of over on the PlayStation Blog.

The PlayStation app will also be receiving some changes in the coming weeks, including the ability to join a multiplayer session from the app, manage your system’s storage, filter the PlayStation Store and even compare Trophy collections between friends. It’s nothing game-changing, but certainly appreciated considering how much they’ve worked to market it as a true companion app.

For a first update, a ton of this sounds good for improving the player experience on the PS5. More updates like this and maybe the PS5 won’t feel like a chore to try and navigate.

 
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