It’s never too late. We’ve all heard the phrase at some point in our lives and Sony, it seems, follows the mantra to a T. The PlayStation 4, while still technically the company’s flagship gaming console, is due to be replaced within the next several months with a bigger, more powerful and no doubt more expensive machine in the form of the PS5, but that certainly doesn’t mean the current incumbent is being forgotten about in the interim. Quite the contrary, in fact.
While we’ve yet to learn of an exact arrival date for the update, Sony has confirmed that the console’s firmware update 8.0 is scheduled to enter beta any moment now, bringing with it several under-the-hood improvements to online services, specifically party chat.
While the quality of life improvements to social features are certainly welcome, there’s one particular footnote that’s got people incredibly excited for update 8.0’s arrival. Once the patch goes live, the security-conscious among you will assuredly be happy to hear that two-step authentication will be expanded to include third-party apps. Previously, the function has only been available via a direct SMS service, meaning popular authenticator apps widely used by other companies to safeguard their customers’ details were off the table.
It might sound like a subtle change on paper, sure, but for a company that has often been scrutinized in the past due to allowing sensitive information to be compromised, this is certainly a welcome move on Sony’s part. Presumably, this will carry over to the PlayStation 5 when it launches later this year as well, but we’ll ultimately have to wait and see if that truly is the case, so stay tuned.
