Sony's latest Playstation 4 firmware update, version 3.50, is set to deploy, and with it comes a whole new bunch of features that many have been looking forward to, mainly the ability to remotely play PlayStation 4 games on a PC or Mac - an upcoming feature that had been announced back in November.
The feature, which will allow players to connect their Playstation 4 with a desktop computer so long as they're within the same home network, then play PS4 games on another screen or in another room in their house altogether, is a departure from Sony's traditional Remote Play which only worked on the PlayStation Vita, PlayStation TV and various Sony-brand smartphones.
Per usual, there will be a beta for the 3.50 update, codenamed MUSASHI, that goes live tomorrow. However, the lucky few that get to participate won't have the chance to test Remote Play.
As detailed by the PS Blog, there is also a variety of new social features that will be added in the 3.50 update, many of which players had been begging for since the PS4's inception.
"Friend Online Notification - Want to know the moment your friends come online? With this update, you can, as we've added an option to be notified when members of your friends list sign on the network.
"Appear Offline - Sometimes you want to play a game or watch a movie without being bothered by friends. Now it's easier to go incognito as we've added the option to appear offline. You can designate if you would like to appear offline when you log-in or at any time from your Profile or the Quick Menu.
"User Scheduled Event - Time for a play date! We've added the ability to schedule a future gameplay session with your friends on the system. When your event starts, users who registered for the event will automatically be added to a party so you can start playing right away.
"Play Together - This features allows all members of a Party to see what each person is playing so that you can easily join a friend's game, or start a new game together.
"Dailymotion - With this update, you'll be able to live stream directly to Dailymotion on PS4. We'll also support archiving live broadcasts, like we do for other streaming services."
Sony has yet to give an indicator as to when the new update will be available to the general public, but the beta for last major software revision took around a month, so that at least gives some indication as to how long it will take. Ultimately, what will truly determine how long 3.50 takes to drop will be the success and stability of the beta test.
