Hideaki Nishino, the Senior Vice President at Sony Interactive Entertainment, has announced that the second major PlayStation 5 update will be available to PS5 owners tomorrow. In it, there are a decent amount of enhancements and features added to the PS5, most notably M.2 storage expansion, which will give players more storage to store and play PS5 games, PS4 games, and media apps.
Of course, that's not the only thing included in this update. PlayStation 5 owners will be able to use their built-in TV speakers to enable 3D audio, which is a neat addition. There's also expanded support for PS Remote play over mobile networks and the new ability to share Share Screen broadcasts on the PS App on September 23, 2021, but let's not get too ahead of ourselves, eh?
What's in the second PlayStation 5 major update?
This update has been in the works for a while, and players have been able to beta test the update since the end of July, which is good since the 10 million+ fastest selling system in the US has had players desperately wanting the main feature available in this update. M.2 storage expansion is the big ticket item in this update, and it's sort of complicated.
I say sort of complicated because there is a level of complexity to it, but not enough to be a huge pain. You'll have to choose a M.2 SSD that's fast enough for the PS5 as outlined here, but once you do the installation process is relatively simple.
As for everything else included in the update, players will be able to customize their Control Center by choosing which controls to hide or unhide at the bottom of the screen. You'll also be able to now easily view and write messages to your friends and Parties directly from the Game Base, which is good because before it was definitely a pain to do.
If you have PS4 or PS5 versions of the same game they'll now appear separately in the "Installed" tab of the Game Library and on the Home Screen. There's also Screen Reader controls where players can now pause or resume Screen Reader (Press “PS + Triangle buttons”) and have it repeat everything it reads by pressing the PS + R1 buttons.
PlayStation Now has a resolution and connection test tool now, which is long, long overdue. In an online match players can also select a forth accolade test, "Leader" which is visible on players' profiles.
There's also automatic capture of "personal best" videos, which is when players compete in challenges to set either a better time or higher score and set a personal best. Those moments will now be automatically recorded.
If you're the type of individual who hunts down trophies, you'll now be able to do so much more easily with the Trophy tracker, which will let players easily access up to five trophies per game through the Control Center.
3D Audio Support for built-in TV speakers is now a thing, and once enabled through the Sound menu it transforms your regular two-channel TV speaker into one capable of outputting three-dimensional sound. Players can also measure the acoustics of the room through the DualSense controllers microphone, which is actually really cool and I'll have to give it a go to see how it sounds.
Those that own and use a Pulse 3D Wireless headset will now also have access to equalizer settings within Sound Controls, which will allow them to customize their sound profiles.
Last but not least are the PS Remote Play App and PS App enhancements, with the most interesting being that players can now stream games over mobile data. At least 5Mbps is required, but 15Mbps is recommended. You'll be able to set a preferred video quality through mobile data streaming as well, so you if want to stream in 720p that would take a faster connection than a 480p stream.
You'll also be able Share Screen broadcasts through the PS App starting next Thursday on September 23, which means that players will be able view their friends Share Screen broadcasts together. If you have the Android version you may have to wait a week, so don't get too mad if you can't watch your friends play PS5 games. While waiting, you can check out everything that was announced at the recent PlayStation Showcase event.
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