Sony is currently in the process of bringing a little additional joy to PlayStation 4 owners by rolling out its 1.51 firmware. An earlier post on the PlayStation blog had teased about the imminent release of the updated firmware claiming that it would be available “later today”. Now that the time has arrived, Sony has flipped the switch of pushing the required update to PS4 consoles.
We are still a little earlier in the life-cycle of the PlayStation 4 to be receiving substantial updates with new features and enhancements. Firmware version 1.51 is by Sony’s own admission a relatively minor update, but it does bring with it a number of system stability improvements as well as some very small changes to the user-interface.
Sony has so far refrained from building on their previous blog post regarding the content of the firmware patch. Eric Lempel, who operates as Sony Network Entertainment Vice President, points users to the earlier blog post for details:
With this minor required update, stability of system software has been improved. In addition, minor refinements to elements of the system UI (such as clearly indicating when a user downloads a game and a game patch at the same time) have been introduced.
Users who may be unfamiliar with the system workings of the PlayStation console are being told that automatic updating of firmware patches is an opt-out feature, therefore enabled by default when the console arrives.
As soon as the 1.51 firmware patch is available for download it should be automatically retrieved and installed on the hardware with minimal interruption to the user. The console itself has been available in the North American region for five days, and with more than one million units sold, Sony should prepare for a relatively heavy load on their update servers.
The almost immediate launch of this firmware update suggests that Sony is going to be on the ball when it comes to giving users regular new firmware revisions. It was great to see Sony offering regular software patches for the PlayStation 3’s operating system, but also proved to be a bit of a pain for those who used the hardware fleetingly and had an update every time they turned it on. The new standby update system should ensure that that situation doesn’t occur again.
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