Sony just announced a ton of new features currently under development. Features such as support for 1440p output have been teased for some time while others, such as the ability to join a Discord voice chat natively, feel like they should have been announced sooner than several years into the console’s life cycle.
You won’t be the first to access these features unless you’ve been selected for the beta, but they seem fairly promising. You’ll finally be able to make Discord calls directly from your PlayStation 5 and display the game that you’re playing to whoever you’re talking to (just like the mobile and desktop versions).
The PS5 will get other notable social features too. You’ll finally be able to request screenshare directly from your friends’ profiles, join gaming sessions through “Party” chats, and see which games your friends also own on their account. If you’re picky about who gets to join your games (like me), don’t fret: Sony is giving PS5 owners the ability to dictate who does and doesn’t get to join your games.
These additions are potentially huge boons to the multiplayer ecosystem that Sony has been trying to build out ever since acquired Bungie for $3.6 billion. And according to a financial call from last year, multiplayer was the biggest reason that PlayStation Plus users kept paying to use Sony’s gaming subscription service every month.
Even if you’re not big on multiplayer, Sony is developing features that are applicable to all PlayStation owners. The one I’m most excited about is the ability to use a voice command to capture video. You wouldn’t fiddle with details manually either; you can make presets for how long an average clip should be.
If you upgraded to a current-gen console recently, you probably remember game save transfers being a huge pain point. Currently, the only way to shuffle your PlayStation 4 saves to your new console is to dig into your cloud storage. PlayStation Plus subscribers will eventually be able to transfer save data automatically. Even if you’re not paying for Sony’s gaming subscription service, you’ll soon be able to transfer data between individual PS5s. You know, now that it’s supposedly possible for the average person to secure more than one console.
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If you’re lucky enough to receive a beta sign-up email, then you can preview these features before anyone else. So check your inbox carefully.
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