A bigger firmware update is going to be available in the near future, and this time around, it’s not going to be just a small stability-improving firmware, like we have seen the last few times recently: 3.00 might be one of the biggest update for the PlayStation 4.

The beta testing is already happening in Japan, and the firmware details have leaked already. Events has been added to the main menu – you can now discover, participate, and view events. Community has been added to the Friends menu. It’s a feature that lets you find close players with similar preferences and interests – create a new community or join a previously established one. Through the community, you can get into games and parties, and discuss common interests. In Now Playing, users will see a list of what users are playing, and from that list can easily start a game or form a party. You can also request to view a user’s gameplay. This has been added to several menu points: What’s New, Friends, Community, and Messages. Speaking of Messages, you can view Now Playing of other users, as well as easily start a party and you can also add favorite groups to your favorites list; it also got stamps, so you can communicate with your friends easier.

The biggest improvements are the two following things: it’s now possible to broadcast using YouTube and you can also upload video clips to Twitter, but only up to 10 seconds long clips. Live from PlayStation got improved: it now supports video clips and screenshots as well as broadcasts. You can change the speed of automatic scrolling and in the notifications, “Community Items,” “Gameplay Viewing Requests,” “Events,” and “Current Song” have been added. You can comment on What’s New activity feed items. PlayStation Plus has been added to the main menu – this allows much quicker access to the service for subscribers. The Blu-ray Disc/DVD player now supports accessibility features – the scope of other accessibility features have been improved. You can also set game start-up restrictions while viewing its age information and rating icon and create a child’s use sub-account from the user selection screen by selecting New User. Also, you can now set a service to block harmful websites from being displayed in Parental Controls, but there is a separate fee to use this service.

These all seem very important updates, but it seems like Sony didn’t really listen to the BetterPSN movement, started by the users themselves. Let’s hope that they will listen to them in the future, but still, YouTube streaming, easier access to PlayStation Plus and the community upgrades make the 3.00 firmware interesting – we don’t know about the release date yet, but going by the beta testing, our guess would be somewhere around the middle of September.