PS5 April Update Introduces USB Game Storage, Cross-Gen Shareplay, And More

The PS5’s first-ever major system software update comes tomorrow with cross-gen share play, the ability to download games onto extended storage – but you can’t actually play them – access to an “improved game base,” and new bells and whistles for the mobile app.

Firstly, let’s talk about the storage update. If you’ve got an external hard drive, you can download PS4 games onto it and play them. This is a neat little solution that stops you clogging up your SSD with old-gen titles, but prior to this update, you weren’t capable of putting PS5 games on there. Now, you can. The downside is that you can’t run them – this, in essence, is a way to avoid having to redownload a game at a later date: you can just move it across when you’re ready.

Support for M.2 drives is still not quite there, but Sony promises it’s coming “in the future.” Vague, but hopefully it’s not too far away. The other part of this update is the ability to share play between PS4 and PS5. This means that you can play next-gen games through your friend if you haven’t managed to nab a new console yet, or you can even just sit back and watch.

Next up is the game base updates which bring with it some neat little quality of life additions that bring the party chat closer and closer to the likes of Discord. You can now alter individual members’ volume and disable game chat from the menu. On top of this, game updates will be pre-downloaded to your console if automatic updates are enabled. Naturally, this doesn’t work if your console is turned off, so it has to be in rest mode. To boot, you can now hide games from the library and search through it, making it easier to access your list of games.

Trophy settings and the stats screen have also had a touch-up, as you can now customize the level of trophies that get automatic captures, avoiding a clog of bronze achievements that clock for things like opening doors or dying. On top of this, you can now access a summary of your trophy level and status.

Finally, there’s the app. In the coming weeks, you’ll be able to join multiplayer sessions through it, manage storage, compare trophy collections, and filter products in the store. Meanwhile, on the console, there’s a new accessibility feature – the ability to magnify to your heart’s content. That’s a lot in one update, but there are still no folders and there’s no external PS5 hard drive support just yet.

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