PlayStation 4 Team Tournaments Now Live With New Update

PlayStation 4 players, heads up! Update 5.03 is now live and available to download. Though the update isn't anything huge by normal standards, it does provide more stability and the inclusion of Team Tournaments. For those gamers that love to follow their favourite players, the restrictive cap on follows has now been lifted allowing PS4 fans to follow anyone they want, verified or not.

A few other message updates and community additions have also been added, with the inclusion of even more adorable stickers too! Here is everything new, courtesy of Sony, with update 5.03:

Team Tournaments

Prepare to recruit the best players you know, because Team Tournaments on PS4 are almost here. With this new functionality, you'll be able to compete against other teams for prizes and status.

Team Tournament functionality will kick off on October 5, shortly after the release of the 5.00 update. The initial batch of titles supporting Team Tournaments will be Uncharted 4: A Thief's End, Uncharted: The Lost Legacy, World of Tanks and Mantis Burn Racing, with more on the way. Head over to the Events section on your PS4 to check out details for different Events and Tournaments, and to start creating your team.

You can join or own up to a maximum of 60 different teams, and each team will have an owner and captain(s) who can manage the team. Only teams will be able to register for official Team Tournaments. Your team will have its own customizable team page where you can see team member information, and view upcoming and ongoing events that your team is currently registered for and competing in. In addition, you can easily check out your team's results in past tournaments with a new bracket viewer that shows full tournament standings for Single and Double Elimination tournaments directly on PS4. Communicating and coordinating with your teammates is also simple via the integrated team chat feature.

Follow Anyone

Before 5.00, you were only able to follow Verified Accounts, but now you can follow any user without having to be friends with them (subject to privacy settings). This allows you to follow content creators, game broadcasters, and other gamers in a community without having to dip into your friends list. And at the same time, this will allow these users to expand their reach and build more interest in what they're doing. Your What's New feed will be updated with the activities of the users you're following, so you can easily keep up on what they're up to. And under Friends, you'll see a new Who to Follow section that will give you customized recommendations of who you can follow. The recommendations will be displayed in separate categories, such as Featured Verified Accounts, trending users, and suggestions based on games you've recently played.

Message Update

We have one more feature to add to the list of updates coming to Messages on PS4. If you send a message that contains a link to a website, messages will now display a preview of the website, like headlines and thumbnails.

Stickers for Uncharted: The Lost Legacy and Horizon Zero Dawn are being added. And similar to the PS4's Messages update, the PlayStation Messages app will also be updated to display previews of a website if you've received a link. Support for Czech, Greek, Hungarian, Indonesian, Romanian, Thai and Vietnamese are being added to the app.

Communities

Following this update, you can switch the app into landscape mode when you flip your phone sideways, so you get a wider view of the app and it makes it easier to scroll through. In addition, you're now able to view and post animated GIFs on community walls. We're also adding the following languages to the app: Czech, Greek, Hungarian, Indonesian, Romanian, Thai and Vietnamese.

You can view the full notes included in the beta version here.