PS5 gets a great free upgrade that will help anyone stuck in a game

PlayStation has announced that its Game Help system is going to get a clever update later this year.

This feature already exists, letting developers create cards that pop up when players use the PS button on a controller to access the PS5's quick menu. 

These cards can tell players how long they have left in a section of the game they're playing, but can also offer hints on how to proceed. 

So far, the system has relied on a game's developer to add hints for sections that it suspects or knows will challenge players, but in the forthcoming update this will widen.

The new feature is going to be called Community Game Help, and it'll allow players to share video clips and hints about sections of the game that stumped them.

This should in turn create a community of helping hands as you play, with more hints produced than developers would ever be likely to make on their own. 

Accessing it will be simple – players will be able to just hit the PS button to access the Control Centre, then check to see if there's a game card labelled "Hints Inside". If so, there will be clips and hints to check out. 

These can also be viewed in the PS App on your phone if you don't want them overlaid on your TV or monitor. 

To actually contribute clips to Community Game Help, players will have to go into their settings, though. It'll be buried in Captures & Broadcasts > Captures > Auto Captures > Community Game Help, where there will be a new opt-in setting. 

Once opted in, your PS5 will automatically take short captures when you achieve certain things in games, which will then be sent to a moderator for approval before being uploaded, before being deleted from your console to avoid a storage hit. 

Sony says that it'll be raw game footage only, so "images and audio from your webcam, microphone, or party chat audio will not be shared" – so it's not really a new tool for influencers. Once your video is published, you can also take it down any time you like. 

This is a pretty fascinating initiative – it'll be really interesting to see how many players sign up and how quickly the hint ecosystem starts to grow. PlayStation says it'll initially start in just a few games before expanding, although even that doesn't have a fixed launch date yet.