A little under a week after details about a new PlayStation 4 firmware update began to leak out on to the web, Sony have officially come out and unveiled the next major update. They’re calling it ‘Yukimura’ but if you prefer the old fashioned way they’re also referring to it as 2.50.
Most of what we heard about a week ago has turned out to be true, with suspend/resume, trophy screenshots, new accessibility options, and new trophy sorting abilities all officially on the horizon. The complete list of what they’ve talked about thus far is just below.
Sub-account to Master account Upgrade: Users with a sub-account will now be able to upgrade to a master account directly from their PS4 when they turn 18, removing restrictions for chat, enabling users to fund their own wallet, make purchases and more. Currently, users can upgrade their sub-accounts online at https://account.sonyentertainmentnetwork.com/.
Facebook Friend Search: Gamers globally have jumped into PS4 as a redefined social gaming experience and connecting with friends over the network is a huge part of what makes the PS4 community so special. PlayStation now lets you go even bigger by connecting with your Facebook friends on PS4 using your linked account. Search for Facebook friends who are PlayStation Network members and build on the foundation of Friends you already have in your list.
Remote Play & Share Play at 60 fps: For games that support 60 fps, the ability to customize the frame rate of Remote Play and Share Play will be added with “Yukimura.” Play to your bandwidth strengths and use this option to stream gameplay at 60 or 30 fps when using Remote Play or Share Play on supported devices.
Accessibility Options: “Yukimura” introduces a wide variety of options to make their PS4 entertainment experience even more accessible. Options include text to speech, enlarged text, bolder fonts, higher contrast UI, zoom for displayed pictures, invert colors on screen and more. Users will also be able to reassign buttons for DualShock 4, making it easier for users with limited manual dexterity or limited reach and strength to play.
Trophy Improvements: We have received a ton of feedback to improve Trophies. In “Yukimura,” a screenshot will automatically be captured at the moment a Trophy is earned, making it easier than ever for you to share your greatest gaming moments with your friends. We’re also adding more sorting options along with the new ability to remove games from the Trophy list that have 0% completion.
Share Video Clips to Dailymotion: When sharing standout PS4 moments via the Share button on DualShock 4, “Yukimura” will allow players to upload directly to Dailymotion.
Heading down to the comments section of the blog post also provided a few new details that weren’t in the main body, as Scott McCarthy answered questions from readers on the blog. For starters, it doesn’t seem like friend online notifications or DLNA streaming support will be included in this update, as Scott asked these readers to stay tuned and noted that they want “PS4 versions of these features, not a cut/paste from last gen.”
Next he talked about the rumour of an external hard drive backup by saying that this feature “cannot be confirmed at this time” and “don’t believe everything you read on the interwebs…” He also responded to several people asking for new avatars by questioning what kind of avatars they’d like to see, so it seems like this request is at least being considered.
Finally, he had an interesting response when a reader asked him if suspend/resume would work across all PS4 games. Here’s what he had to say.
There’s some basic functionality that requires developer support and, there are cases where general game architecture prevents jumping back to exactly where you left off. Currently support is widespread. General architecture issues are very rare.
So it sounds like the vast majority of games should work with suspend/resume as advertised. Having said that, because he specifically mentions game architecture occasionally being a roadblock, and because they put “suspend/resume is supported by nearly all PS4 titles” in the body of the post, it seems like games that won’t work with it are few and far between but probably do exist.
No date or even a window was given for 2.50, so we’ll hope “coming soon” means before the end of March. Or course, we’ll also hope that it doesn’t break anything when it gets here. Head to the comments and let us know what you’re looking forward to the most, or what you hope they’ll start working on next.
Source: US PlayStation Blog
a inferior race
I hope you can turn the trophy screenshot feature off as I have no interest in it and would rather not waste my HDD space on it.
Youles
Yeah, would make sense to be Off as default. And hopefully they’ll store in a specific Trophy folder rather than individual game folders, amongst any of your own chosen captures. Seems an odd decision as sometimes a trophy is more about performing an act, so a video would be more appropriate than a screen-shot – often a screen-shot won’t show what you’ve done to get it. Although, I guess a lot of people share such screen-shots so it means they don’t have to quit to the Share screen on earning it. Nice feature I guess, so long as it can be switched on/off.
Sniper Elite 3 did a similar thing where it automatically recorded several seconds of gameplay with certain long or headshots, and didn’t realise it was doing it until I noticed a large amount of my Capture memory was used for it! I’m not sure there was even an in-game option to turn that off!
MrJimmy
It’s that stay tuned for dlna comment that annoys me, SOME indicative dates would be helpful but as it stands I don’t know whether to buy some other solution for the spot my Ps4 lives in. If i do you can bet the update follows to render it a waste :/
TSBonyman
I want dlna on PS4 too but still have my PS3 and a Raspberry Pi. The latter is a tiny piece of kit, cheap as chips, pretty easy to set up and provides a great solution for streaming media.
Currently thinking about upgrading to Pi2..
http://www.raspberrypi.org/raspberry-pi-2-on-sale/
Amazon Uk link.. http://amzn.to/1F260Nu
Andrewww
Some nice features included here, and I especially praise them for improving PS4 accessibility.
It’s quite obvious suspend can’t work for all games, e.g. online games, etc.
Good stuff, keep going..!
Youles
Resume function will be nice; but the 0% trophy list deletion is fucking marvellous – for all those shit games you tried and hated, or games other people played on your PS3 before you cared about trophies! Hopefully it’s a step closer to removing lists with trophies eventually too.
I just want custom folders for games – is it too much to ask? ;)
Youles
And button customisation will be great – like switching run from L3 on Dying Light, and R3 bringing up a menu screen in The Evil Within.
colmshan1990
Has button custimisation not always been there?
It’s up to developers to allow it. I know I can change my FIFA controls whichever way I like when I want to make Remote Play better.
Avenger
I’m not sure on current features, but the update allows the firmware to reassign buttons rather than Remote Play (Vita) or in-game customisation. For example if sprint is locked to L3 in a game, I can reassign R2 to input L3. Hence when I go in the game, I can use R2 to sprint.
Incidentally (I only just noticed it) R3 to bring up a menu screen is bonkers. I’d end up triggering the menu every five seconds.
blackarts
Why do you care what’s on your trophy list? Is this like the childish singstar xmb icon again? When you grow up, you will find more important things to care about than icons and empty trophies.
Youles
Yeah I do as it happens, I track my progress of games played/completed so it would be nice to remove ones I don’t care for and I never played – presumably others feel the same which is why they added it. Perhaps when you grow up, you’ll leave more productive, worthwhile comments you stupid prick.
Tuffcub
Please be civil, people are perfectly entitled to care about whatever they like. Unless it’s Paloma Faith.
Starman
That singstar icon is so annoying.
cnutard
Lol’d quite hard at Youles last comment.
I too keep track of my completed games, as I’m extremely ocd, and am looking forward to getting rid of those nasty games I hated or will never have the time to complete!
Pitcher-T
I loved how Youles’ comment was so well worded and succinct yet still ended with “stupid prick”. Master of the art of language.
Avenger
Really glad for the 0% trophy list deletion. It’ll definitely allow for those achievers to get a more truer record of their progress. I honestly would like it to extend to 1% trophy lists, simply for the fact that games I’ve tried might trigger a trophy, and then I find the game isn’t my cup of tea. I hope they expand the feature outside of PS4.
Youles
Yeah, the 1% would be good too. Perhaps you could use a mates’ PS4 briefly, then de-register your account after deleting them. Presumably it’s not just limited to PS4 games too.
TSBonyman
This is probably the wrong time to mention that some new pics released by SCEJ – intended to illustrate some of the new accessibility features, zoom etc. – seem to also reveal that the PS Store icon has been moved from it’s current position, tucked away on the top bar, and is now an App icon alongside your games. Presumably it’ll be permanently alongside What’s New – they’ll hardly want it to get shuffled along into your library. Bah.. :/
MrYd
So the only useful feature that was rumoured is now possibly not there? And all those other features are going to eat up more and more space on that horribly inadequate 500 gig drive?
If only there was some way to back up (or even install) games on an external drive. Like the rumours said.
I’d open it up and put a bigger drive in, but then that’s close to 400 gig of stuff to download again. Which would take a couple of days.
Tuffcub
Its worth doing. I cant see external backups hacking as that opens the door for piracy.
MrYd
Piracy? How?
For downloaded games, it’s all tied to your PSN account, and for games on disc, you need the disc anyway. (And ideally it’d backup all the DLC and patches too, but that’s all tied to the PSN account as well).
Avenger
“Piracy? How?”
I’m choosing not to corrupt your innocence on that matter. Suffice to say there’s a little bit more to it than content being locked to a PSN account and discs being required for games. External HDDs add another significant access point for people, and if they do it, it’ll have to have water tight coding.
djdustb
Having just updated my HDD to a new 2TB one I would love to see a select all option when copying data to an HDD and from the HDD back to the PS4. I spent hours going through all the saved data on the two profiles in use on the server it really was a huge waste of time that could be avoided.
How do people register features they want to see in firmware? There are so many basic features (like select all, or order by) that are missing.
cnutard
You can head over to http://share.blog.us.playstation.com/ to submit any ideas you have.
cam_manutd
Good update I really hope the suspend and resume works with Battlefield 4 as I was hit with its nasty non-save bug which is why I have only completed two missions :’).
stonyk
My biggest gripe these days is lack of Bluetooth support for headphones. Could never understand why people complained until I bought a new pair a few days ago.
That has to be the craziest scenario ever. The PS4 recognises them by name but just refuses to let them work! When will this be updated please. Especially will the rumours about spotify app coming.
NotSmartEnough
Looking forward to suspend/resume and 60fps remote play.
Bit disappointed about the backup/restore utility possibly not making the cut: the lack of this is stopping me upgrading my HDD at the moment.
Couldn’t care less about trophy lists, DLNA, folders…
Pitcher-T
Maybe the suspend and resume comment is merely referring to instances where you won’t necessarily resume EXACTLY where you left off. Maybe it’s like a checkpoint system built into the game? But it would be nice to cover all games, but I suppose they never want to commit to saying all games will work with it.
On a side note, are there many games that do not allow Share-play? I seem to remember COD AW being the main culprit but I wondered if there were many more.
Unlike Share-play however I don’t see any detrimental effect on the gaming “experience” by being able to suspend/resume, so hopefully not many developers choose to disable the feature.
NotSmartEnough
I’m guessing, but I think that the suspend/resume limitation is going to be down to game design, rather than developers choosing to disable it.
Anything with a significant network component is going to struggle if the game is hibernated and then woken hours later. Anything like warframe just isn’t going to work: it’s fine to write everything to disk and rehydrate it when the system’s powered back on, but the server session would have disappeared long ago.
Pitcher-T
Very true, a game like Destiny would just not work. Hopefully there aren’t too many foolish people that expect to suspend Destiny mid-raid and hope to resume later haha.