Sony has unlocked another one of the PS4's eight processor cores for use by developers.

Previously, two of the console's cores were reserved for running the PS4 operating system, which left only six available for developers to harness.

But the patch notes for a recent update of FMOD Studio's audio middleware noted that it had "added FMOD_THREAD_CORE6 to allow access to the newly unlocked 7th core," which was soon corroborated by sources at Sony.

Unlocking the seventh core gives developers that much more CPU time to use for processing physics, graphics, or game logic in future games.

Microsoft made a similar move earlier in the year, unlocking a core normally used for Kinect voice commands.

Efforts like these, along with optimisation and more-efficient programming, can help to extend the life of consoles despite their static hardware.