In terms of raw power, console hardware doesn't really change over time; the PS4 you buy today will essentially have the same pixel-pushing components as one you buy in 2020. But through software updates, the current generation of game consoles is managing to give developers access to more of that raw hardware power as time goes on.

Sony's PlayStation 4 is the latest beneficiary of this trend. The system's eight-core CPU used to devote two entire cores to managing the underlying operating system, leaving just six available for developers to use for games. So it was a bit surprising when the release notes for a recent version of FMOD Studio's middleware platform noted that the API had "added FMOD_THREAD_CORE6 to allow access to the newly unlocked 7th core."

Digital Foundry confirmed with its development sources that Sony has indeed unlocked a seventh CPU core for direct access by developers. Those same sources suggest that the core may still be partly used for system-related tasks at points, so it's not exactly a one-sixth improvement in available CPU time. Still, every little bit helps when trying to process complex scenes or bits of game logic.

Existing games probably won't see any performance improvements from this change, unless developers go back and release a patch specifically designed to take advantage. Going forward, though, developers will be able to reserve a bit more CPU time that used to be hogged by the OS.

Sony's move mirrors similar Microsoft efforts to unlock most of a seventh core on the Xbox One CPU for use by game developers late last year. That move was somewhat limited by the Xbox One's continued support for Kinect-based, system-level voice commands, which could take up to half of that core's CPU time when in active use. That makes it hard for developers to know just how much of that additional CPU power will be available at any given moment.

Earlier in 2014, Microsoft announced that it had also unlocked a 10 percent slice of the Xbox One's GPU cycles that had previously been reserved for system-level features like Kinect commands and snap mode. Before that, Microsoft reportedly increased the Xbox One's GPU clock speed just before the system was released.

We're hopeful that both Sony and Microsoft will continue focusing some effort on the kinds of OS optimizations that allow for more of the base hardware to go toward actually running games. Combined with new optimizations and efficient techniques on the SDK side, we could start seeing some decent improvements in top-level software performance even on the static hardware of aging game consoles.