Sony’s PlayStation 4 has been in the public ether for close to sixteen months by now and, harkening back to the console’s first reveal in February, 2013 for a brief moment, there are a number of system features that are still missing from PS4’s architecture. Nevertheless, quirks including suspend and resume and remote gameplay takeover are imminent.
That’s according to the company’s head of worldwide studios, Shuhei Yoshida, who spoke candidly about the promised features in an interview with Kotaku:
“Our team has been working on it. There are some things that we announced in February of last year that were not planned for the launch timeframe. I am asking the same question to my tech team every other week.”
Perhaps the most enticing feature that is still brewing in development is the aforementioned suspend and resume. Back in February, Sony assured users that the window of time between booting up your console and being immersed in the game is a thing of the past. Essentially, this will be achieved by putting the PlayStation 4 in a low power state during downtime, so that jumping back in is instantaneous, in a similar vein to the Vita.
Elsewhere, Yoshida also touched upon another PS4-related attribute that was announced sixteen months ago: the ability to control gameplay remotely. In the ever-evolving world of online streaming, Sony hope to allow gamers to directly interact with friends and help them through the most difficult patches of any given game with the touch of a button.
At the moment, Sony has nothing to announce regarding these inevitable updates for PlayStation 4, but we can expect suspend and resume and indeed remote gameplay takeover to appear in a future firmware update before long.
