PlayStation 4 Gets Suspend And Resume, External HD Backups On March 26

Sony’s upcoming “Yukimura” update for PlayStation 4 brings the console one magic power that many players have been eager to get their hands on: The ability to suspend game play and resume  play right where you left off after putting the console into Rest Mode  and then waking it up again.

The Suspend/Resume function means you won’t have to save to stop the action, and it’s much more convenient now that it survives the PS4’s Rest Mode, which puts the console into a low-power, stasis-like state. Previously, games could be temporarily paused like this, but only while you exited to the menu to quickly check on something else.

Another anticipated new feature coming with Yukimura (PS4 software version 2.50 if you want to get technical) is the ability to back-up and restore console HDD content to an external USB drive. That means you can fully back up the system, including everything from settings, saved data an screenshots to games, patches and downloads.

You could back up saved data previously, but only to USB flash drives and everything else had to be re-downloaded from PlayStation’s servers if you ever needed to do a factory reset or set up a brand new console. This was not a super fun process, as I can personally attest, and being able to quickly load up your entire system as it had been from a mobile SSD should really help.

Additional features include the ability to find fiends on PSN by searching through their linked Facebook account for those connections, and there are fewer steps required to make a party or join the games friends have in progress. You can now share your Trophy info via FB, Twitter or Message from the Share button menu, and Sony ha also added customization options for Dualshock 4 button layout, text-to-speech and graphical display options for accessibility benefits.

The following additions are also new, direct from Sony:

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