A new PS5 software beta will be released today, February 9, and it will include several new party chat and home screen features and a smaller PS4 beta that will be released alongside it.
As with the previous beta, the new beta will be offered to a small group of users in the United States, Germany, United Kingdom, Japan, Canada, and France.
The upgrade will include new options for party chat, according to Hideaki Nishino, senior vice president. Players on the PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 4 will be able to host both open and closed parties, with open parties allowing any of their friends to participate without an invitation and closed parties requiring an invitation only.
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To allow PS5 owners who do not own beta software to participate in open parties, you’ll have to make a closed one. The new party chat options include improved reporting tools for party chat and a one-click Share Play feature for friend profiles, which is related to the new party chat choices.
Sony revealed that PS4 also receives individual voice volume exactly like PS5, which is a wonderful quality of life enhancement. Voice chats are now grouped under parties on the PlayStation 5, and the Game Base interface has been modified to show friends, parties, and messages instead of just messages.
Among the features of these tabs, according to Nishino, would be clearer friend listings, friend requests, and media access for friend groups.
Undoubtedly, one of the most exciting new features is connected to the PlayStation 5 home screen, which previously appeared quite messy.
Users will now be able to tag up to five games or applications to have them display on their home screen at all times, allowing them to be separated from the limit of 14 games or apps that can be on the home screen at the same time.
With this update, Sony is also discreetly demoing voice commands for the PlayStation 5. For the time being, this opt-in function will only be available to English beta participants in the United States and the United Kingdom, and it is based on the phrase “Hey, PlayStation.”
You can use voice commands to open games, control media, and adjust settings from there if everything goes according to schedule.
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The feedback tool, which may occasionally record your voice commands and allow you to submit rapid feedback from time to time, “may assist us in improving the functionality,” Nishino explains. “You have the option to switch off this feature at any moment through the system settings. For child accounts, this feature does not capture audio at any point.”
Even though the final version of the software under evaluation is slated to arrive “later this year,” it is possible that it will not include all of the capabilities evaluated during the beta phase. On the PlayStation Blog, you can see the whole patch notes, which contain some welcome accessibility additions such as new screen reader languages and other improvements.