Sony announced yesterday that the 1.70 update for the PS4 is coming “soon”, and that it will bring a bunch of completely new features to the console. These include a brand-new video editor called ShareFactory, the ability to store saved games and captured videos to a USB drive, and the pre-loading of games you’ve pre-ordered, days before their official release dates.
The ShareFactory video editor is an unexpected surprise, and adds far more functionality than Sony’s own built-in one. You’ll be able to customise any videos you’ve captured with the Share button by combining them, adding text and music (either by importing your own directly or using any of the tracks provided by Sony) , and there are a bunch of filters and transitions at your disposal so you can really spruce your vids up.
You can even add picture-in-picture commentary to your videos using the PlayStation Camera and share your creations via Facebook, PSN and even save them to USB drives, so this isn’t exactly a lightweight addition.
See ShareFactory in action:
If you much prefer capturing footage using your PC or Mac, update 1.70 makes it possible to turn off HDCP (High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection) so that you can stream your PS4’s footage to a video capture card.
Being able to store savegames and screenshots to an external USB drive is another excellent addition to the PS4’s arsenal, making for much easier data transfer between the PS4 and computers/tablets. While it may seem fairly trivial, many people don’t have internet connections and thus can’t share their screenshots and videos, and the option to save them to portable storage and then take them to a friend’s house is a welcome addition.
Sony didn’t provide a release date for PS4 update 1.70 beyond “soon”, so keep your eyes on your PS4 this weekend in case they roll it out sneaky-like.
