Sony has started the year with a bang. A couple of days ago, it had its first PlayStation State of Play of the year, showcasing some of the upcoming games to the PS5, including the highly anticipated Death Stranding 2. Today, the company has announced a new PS5 beta software update that improves the PS5 gaming experience.
Beginning with the DualSense and DualSense Edge wireless controllers, a new firmware update adds enhancements to the built-in mic and audio speaker. With the update, “the controller speakers can now produce higher volume sound, allowing you to hear in-game sounds and voice chat audio more clearly,” Sony says in a PlayStation blog post. The update also adds a new AI machine-learning model that adds improved noise cancellation to the controllers. Due to the update, Sony says “You may feel that the sounds coming from your controller speaker may sound louder.” Players are advised to adjust the speaker volume of the wireless controllers from the control centre.
Screen sharing on the PS5 is now more interactive with pointers and emoji reactions. When watching a screen share, viewers perform the following activities:
- Move a pointer around, send a ping or draw a line on the shared screen, allowing them to highlight certain objects or areas to guide the host player more accurately.
- Send emoji-based reactions to the host’s screen to visually encourage and celebrate gameplay actions.
The new interactions are available by default but the host can choose to turn them off in Screen Sharing settings.
Lastly, players can now adjust the brightness of the PS5 power indicator. There are options to Dim, Medium, or Bright (Standard) when players go to Settings > System > Beep and Light > Brightness.
Sony says it plans to release the software update globally in the coming months.
