On October 14th, Sony released PS4 System Software Update 8.00. This update is a major one, affecting party and messages, avatars, parental controls, and other features. What are the details? Let’s take a look at what changes this patch brings, as well as some issues that have cropped up since its arrival.
What is New With PS4 System Software Update 8.00?
Sony published a detailed blog post regarding the system update. The company writes, “Following this update, Party and Messages will be more tightly linked together and you will see changes to the UI. Both apps will now use the same ‘Groups’ of players for Party voice chats and message exchanges, instead of having different groups setup across the two apps. So now you can start a Party chat or send a message to the group you’ve previously chatted with across PS4, as well as PS5 when it launches.”
Sony goes on to explain that there are also more pre-set avatars for player profiles. The Quick Menu also now has an option to “Mute all Microphones.” 2-Step Verification was enhanced. Event Creation and Private Community Creation were removed. Sony also updated the Remote Play App on mobile and PC.
As for parental controls changes, Sony writes, “Under Parental Controls, we’re combining the ‘Communicating with Other Players’ and ‘Viewing Content Created by other Players’ into one setting – ‘Communication and User Generated Content’- to cover both areas of communication and UGC sharing. This offers a simpler setting that’s easier for parents to understand and apply to their children.”
Sony also implemented a feature that lets kids request exceptions for specific communication features in individual games. Their parents get instant notifications and can grant the requests right away.
There have been some PlayStation Network difficulties since the update came out, but Sony is aware that there are issues. The team is investigating, so hopefully there will be fixes soon. You can follow further news on PS4 System Software Update 8.00 in our PlayStation news section.