Sony has confirmed that the next major software update for the PS4 is rolling out to the console today. Firmware 5.00 brings with a number of incremental changes like being able to create custom friends list, choose different levels of restrictions on individual accounts, support for 5.1 and 7.1 virtual surround sound when watching movies using the PSVR headset and headphones, and the foundations for Team Tournaments.
The full list of features is below.
- Team Tournaments – Can join or own up to 60 teams and compete against others for prizes. Each team will have own customisable page where members can be viewed, tournaments can be joined, and past results also viewed. This function will be added soon after 5.00.
- Friend List Management – Players can now create custom lists to group friends, which can be based on partying up for certain games for example.
- Follow Anyone – Instead of just being able to follow verified accounts players can now follow any account, provided that other person’s privacy settings allow people to do so. Recommendations will be given based on games played, trending accounts, and verified accounts.
- Message Improvements – Messages can now be sent where individual music tracks can be shared with others. When selected the song will open up on Spotify either on mobile or console. Additionally web links will now have previews like headings and thumbnails.
- Quick Menu updates – The quick menu will now show notifications including progress of downloads and updates without having to exit a game or app. You can also leave a party directly through the quick menu.
- Notification Updates – The choice is now available to disable pop ups while watching movies or other video content. This has to be enabled in the settings menu. Message previews can also be turned off which will hide the sender’s online ID. Notification bar colour can now be either white or black.
- Broadcast Updates – Can now link live broadcasts to any of your communities, inviting other members to view your stream. In PSVR you can now view spectator comments while in both VR mode and cinematic mode, so you can better interact with viewers. PS4 Pro users will be able to stream at 1080p 60fp through Twitch.
- Virtual surround for PSVR – Both 5.1 and 7.1 supported for when watching movies in cinematic mode while using headphones.
- Better tournament bracket viewer – Players can now view standings in tournaments through an easy to understand bracket viewer for single and double elimination tournaments.
- Expanded language support –Â Â Czech, Hungarian, Romanian, Greek, Thai, Indonesian and Vietnamese now supported.
- App Updates – Communities app can now be viewed in landscape mode, and gifs can be posted to community wall. Language support adds aforementioned languages. Messages app now has Horizon Zero Dawn and Uncharted Lost Legacy stickers, plus website previews for links. Also expanded languages support for the above languages.
Source: PlayStation /Blog
MrYd
There’s also a update to 3.10 for the PSVR to go with it.
The 5.0 update is about 375MB and mandatory if you want to go online. The VR one is a lot smaller and presumably does many useful things they’re not going to tell us about. I doubt it fixes my issue with “VR Hair” though. That could only be fixed by shaving it all off before putting on the PSVR. Or some sort of hat, maybe.
camdaz
I’ve been using the beta for a while and haven’t used the main features very much but they’ve worked without any issues and they’ll be more useful to others.
MrYd
The most useful things are the “stop annoying me with notifications while I’m Netflixing” and changing the colour of the notifications. Black is much nicer.
And the changes to the quick menu are nice too.
For VR people, that can be very handy as it now tells you the time. Which you’ve probably completely lost track of. And a little trophy icon pops up in VR mode too. Doesn’t tell you what it was for, but you can quickly look at the quick menu and see that.
TSBonyman
Surround sound for PSVR is a good addition, the previous stereo sound was weird because it would fade in/out from each ear as you turned your head slightly.
parryman
I had minor issues with the beta (Dark Souls 3 dlc was installed but not recognised by the system, almost had an embolism when my 200hr Ng+5 save wouldn’t load, I’m so close to plat’ing it)
Sitorimon
I’ve had problems all evening since installing. Games crashing, xmb freezing, saves disappearing and a mysterious loss of about 50gb’s of data. My storage still showed 22gb remaining, but no games would launch until I deleted another 135mb. I’ve not really had problems with previous updates before – maybe I’ve been lucky, but this is leaving me less than impressed if it continues.