Major PlayStation Software Update Extends Remote Play to Smartphones

The next iteration of PlayStation software updates with '7.0' will land this week. | Source: Joeri Mostmans/Shutterstock.com

Sony Interactive Entertainment has confirmed its latest PlayStation 4 software update version 7.00 will pushed out worldwide sometime this week.

There’s some confusion around when this might happen with the Japanese PlayStation portal citing tomorrow, Oct. 8, while the English language PlayStation.Blog announcement offers a non-committal ‘this week.’ We may be in for a geographically-staggered release.

Remote Play Extends to All Android Mobile Devices

The highlight of the update comes in the form of a lot of changes to Remote Play. Players will now be able to stream games to all mobile devices using Android 5.0 Lollipop or higher via the PS4 Remote Play App. As always, Remote Play is reserved for select games, so don’t expect to jump in and stream every title under the sun.

Alongside, the DualShock 4 controller is now compatible with wireless play via Bluetooth for Android devices running version 10, and Sony has implemented on-screen controller support.

While iOS Remote Play has been built into the PlayStation 4 software for a while now, the update ports over the on-screen controller functionality as well as a new lock-screen feature to prevent the display from changing orientation and interrupting play. DualShock 4 compatibility also carries over to Mac mobile devices for devices using iOS 13 (or equivalent iPad and Mac versions, iPadOS13, and macOS Catalina, respectively).

Party Size Jumps to 16 With Latest PlayStation 4 Update

Party play is also getting some love with party size jumping from a cap of eight to sixteen players. On top of this, Sony has addressed the long-running connectivity and audio quality plaguing the feature, which should drastically improve performance, especially in cross-play after it surfaced last week that cross-platform support was out of beta.

Additionally, Sony is also pushing out a Chat Transcription feature to US users to up its accessibility credentials. Players can now morph voice chat into text or have the system read out typed text to your party.

Bye Bye Facebook Support

According to Reddit, the PlayStation 4 software update will also do away with Facebook connectivity meaning players will no longer be able to log in to their PlayStation accounts via the social media platform nor share content like trophy achievements on their feeds.

Sony made no explicit mention of this in the update breakdown, so we recommend a dose of salt. We’ll have to wait for the update to drop to find out, but from where we stand, an end to Facebook support shouldn’t inconvenience too many users given it’s not exactly the most popular, or useful, of features.

We also expect Sony to add in an HDR calibration tool to adjust brightness levels (as seen in the 7.00 beta), which should confine darkness issues to the past for games using genuine HDR tech.