14 DAY TRIAL // The development team at Sony in charge of the PlayStation 4 is announcing that it plans to launch a new firmware update for the home console, labeled 3.15, before the end of the day, with tweaks that are designed to improve the overall performance of the device.
The information comes from the official Twitter account of the platform and offers no other detail about the actual changes being made, despite the fact that the user community has been long pressing the company to offer a full list every time it delivers an update for its platform.
The company might be simply improving the stability and the performance of the PlayStation 4, but it's also possible that it is making under-the-hood modifications that might have something to do with future features for the home console.
Some fans have linked the deployment of firmware update 3.15 for the device with the recent outage that affected the PlayStation Network, but those issues were server-related and were probably dealt with at the server level.
The company has recently started sending out an e-mail to those who were affected by the outage, offering them codes that will extend their PS Plus subscription as compensation, which is a solid way to make sure that the player community remains satisfied.
The causes of the downtime for PSN have not yet been revealed, but no user data was affected.
Sony is not expecting any downtime when firmware update 3.15 launches for its home console and might offer more details when all the changes go live later in the day.
The PlayStation 4 is over the 35 million mark
The platform has managed to perform very well during the Christmas period, adding 5.7 million in sales to some already impressive numbers, and Sony says that it is not seeing a decline in the current pace of sales.
Meanwhile, rumors are suggesting that the Xbox One from Microsoft has only gone past the 18 million mark before the end of 2015 and is struggling to find ways to improve its performance in the long-term, despite a range of new bundles and exclusive coming titles.
Sony believes that solid firmware updates, which both fix issues and introduce new features, are a good way to keep gamers engaged with the PlayStation 4, and claims that it has no plans to introduce an official price drop during the current year.
The company is also working to finalize the core features of the PlayStation VR virtual reality technology, which currently lacks both an official launch date and a price.
According to the team working on it, more than 100 titles are being developed for the tech and the plan is to convince at least 2 million PS4 users to pick one up before the end of the year.
The biggest exclusive launch for the Sony device is Uncharted 4: A Thief's End, which is set to be launched on April 26 in North America and will mark the final adventure of Nathan Drake.
UPDATE: The new firmware is now live and no extra details about features for the PlayStation 4 have been offered.
PS4 system software update 3.15 is coming tonight – it’s a minor update designed to improve system performance.
— PlayStation (@PlayStation) January 13, 2016