New PS5 update to introduce upgraded Parties, voice commands

Beta participants in the UK and US can preview a voice command feature, activated by “Hey, PlayStation!” to find and open games and applications, as well as control media playback on the Playstation 5. The accessibility feature is currently available in the English language only.

Playstation 5 voice command feature (beta). (Image credit: Sony)

Same as previous betas, participants will receive a personalised invite to download the updates as they go live on either console. The much-requested party chat option will soon be included in both the PS5 and PS4, allowing players to open or close voice chat groups. An open part will be directly accessible to friends, letting them enter without an invite, while a close party is off-limits to anyone without an invite from the host.

Users will soon be able to adjust voice chat volume for individual members. (Image credit: Sony)

There are some visual indicators as well, helping you detect who was speaking and report/ban them from the call. One could also adjust the voice chat volume for individual members in the call, similar to Discord. Currently, the feature is only available between beta participants.

Sony is also adding a Game Base, or rather, the place where you can keep track of your friend activity. Users will be able to chat with others, add people to closed groups, and send images and other forms of media to members. A friend request Decline button is also on its way, letting you ward off those annoying notifications.

Players will soon be able to add favourite games to the home screen for easy access. (Image credit: Sony)

The PlayStation 5 user interface will introduce a filter by genre option letting you pick games much faster. One could also paste up to 5 favourite titles to the home screen for easy access upon logging in.

On the accessibility side, we could soon see a screen reader (text-to-speech) function being added for guidance through the console and is available in six additional languages – Russian, Arabic, Dutch, Brazilian Portuguese, Polish, and Korean.

For players with unilateral hearing loss, sony is also introducing mono audio for headphones option, which essentially plays the same audio channel on both left and right earcups, instead of stereo or spatial 3D sounds. Other changes include visual updates to the trophy/achievement system, a share screen option, and checkmarks for enabled settings.