With the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S around a year and a half old, it is natural that attention is starting to turn away from last-gen consoles. New games are still coming out for the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, such as the recent LEGO Star Wars game. However, the number of next-gen exclusives is growing.
Still, Sony hasn’t abandoned the PlayStation 4 yet, releasing firmware update 9.51 earlier today. The new update brings performance improvements to the aging console, though there isn’t much for PS4 users to get excited about.
Anyone expecting an itemized list of fixes and improvements is going to be at least a little disappointed with the PS4’s latest update. The patch notes have exactly one entry, which reads, “This system software update improves system performance.” That is not a lot of information, but it is all that Sony has to say about the PS4 firmware update for April 13th. At least the patch is relatively small in terms of data, being only 491.8MB in size.
Granted, PlayStation 4 players probably shouldn’t have expected anything particularly spectacular from firmware update 9.51. After all, both the PS4 and PS5 saw major firmware updates only a few weeks ago, providing a much more comprehensive range of improvements. The March 23rd updates included a variety of changes, fixes, and adjustments to Open and Closed parties. It also brought new UI and accessibility features and improvements to the PlayStation app and Remote Play functionality.
Unfortunately, the March 23rd update also seems to have caused a severe issue with the PlayStation Network that prevented many players from playing online. Some initially believed that the problem was caused by an Elden Ring update the same day. However, PS4 and PS5 users soon encountered the problem with other games. The PlayStation Network later went down entirely, indicating it may have been a server-side issue. While Sony seems to have addressed the main problem, some PSN users reportedly had an issue where they needed to keep updating their PlayStation Network account. It is possible that today’s performance improvements included fixing whatever caused that problem.
Of course, if that is the case, it’s somewhat odd that the 9.51 patch notes didn’t say as much. It is conceivable that today’s update 9.51 is laying the groundwork for something more substantial. It’s not unheard of for console manufacturers to sneak unfinished content into unrelated patches. However, that would be much more likely with a new and increasingly popular console such as the PlayStation 5. Given the PlayStation 4’s age, it’s unlikely that Sony intends to make any significant new changes to the last-gen console.
Source: Push Square
