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Sony has said that it still has plenty of “interesting, exciting, fantastic ideas” it wants to bring to the PS5 through future firmware updates.
This comes from SVP of Platform Experience at Sony Interactive Entertainment, Hideaki Nishino, who discussed the console’s system software in a recent interview posted to the Official PlayStation Blog.
This month, the PS5’s second big firmware update went live, introducing some highly-anticipated features like internal storage upgrades and 3D audio support for built-in TV speakers. Even after this, Nishino says, there’s still “a lot” that the team wants to do.
Some of the ideas for features to implement come from community feedback that the team has received since the launch of the PS5 and Nishino says they’ve been “receiving a bunch of feedback from the community through social networks or system telemetry, as well as the media, my family, my friends. We have tons of lists of the feedback”.
But the team’s learnings can also be traced back through to the PS4, with Nishino explaining, “we learned a lot through PS4 and continue to learn about how players are using the system and how games are behaving. We know what is most accepted and most popular; what features are not used.”
As a result, they had “a gigantic list of things before PS5 launch that we wanted to do” and even now, he says, there are ”interesting, exciting, fantastic ideas on the list.”
Nishino didn’t reveal any specifics when it comes to he and his team’s plans for the future but between their own list and what the PlayStation community is asking for, he says “there’s a lot.” Nishino promises that he is “diligently working on these lists and there will be more coming out in the future.”
Analysis: what’s coming?
It’s maybe not entirely surprising that Sony still has plenty that it wants to do with the PS5 given the console only launched less than a year ago and this month marked its second major firmware update.
The question is, what does it have planned? Well, Nishino noted that community feedback is being taken on board, saying “we are not just whiteboarding our desired features. We work for customer needs.” Scrolling down into the comments underneath the interview gives some indication as to what PS5 players are currently looking for, from VRR support, to 1440p monitor support, to support for folders, and more besides.
Sony has previously said that VRR support will be added “after a future system software update”, though there isn’t an exact timeline for when we should expect it. Nishino pointed out in the interview that updates are “more dynamic now” and that while there are major firmware updates, “if you carefully look at the PS5 system, over the network we are changing the UX behavior quite often. Sometimes we do some customization for a certain group of people to see how these features are used.” In the meantime, the recent major update has introduced several long-called-for and much-needed improvements, with an added slight performance boost, too.
Of course, you can’t really appreciate changes to the PS5 when you can’t get your hands on the console in the first place and many are still facing a real challenge when it comes to getting one. Keeping an eye on stock drops is the best way to grab a PS5 and at TechRadar, we’re regularly tracking retailer stock. Readers in the US still on the lookout for a console can follow our dedicated PS5 restock tracker as well as TechRadar’s US Editor-in-Chief Matt Swider, who has had plenty of success in helping people secure consoles.