Pat PilcherThe first update for the PS5 has finally gone live, and it comes with plenty of nifty features, reports PAT PILCHER.
The headline goodie is that PS5 owners can finally store games on an external hard drive, but there’s plenty of other good stuff going on too. Here’s what the good Witchdoctor has uncovered.
First things first, the update weighs in just shy of a gig at 902MB. This isn’t a big deal for fast fibre users, but gamers with slower broadband might need to set aside some download time.
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The wait will be well worth it though, as gamers can now copy over PS5 games from internal storage to an external USB drive. There are still limitations. Because PS5 games typically take advantage of the PS5’s super zippy solid-state storage, games on a PlayStation 5’s external drive can’t directly play off an external drive. That said, being able to store games elsewhere is a welcome addition.
The other good stuff also includes some much-needed social tweaks. With the update, PS5 owners will be able to use Share Play. It lets PS5 and PS4 owners share their game screen with friends, and pass controllers virtually to play co-op games together. Adding to the co-op gaming buzz is a ‘Request to Join’ feature. It serves as a shortcut to jump into games with friends more efficiently than had previously been possible.
The other goodie that gets the big tick is game update Pre-downloads. When enabled by developers, updates for games can pre-download (your PS5 has to be set up for automatic updates). Twiddling my thumbs while a huge update takes forever to download could become a thing of the past. Thank goodness!
A not so obvious update is the ability to switch the video output to non-HDR for games that don’t have HDR support. If you’re the owner of a flash new telly or monitor, you can rejoice as the update now allows 1080p at 120Hz for silky smooth gameplay.
Last but by no means least, the PlayStation UI has been given a tune-up. Chatting with Friends is now easier to manage, and you can also disable game chat/tweak chat volume levels quicker. Titles in your game library can also now be hidden, and the library is searchable too.
If that’s what’s good, what’s not so good? The update doesn’t provide support for storage expansion via M.2 drives. This is a tad odd as the PS5 has an empty M.2 drive bay behind its face cover. Frustratingly, this bay remains unusable until a future firmware update is released. Oh well. The upshot of this is that PS5 users will have to continue to look at the Xbox Series X 1TB storage expansion option longingly and make do with the PS5’s 667GB of usable storage.
