GDC 2014: Upcoming PS4 Updates Will Enhance Share Features

by Brien Bell | Mar 19, 2014 | 2 comments
Brien Bell

PS4 Dualshock 4 Share

The Share Button on the PlayStation 4’s DualShock 4 controller has been one of the most highly-touted features of the new console. In fact, the ability to share your screenshots, gameplay videos, or broadcast live to Ustream and Twitch has been at the heart of the social focus of the PS4. The stats for how many pictures have been uploaded and how many hours people have broadcast to Twitch show just how right Sony was to build social integration into their hardware. But the folks at PlayStation aren’t done yet, and today the PlayStation Blog let us know just what we can expect in the next firmware update–and it’s all focused on Share.

Scott McCarthy, the Director of Product Planning & Software Innovation at SCEA, revealed a few things on the official PlayStation Blog about the upgrades coming soon to a PS4 near you. McCarthy first explained that many of these coming additions were due to fan response and feedback, something he says their team listens to closely and “weighted heavily when looking at the future of our platforms.” Among these additions are a rich video editor, with tools to easily customize your clips, and the ability to export videos and screenshots to a USB storage drive. This future firmware update will also include an HDCP off option to allow for video capture over HDMI for external devices, something that had been expected after Shuhei Yoshida addressed the issue prior to the system’s launch.

Looking even further into the future, McCarthy noted that another highly sought feature–the ability to archive Twitch broadcasts shared through the PS4–would be coming in a future update, along with the ability to stream gameplay at 720p. Neither firmware update was given a release date, and McCarthy finished the blog post promising more information in the coming weeks. Whenever these new features go online, you can be sure we’ll have it for you here at SonyRumors.

Discuss:

What new feature are you looking forward to most? Video editing? Video/screenshot exporting? HDCP off option? Twitch archiving? Let us know in the comments.

[Via PlayStation Blog]