Sony has announced that a new beta firmware for PS5 and PS4 with functions for party chat, accessibility options and user interface improvements.
As confirmed by the PlayStation Blog, the firmware beta testing phase is limited to players residing in the US, Canada, UK and France, but it is still interesting to read the details to find out what’s coming in the near future for all users.
As mentioned at the beginning, there are news on both PS5 and PS4 for the management of voice chat. Specifically, now when players start a party they can choose whether to create one that is open to all or closed. In the first case, all friends on your list and “friends of friends” will be able to access it. A closed one, on the other hand, will be accessible only by users to whom you send an invitation.
On PS5, the voice chat reporting system has also been updated, with new visual indicators that will make it easier to identify who said what, allowing PlayStation Safety to take more appropriate actions based on the reports. Furthermore, it will be possible to start Share Play without first going through the Share Screen. On PS4, however, the option has been added to change the volume of each individual user of a party.
Changes have also been made to the Game Base function of PS5, with the voice chats now called party and the subdivision of the menu in three subsections: Friends, Party and Messages.
As for the improvements to theuser interface on PS5, with the new beta firmware you can filter the games in your collection by genre, lock up to five application icons in the dashboard home. In this regard, the maximum number of icons displayed has been increased to 14 (now the maximum is 11). In addition, the design of the cards and the Trophy list has been changed.
Among the new features for accessibility options, the number of languages supported by the screen reader has been increased (Italian was previously supported), the function that reads texts on the screen aloud and provides instructions on how to perform operations with the console. Also you can set mono sound for the headphones.
Finally, for US and UK users only, the i function has been added voice commands to start / close applications or manage multimedia commands with your voice.
