Gamers will probably get access to it in early 2015

Oct 27, 2014 22:27 GMT  ·  By

The team at Sony in charge of the PlayStation 4 home console says that it might not have offered any information recently on the Suspend/Resume function that is supposed to be part of the device, but it is still working on it and plans to deliver it via an update to the firmware as soon as possible.

System Update 2.0 for the platform is being introduced today and brings over a wide variety of improvements to the core features and some new functionality for gamers to try out.

Murray Hume, a vice president of product planning working at Sony Computer Entertainment Europe, is quoted by Videogamer as saying that "there's nothing to announce today, we haven't stopped working on it."

Suspend/Resume for the PlayStation 4 was first talked about in February and is designed to offer a quick and easy way for users to get their console into a low power state which allows it to preserve memory and start up as soon as a button is pressed, with no delays.

Given that Sony has said that it plans to deliver firmware updates for the PlayStation 4 as often as possible, the new feature might be introduced in early 2015.

It's unclear whether the company believes that Suspend/Resume is essential for the future of the platform or if there are other features which are ahead of it in terms of priority.

Features might decide the console competition

At the moment, the PlayStation 4 from Sony has managed to sell more than 10 million units worldwide and is ahead of the rival Xbox One from Microsoft.

Both companies are delivering new features for their home consoles at a constant pace in order to make them more appealing to potential customers.

The Xbox One's price in the United States has been reduced for the rest of the year to 349 dollars (248 Euro) in order to increase overall sales and there are also some interesting bundles associated with the title.

Sony is unlikely to match the offer for the PlayStation 4 and will rely on its lead in sales and on the perceived technical superiority of its platform in order to generate big sales during the all-important Christmas shopping season.

It will be interesting to see whether either one of the companies can generate a big lead during the next few months or if 2014 will end as it began, with the PS4 in front.