Sony has released a substantial update to the PlayStation 4’s firmware that adds a number of exciting options to Sony’s latest home console. Headlining the “Yukimura” update are a whole suite of accessibility options, the long awaiting ability to suspend games when entering rest mode and 60 FPS Remote Play on PS Vita!
Suspending games in progress was touted during the console’s Feb 2013 reveal but has been absent from previous system updates over the past year. Now if you enter when Rest Mode when playing a game the PS4 will save your current game-state to memory, ready to be played the next time you power up your console.
A whole host of accessibility options improve the PlayStation 4 experience for players with accessibility needs. You can now remap buttons on your DualShock 4 at the system level. This feature isn’t just useable for those who have accessibility concerns – do you like your cancel and confirm commands swapped but your favourite game doesn’t support it? Now you can! Also added under the accessibility menu are the ability to activate a high contrast mode and large text for system menus. As someone who has a severe visual impairment I really welcome the ability to adjust text size. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to run games at 720P because the text was just too small.
Rounding out the most important features is the implementation of 60 FPS Remote Play when using a PS Vita and the ability to backup your PlayStation 4 content on to supported USB flash Drives and portable hard drives. I haven’t yet tested out the back up options but from the quick peek I took at the menus it looks like you can back up individual items like stored gameplay videos, screenshots and save data!
For a full list of new features make sure to check out the PlayStation blog.