The PlayStation 5’s latest system software update has come out of beta and is now widely available. This update adds Discord voice chat, as well as all sorts of small interface upgrades.
As explained on the PlayStation Blog in a post from the aforementioned beta, all players on PS5 can voice chat with people on Discord as long as they link their PlayStation Network and Discord accounts. Discord and PlayStation announced a partnership in May 2021, which it followed up on a few months later in January 2022 when players could link their two accounts. However, this mostly just showed users on Discord what game you were currently playing on PS4 or PS5. Xbox also received Discord voice chat in September 2022 after the feature launched for Xbox Insiders a few months prior in July.
The other additions are much smaller, and a few are focused on social features. Players can now request to screen share directly from their friend’s profile, more easily join a game in party chat, see what friends play what game on the game’s hub through a new button, and manually choose what media gets uploaded to the PlayStation app, which was previously an automated process.
The rest address miscellaneous aspects of the user interface. Users can now sort games when adding to a game list, which previously would only sort by alphabetical order. It’s also now possible to set preferences for who can join a party in multiplayer. Players will also be notified when they download a PS4 game on PS5 that has save data in the cloud and when they download a PS5 upgrade of a PS4 game that allows for save migration like Ghost of Tsushima or, presumably, Resident Evil 2. It’s also now possible to transfer games, saved data, user profiles, settings, screenshots, and videos from one PS5 to another through Wi-Fi or a LAN cable, which will be useful if Sony ever releases a PS5 Pro.
The last few bits are for specific cases, but still add to the system’s functionality. VRR, which was added last year, is now possible on 1440p displays. The screen reader has also seen some improvements and can now guide players more fluidly through the console. Some users in the United States and United Kingdom even get access to an early version of a voice command feature that lets them capture recent gameplay.
PlayStation VR2, its controllers, and the DualSense controllers also all got updates, but it’s unclear exactly what those updates do.
