The announcement about Sony's PlayStation 5 being at the "latter stage of its life cycle" is finally dying down, and owners of the console are getting updates that improve the gameplay experience, both in hardware and software.
PS5 Latest Update
The latest system update, which is version 24.02-09.00.00, comes with several changes for the console, but perhaps the most significant one would the the enhanced audio for both the DualSense and DualSense Edge.
The audio will now be louder and clearer, which would be a welcome change for better voice chat and in-game broadcasting functions. The microphone's quality is also improved using a new AI-machine learning model.
To make the voice chat experience better and clearer for players, background noises from button presses and game audio are suppressed, which has been an issue for some games that constantly have background sounds.
The brightness of the PS5's power indicator can now be adjusted. All you have to do is head to Settings, then System, Beep and Light, and then select Brightness. Under the Mute Beep Sound toggle, you can choose between Dim, Medium, and Bright (Standard).
For gameplay, Parties and Share Screen can be more interactive. For one, players watching the shared screen can use pointers to indicate specific locations on the gameplay screen using a ping, allowing them to help out when the host needs assistance.
Viewers can send emoji reactions based on how they feel about the gameplay they're watching. If the host doesn't want these interactions, they have the option to turn off Viewer Interactions in the Share Screen settings.
Other than that, the blog post also states that the system software performance and stability have been improved, as well as the messages and usability on certain screens. Messages can now use Unicode 15.1 emoji with the added support.
This Could Mean the PS5 is Still Worth the Purchase
All this talk about the latter stages had PS5 owners disappointed, especially since a lot of owners hadn't hit the one-year mark of their ownership yet. With the updates that Sony is still issuing, it means that the current generation console will still be current-gen for a while.
Even after the next generation console is released, the company behind the console still releases updates from time to time. For instance, the PlayStation 4 has been out since 2013, and its latest system update was released ten years later in December 2023.
Not only will the PS5 likely have a couple more years before the release of the PS6, but it will still get updates long after. So, if you're questioning whether you made a mistake buying the PS5 now instead of waiting for the PS6, you did not.
Once the next generation console or the PS5 Pro is released and you want to get the console as soon as you can, you can always choose to sell your PS5 since a lot of people are still willing to buy them, and they would be more inclined to at a cheaper price.
