Yesterday we reported that Sony Computer Entertainment Japan posted on the official Japanese Play Community blog mentioning an April 30th release date for an upcoming update including Nico Nico broadcasting. Today we confirmed that the feature is coming with update 1.7.

What's more interesting, though, is that this morning Sony stealthily removed the date from the post, without offering any explanation, as you can see from the screencaps at the bottom of the post, showing the page before and after the surgery.

The paragraph originally said:

At the booth there will be corners for you to experience the new features that allows to broadcast to the popular Nico Nico service from PS4, that will be implemented in the update coming on Wednesday, April 30th.

The highlighted text has been changed with "that will be implemented in a future update."

The fact that the text has been changed with absolutely no explanation after being left on the official blog overnight is very uncharacteristic, and definitely quite telling. It's also probably the closest thing we'll get to a confirmation of the release date.

If the date was the wrong one, the correction would normally come with a notice explaining that the data provided was incorrect, and apologizing for the mistake. That's pretty much the standard procedure to avoid confusing the blog's readers.

On the other hand, if the date was correct, whoever handles the official blog can do very little else (short of officially confirming) than just stealthily change the paragraph hoping that not too many noticed it, as writing that the date was incorrect when it is indeed correct is not a viable option, as it would be perceived as a lie.

It's also worth mentioning that a release on the 30th in Japan could translate to April 29th in the west, due to the difference in time zones.

Of course this should be considered a rumor until Sony provides an official announcement, but as things stand, I'd say that the possibility of seeing the 1.7 firmware update release between April 29th and April 30th is very high.

In addition to that, we can pretty much assume that the update will come after April 27th. Since the Nico Nico Live broadcast feature will be showcased at the Nico Nico Chokaigi 3 event between April 26th and April 27th, and it's supposed to come in a "future update." It wouldn't make much sense to give the feature the spotlight (it's even mentioned before a new augmented reality tech for PS4 and PS Vita) if it was already released by the time it's demonstrated.

Before

After