Last year, Sony rolled out update 3.00 for PlayStation users, which included more cloud storage for PlayStation Plus subscribers, the ability to share footage via Twitter, and the creation of Communities. Less than a year later, the company is set to release a beta of version 4.00, codenamed “Shingen.”
Menus
The focus of the Shingen update seems to be on the console’s menus and interface, beginning with a complete refresh of the UI. According to Sony, you’ll notice new backgrounds and icons as well as an updated “What’s New” tab and notifications.
There are changes to the Quick Menu (the screen that appears when you hold down the PlayStation button on the controller), as well. For instance, the Quick Menu takes up a small portion of the screen so that you can keep an eye on your gameplay. You can also customize what appears on the menu so that you can get quick access to your list of online friends, the PlayStation Store or your favorite Communities page.
Just like the Quick Menu, the Share Menu will also take up a small portion of the screen (in the past, both menus were a full-screen experience). The Share Menu will also save the last social media platform you used so that you can upload footage or images faster. Update 3.00 last year gave users the ability to share up to 10 seconds of video on Twitter. With version 4.00, you can upload up to 140 seconds on the popular social media platform.
Organization
The new update also brings some organization to your growing library of titles. Speaking of the Library tab, it now has a new section called “Purchased,” which shows all of the content you own. The Games and Applications sections are specifically reserved for those titles installed on your console.
A heavily-requested feature was the ability to create folders in the main menu, and this update will include it for the first time. You can put your favorite games or apps into specific folders so that you don’t have to spend extra time scrolling through the menus to find a specific program.
Trophies, User Profiles And More
Other new features in the beta include the ability to view your Trophy collection offline, and you can also view the description of a hidden Trophy. For your specific profile, you can add a background image to your page to give it a personal flair, and you can quickly see how your Trophy collection stacks up against other players.
However, this is just the tip of the iceberg that is the Shingen update. Sony mentioned that other new features won’t be available in the beta, but you’ll see them in the final version. The beta tests are rolling out soon, according to Sony, and we’ll find out the launch date of version 4.00 in the coming weeks.
