A new PS4 and PS5 beta is now rolling out to select participants in Canada, the U.S., Japan, U.K., Germany and France.
Additionally, participants in the U.S. and U.K. can now preview a feature that enables voice commands for finding and opening games, apps and controlling media playback.
If you aren’t selected for this beta, the full update will launch globally later this year. Here’s what the beta includes:
Party Chat Update
When you start a party, you can select whether to create an open or closed party. An open party lets friends see and join a party without an invite, and friends of party members can also join. A closed party is only for players you invite. Open and Closed parties were already a feature, but now you don’t have to go into any menus to start them.
There’s also now a voice chat reporting feature, so if you want to report something that someone said, there are now visual indicators for you to identify who was speaking.
Additionally, in the PS5 beta, you can start a Share Play directly from the voice chat card; this means you don’t need to start Share Screen first to use Share Play.
On the PS4 beta, you can individually adjust the voice of each player in a party, similar to PS5.
Voice chats are also called ‘Parties’ again, and the Game Base menu is now divided into three tabs: ‘Friends,’ ‘Parties,’ and ‘Messages.’
Two other Game Base updates include an “on-air” icon when someone is sharing their screen and a button that will let users quickly decline a friend request.
New PS5 UI Features
Beta participants will now be able to filter their game collection by genre. You can also choose up to five games or apps to keep on the home screen by selecting “Keep in Home” with the options button. However, you can also keep up to a total of 14 games and apps on your home screen.
There’s now a new trophies UI update that shows a cool visual design of trophy cards on the trophy list and sees suggestions for which trophies you can earn on the trophy tracker.
You can also start the Share Screen from the Create menu and stream your gameplay to an open party.
Accessibility features
There are new accessibility features, including a screen reader, which reads aloud on-screen text and spoken guidance for operating the console. Additionally, there’s now mono audio for headphones instead of a stereo or 3D audio sound mix. This should provide a better experience for players with unilateral hearing loss.
You can also show a checkmark on enabled settings so you can see which settings are turned out.
Source: PlayStation Blog
