PS4’s System Software 5.00 Beta Rolls Out Today, Key Features Detailed

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PS4’s System Software 5.00 Beta Rolls Out Today, Key Features Detailed

An overhauled family management system, 1080p60 broadcasting with PS4 Pro, and various other enhancements headline the new update.

The beta for the PlayStation 4 system’s next major system software update 5.00 (codenamed NOBUNAGA) rolls out today for those of you that were selected for the beta program. If you signed up and were chosen, you’ll receive an email with instructions on how to download and get started.

Whether you’re in the beta program or not, we wanted to give a first look at the features included in this update. We’re introducing family on PSN, making it easier to manage your friends, and adding a variety of new features for Broadcast, Notifications, Messages, and much more.

Family on PSN

We’re overhauling the current master/sub-account system, and introducing the new “Family on PlayStation Network.” This new system will offer a more flexible experience for families on PS4 by making it easier to setup PSN accounts for children and customize parental control settings. Below are the new features that will be introduced with family on PSN:

Family Manager, Parent/Guardian

Family on PSN will allow multiple adults to be part of a single family. The Family Manager can promote another adult inside the family to a Parent/Guardian, who can then customize parental control levels of children’s accounts.

PS4 System Software Update 5.00

Individualized Parental Controls

Before this update, the same parental controls were applied to all users on the same console, including adults. But with 5.00, all controls (including game age ratings) can be individually attuned for each child.

Friend List Management

In place of the current ‘Favorite Groups’ tab, we’re adding a new ‘Custom Lists’ tab within Friends, which allows you to create and edit custom lists of your friends. This makes it easier for you to manage your friends and access specific groups. For example, you can create a custom list of your Destiny teammates and easily send them raid invites.

PS4 System Software Update 5.00

Broadcast feature updates

Communities

If you own a community, you can now bind your community to your broadcast. When a broadcast is linked to a community, the community button appears on the Live from PlayStation spectator screen. Once a spectator clicks on the community button, they’ll be able to jump directly to your community page to check out the details.

PlayStation VR

We’ve added a new setting in PlayStation VR: Display Message to Spectators and Spectators’ Comments. Once this is enabled, spectator comments sent during a broadcast is displayed not only in cinematic mode, but also in VR mode. This makes it much easier for VR broadcasters to keep up on comments and communicate with their viewers.

PlayStation 4 Pro

Good news Twitch users: with this update, PS4 Pro will support 1080p 60fps streaming on Twitch.

Messages Improvements

You’ve already been able to share your favorite music to Twitter and Facebook via PlayStation Music, but now you’ll also be able to share via messages using your PS4. If your friends are on PS4, they can listen to the track right inside the message by booting up Quick Menu, and if they’re on their mobile device, they can jump directly to the Spotify app from the PS Messages app to check out the song.

In addition, if you’re part of multiple message groups, you can now easily leave several groups at once. Just open up Options in the message list, select Leave, and choose the message groups you want to leave.

PS4 System Software Update 5.00

Notifications Updates

We’ve added a new setting that allows you to disable pop-up notifications while you’re watching a movie or TV show on your PS4. This setting is off by default, so go to Settings > Notifications to disable notifications and go uninterrupted during your videos.

PS4 System Software Update 5.00

Furthermore, you now have the option to turn off message previews on your pop-up notifications. If you turn this setting off, the pop-up notification will hide the message senders’ online ID and will display a generic user icon and message instead.

PS4 System Software Update 5.00

Lastly, you’ll have the option to change the color of your pop-up notifications to either white (default) or black.

PS4 System Software Update 5.00

Quick Menu Updates

If you want to keep an eye out on what’s happening under Notifications, like the progress of your game downloads/installations or new party invites, you can now access this directly from the Quick Menu so you don’t have to step away from your game every time you want to check your notifications.

PS4 System Software Update 5.00

Also, we’ve added a ‘Leave Party’ option in the Quick Menu, so you can easily exit a party and go right back to playing your game.

PS4 System Software Update 5.00

In addition, now you’ll see the system clock in the upper-right corner of the screen when you pop open the Quick Menu.

Virtual Surround Sound on PS VR

PlayStation VR now supports 5.1ch and 7.1ch virtual surround sound on your headphones when watching Blu-rays and DVDs in Cinematic Mode, making for an even more immersive viewing experience

Improved Tournaments Bracket Viewer

We have a new bracket viewer that shows full tournament brackets for Single Elimination and Double Elimination tournaments on PS4. This makes it easier for you to see the current tournament standings.

PS4 System Software Update 5.00

New System Language Additions

With this update, we’re adding the following system language options on PS4: Czech, Greek, Hungarian, Indonesian, Romanian, Thai and Vietnamese.

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351 Comments

5 Author Replies

  • My internet is off for 3 months now and I’ve signed up for beta for a long time. But do you have a .Pup file I can download it?

  • when will we ever be able to change our User IDs ? :-(

  • Awesome quality of life changes Any way PSVR Cinematic Mode could be updated to use camera tracking to eliminate screen drift? I would use it a lot more

  • Will we be able to use family accounts to share PS Vue subscriptions and be able to use it on multiple PS4s?

  • Very excited for this update! There are plenty of things, like ID change, that we would all like to see, but what I would really like to see are people not leaving bad comments all over everything. Thank you PlayStation for being the greatest!

  • I don’t really want to be the type that complains because a feature I may have wanted is not listed but I will say I don’t see why they need beta testers for such a small update?

    If you look at the last 3 firmware’s that had Beta testing there was bigger changes that obviously needed testing, I don’t personally see anything here that needs to be tested

  • People asking for PSOne Classics when they only have like 45 PS2 Classics. There’s still a ton for them to add. And for those asking for cross-buy, good luck. They didn’t for PS2 Classics.

    Them adding 4K Blu-ray and even CD support would be nice.

  • Czech language? OMG *_*

  • How about putting in a mass delete friends option? The current friend deletion set up is the most annoying and slowest thing in the world. Nobody wants to sit there and click every profile, view it, and then one by one find the delete person button. Just make it easy, click the box next to their name’s and then hit delete, how hard is that?

  • To be honest with you, for a “major” system update, this is pretty disappointing. I was expecting maybe MP3 support and PS1/PS2 backwards compatibility (sorry guys, PS3 backwards compatibility won’t happen because the PS3 is too powerful to be emulated). Instead, we got crap that neither of us ask for.

    • PS2 and PS1 would be neat. From what I remember you can actually play PS1 on PS3, so being able to play PS2 on PS4 would be amazing. If it’s not possible to emulate then Sony should speed their port game up, in Europe we barely have anything in the PS2 section. I’d expect Spyro, Rayman, Crash (especially Twinsanity), Silent Hill, all those amazing games. Those games are like 15 years come ooon lol. Why won’t they port the best games.

  • Maybe there could be more colors for the notifications, like red or blue or green if we want to match our notifications to the home screen theme.

  • It would be nice if every notification recieved wasn’t all clumped together and would further be nice if we could delete said notifications. So tired of seeing downloadsb uploads, party notification etc all clumped in one spot.

  • Yet another useless update, except maybe for Playstation VR users who finally get to enjo5.1 and 7.1 surround sound, which should’ve been there right from the get-go.
    We need a REAL Media Player on the PS4, Sony, not that utter piece of cr@p that doesn’t even allow us to change the soundtrack or the subtitles (and by that I don’t mean more font options for the subtitles. We need it to support HEVC, aka h265, aka x265 files, for 1920x1080p as well as 3940x2160p , we need support for dts, dts es, dts hd master audio, dts x soundtracks, we need FLAC support and so many more codecs and sound and video formats!
    We also need Google Chrome instead of that cr@p web browser that doesn’t even allow us to copy/paste FFS! The one on the PS3 was also an utter POS and it did this very badic thing. Also, it would be nice to have Google Earth on our consoles. Thanks to the power under the hood of my PS4 Pro I would finally be able to enjoy that app the way with 3D buildings and landscapes without it suddenly shutting itself down.
    Get to work guys, seriously, what you offer for what is supposed to be an important update (5.0) is bordering on insult.

    • Exactly what I said when they announced a beta was coming. More video codecs. Song keeps touting the Pro is the ultimate 4K streaming device well they need to prove it. I’ll take any update but this one is underwhelming to say the least.

    • Sony has no control over Google’s apps. It’s up to Google to bring Chrome or Earth to PS4 (though I doubt Sony would allow an alternate web browser anyway).

  • So why was important to know in the beta application if we subscribed to PlayStation Now if there is nothing regarding PlayStation Now in the update?

    • That’s exactly what I was wondering. I was kind of hoping that PSNOW was going to boost to 1080p streams, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.

    • Although, I’ll add that sometimes they add features for the full release on top of what they offered for the Beta. It’s possible that they have something in mind for the full rollout.

      Though, it’s also possible they were just doing their own version of a survey for whatever reason. People looking into and ware of the BETA would be considered part of the core audience. Trying to see how much of their CORE subs to PS NOW could be useful I suppose. Maybe for PLUS incentives or something, I don’t know…But it just feels like a weird way to go about it. That stuff they have access to anyways.

  • Great new add ons can you next add how long someone actually logs off for. And fix the notification where if they log off it says off not on like firedust4 is online then logging off firedust4 is online. The little errors that are annoying at times. One more the spammers that add everyone they can in a message chat ps makes it a error to leave says you cannot leave group chat.

  • Please give me a quick way to turn HDCP on and off. Thanks!

  • Still no 4k pass through for the vr box even the addition of a new vr box to pass 4k would be at least something

    • Not sure that’s possuble wirh a firmware update, but I’d definutely drop $20 for a new box with 4k HDR passthrough!

  • Eh it’s alright. The few features added are nice, but surely not enough for a .0 update. I’m a bit disappointed as there’s a lot which could be added, mostly the activity log. I personally would love music to choose from for the home screen, which would also apply to themes with no custom music. This is a good update, but not .0 good.

  • Good job Playstation team :D

  • Finally I can hide pop up notifications when watching movies or show. Still waiting for the ability to hide the unwanted apps in the movie TV folder

  • Serious question.
    How difficult would it be to add the Discord App?

    • YoungBlaise, GREAT QUESTION!!!!!! I went out and bought a mixer and connected to my PSVR and cell phone in order to be able to communicate Cross Platform with PC gamers in the games that I play. It would be GREAT to have Discord native on the PS4 to eliminate the “spaghetti” syndrome (wires) I have to deal with for the homemade set-up.

  • The one feature that I heard was being included(larger party cap) isn’t noted.
    ..at least I didn’t notice it while skimming.
    I hope this isn’t an indication that it’s not something that’s being improved now, because it has been a majour inconvenience for our group.

  • Finally! Hope I get an email

  • This was an extremely underwhelming update. This could’ve been added in a minor update. These are good improvements but these quality of life changes add almost nothing for gamers other than 1080p twich streaming.

    PS Classics would’ve been a much better announcement. I have a ps3 and can play them there, but adding them on ps4 would allow for share play features and games that don’t normally have online would have it because of share play.

  • Ps now needs to go and backwards compatibility for ps1, ps2 and ps3 titles needs to be implemented. As different as the architecture was for those systems, it’s definitely doable

    • For PS1/PS2, yes it is. For PS3…No, it’s not. Funny how everyone seems to claim it’s “doable”, when they really don’t know what they’re talking about.

  • Guys i know you got alot on your HANDS BUT PLEASE OH PLEASE. LET US CHANGE OUR PSN ID OUR GAMER TAGS. like serously guys xbox have been ahead you since xbox 360 with the gamer tags. Thats what everyone wants. Just look at my trash name i would like to vhanve thay sometime sony please. With a do respect for the brothers.

  • Thanks lots of cool little features. Id change and trophy sets delete, filter trophy list alpabetical, cd ps1 2 3 support would make it the best console

  • Dear PSN team, listen to your fans for once in your life, PLEASE ALLOW US TO CHANGE OUR PSN ID’s, I know your database key is our IDs and it would take much time and resources to change it but IT IS possible, and be sure that lots of people would pay for it, you would even win more than losing with just 10 or 20$ for the ID change, hell, I’d probably pay even more than that. Yeah, we all know we can create other accounts and still have ps plus from the secondary account, but our trophies matter, and we can’t transfer purchases also so, please Sony, I’m sure I’m not the only one, listen to the tons of people that want this.

    • Man I think is impossible to do that, they need the rebuild their data base completely and a lot of things can go wrong, like PS4 Accounts getting delete it without explanation, dont get me wrong is a good feature, but is better let things how is right now in my opinion.

    • Jeez why do people want to change their ID so badly? Why make the account with the particular name if you just want to change it later?

      To do this they would have to rebuild the database and with doing comes alot of problems; some accounts may even get deleted in the process. And I don’t want my account to be accidentally deleted because some people made a “bad name choice” when they was kids. Get over it and be proud of your ID lol

    • They could easily let us give our accounts a ‘public alias’ and keep our PSN ID’s private. That way we could still maintain our friends lists etc.

    • I agree with tpres1975, yeah, I didn’t consider all the things that would go wrong wit the rebuilt of the PSN database, but I’m pretty sure giving us a “public alias” and the possibility of making our actual ID private wouldn’t delete accounts or that stuff, but I don’t know if Sony has said something about this idea already.

  • Thanks for the FREE system update Sony! Jeez some of you guys are so ungrateful. This isn’t something they have to do it’s something they do for us. This update alone has better features then the older consoles so be greatful.

    • They could easily let us give our accounts a ‘public alias’ and keep our PSN ID’s private. That way we could still maintain our friends lists etc.

    • “THankS For ThE frEe UpdAte”Firmware Updates are SUPPOSED to be free as they help the overall system run better and Sony does these updates to make their consumer satisfied of their purchase and helps greatly that their next PlayStation product won’t be a total flop.I’m getting sick and tired of these comments appearing over and over again.

  • This update is looking great to me I like it a lot!

  • Its sad how Playstation has degraded into my least preferred platform this gen. Switch has been fantastic and my default console for indie/smaller games. XOne is my default console to build a multiplat console game library as Microsoft has shown great commitment to backwards compatibility and upcoming XOne X ensures best game performance. This leaves PS4 in the sad spot of just being an exclusive machine. Its remarkable how Sony went from knocking it out of the park at the end of PS3 cycle to the cashgrabbing, crap ps_, no ea access, no backward compatiblity system. Honestly I can’t call Playstation as a platform now. Its a mess.

    • * crap ps+

    • You (and many others) need to realize that backwards compatibility is a LOT harder for Sony to achieve than is it for Nintendo and Microsoft. The reason being is because of the CPU architecture than the PS3 and PS2 used. The PS3 was an extremely complicated machine to program for. That’s why they switched to an X86 architecture (more pc like), so that programming would be a lot easier and maintaining future releases would be easier. Where Microsoft and Nintendo differ is because they use similar hardware for most of their console releases, so it’s easier for them to port the code and to make emulators work on their newer hardware. – Sony may manage to bring some of these older titles to the PS4, it’s just going to take time. The PS4 is still leading the race and it’s a fantastic system. It’s not perfect, but it is pretty dang good.

    • @cowmamba As an end user I couldn’t care less about who’s selling more consoles or who’s ‘winning’ the console war. I care more about what the console can do for me. Its just typical PS marketing spin that ‘difficulty of PS3 architecture resulted in no BC’. Well what stopped PS3 purchases of PS1/PS2 titles to carry over? Its painfully obvious that its a cheap business decision that led to a lack of BC (PS1,PS2,PS3), no EA Access, forcing PS Now as BC and finally crappy PS+ games. The list goes on. Sony knew it was winning this gen and wanted to maximize the profits. Simple. Its also noteworthy how Sony has quickly abandoned several of its own hardware platforms like PS Vita Vita TV, Move, and now PSVR looks to be heading in same direction. All said and done I would respect a company like Nintendo much more as it kept on supporting its failing Wii U with excellent games despite low sales. I am disappointed by Sony’s business attitude more than anything else. I’ll grant that they have some fantastic exclusives though, that keep me interested still. Get well soon, Playstation.

  • A quick menu option to turn off the controller would be really nice.

    • Good news, that already exists! Quick Menu > Sound / Devices > Turn Off Device

    • @Andrew Kelly – I think he means as a standalone option that you can select right away to bypass the “Sound / Devices” > “Turn Off Device” options, similar to how it is on PS3 (hold the PS button, and select “Turn off controller”. I certainly would like that anyways.

  • I want to delete my unwanted trophies with progress more than zero pleasee

  • larrydavidawkwardsmile.gif sounds more like a 4.x update, even for a beta, if something bigger was ready they would have announced already, no?

  • Nice update, but I think that its not worthy from a major update.

    I would liked that it had backwards retrocompatibility or maybe an added feature of PS Now.

    -Insert Disappointed meme here please-

    Well, lets see how the comunity reacts to this.

    • I think some kind of “PS2 Classics” app for the ps4 would be great. Make it like $5-10, free for PS+, and have it function as a ps2 emulator but with native 1080p upscaling. I’d be happy to pay that much for that kind of feature.

  • So Sony’s still refusing to have people gift or trade games? As in no “license transfer” or “give to friend” options for when you get your own acct separate from your parents’, meaning your folks are now stuck with titles they’ll never play, and you have to buy it again, possibly at full price… Cool. So I guess there’s STILL no real reason to make a sub/kids account besides parental controls, which are pointless when you consider that parental controls are active regardless of what account you’re using if it’s enabled on your device… It’s actually kind of sad that they refuse to do this, because that’d be a great feature to have.

  • I was hoping the family system would be more like Apple Family. Since I buy almost entirely digitally now it’s irritating that my wife cannot play them as well without setting her system as the primary etc…

    I hope this is considered the future for a family purchase system.

  • Though I’m thankful for everything this update does, the Custom Lists and Spectator Comments for PSVR streaming especially, I can’t help but feel a little… Disappointed, I guess. Particularly in the decision to improve the PSVR’s streaming features prior to its overall notification displaying abilities. Perhaps I missed it, but I’d love to actually see my notifications (trophies, messages, low battery, etc.) while playing the PSVR. It’s kind of annoying not knowing what’s going on despite hearing the chimes.

    Perhaps in the next update? Please? :D

  • All these tiny Little updates and they still haven’t fixed the notification tab after they ruined it last update. Before it was so perfectly organized, we had tabs for each specific notification; Downloads, uploads, friend requests, etc. But now it’s all a jumbled up mess. What makes even worse is that you can’t even delete the notifications like we use to, so basically my notification list is filled with notifications that were from 2015 that doesn’t even exist on my console anymore.

    PLEASE FIX THIS SONY IT’S REALLY ANNOYING AND A REALLY BRAIN DEAD DESICSION THAT YOU MADE TO TAKE AWAY TABS!

  • Not impressed at all with this update. A lot of us don’t have our PS3s anymore but hundreds invested into PS One Classic purchases on our PSN account meaning that those games are just sitting there rotting in a virtual tomb. The consumers are demanding some means of BC and it’s sad that there would be a day where I had to admit that MS is actually showing you up as far as that goes. Listen to your customers, it’s not hard. Stop holding our PSN game libraries hostage! I want to play the JRPGs I bought! :(

  • I want to be able to delete my trials and demos permanently from my Library. Too many titles of the same name and too cluttered. Was hoping this update would allow me to do that. There’s really not much to this update. So far anyway.

  • I hope this fixes my issue with the platinum headset. I have to unplug and plug in the wireless dongle EVERY time I boot up my Pro

  • Want Trophy notification in VR… Trophy hunting is impossible in there…

  • Meh, it’s an alright update, I guess.

    – Family on PSN: way too late on this feature. I and my daughter gave up on her original PSN name in favor of a new one with my birthdate so she could play more mature games as my wife and I felt comfortable with her doing so. I’ll have to see if there are any features within the Family on PSN that enable me to legitimize her username.

    – Friend List Management; with Custom Lists: I like this feature, being able to group friends as family, or by game, etc. has been a feature I’ve wanted for years; since SOCOM.

  • Feature to delete alphas, betas, and demos from a library? When we can get that feature? I would like to sort out my library. PLZ!

  • Thanks Sony, always love seeing the improvements. My 2 most wanted features are name change (my wife would happily pay for her PSN id to be changed if it was possible) and activity log like steam (# hours played)

  • Nothing for me, it seems.

  • Nice update, now we need activity log and trophy progression.

  • Black pop-up notifications are back!! Finally!

  • not a whole lot of exciting things in this update.

    what about more HDR support in the apps on the Pro??

    Netflix HDR support?
    Amazon HDR support?
    Vudu 4k/HDR support?

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