PS3 Firmware Update 3.0: Does It Make The Grade?
August 18th, 2009 | Written by Chris Selogy | Topic: PlayStation 3
Before the announcement of the $299 PS3 Slim – the highlight of the Sony Press Conference at GamesCom in Cologne, Germany – Sony revealed that a new PS3 firmware update should be released around the same time that the PS3 Slim launches on September 1. The monumental 3.0 update for the PS3 should bring with it substantial additions that tackle the long list of requests that is posted in every corner of the internet. So will the upcoming firmware bring the goods?
The “What’s New” Section – Rating: B-
The most NXE-like that the new update will get seems more of a quick summary of the most significant new content that has been released in the PlayStation Store. These icons show off anything from PSN games to the latest episode of Pulse or Qore and offer direct links to the specific product or start streaming the selected video. It’s like the old Information Board, which was useless and annoying for a long time, so this is at least a step up from that. This is also supposed to add games you’ve recently played so you can quickly launch that game when you turn the PS3 on, which isn’t really all that useful. It also seems like these appear on the old PlayStation Store icon, possibly requiring another click just to get to the content to make this part of the XMB more clunky to navigate, so I hope that is not the case. This is a decent addition if you’re not keen on actually going to the PlayStation Store to see what’s new.
More Ways To Find The PlayStation Store – Rating: A-
This is a pretty simple addition, which puts icons to reach the video or game PlayStation Store under the Video and Game tabs of the XMB, respectively. This makes it easier to reach the video store since it was hidden behind the game store before, so it’s a bit easier to reach them now.
The New Status Indicator – Rating: A-
If you’ve noticed the date and time in the top right corner of your XMB screen, that is the status indicator as it exists right now. With 3.0, that will be significantly upgraded to be a bit more like the area of the screen on the Xbox 360’s dashboard with the number of unread messages you have, friends that are online, time and date, and even a little news ticker that seems reminiscent of the Information Board. Your avatar seems to be completely miniaturized, unlike how big it is on the Xbox 360 dashboard, so it makes that inclusion seem pointless. Also note that when using the in-game XMB with the new firmware, the battery power indicator will not cover up the time and date, so that long standing issue is about to be fixed for good. Allow me to turn off the news ticker and this is probably the best addition here. That may be a sign of what to expect from the rest of the features.
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Animated Themes – Rating: B+
I do have to confess that I love PS3’s themes, as they generally look good, can change up the look of the XMB greatly, and the vast majority of game-related themes are free, so animated themes seem like a great step up on that front. The example Sony had to show off is a LittleBigPlanet theme where Sackboy runs across a little Earth as the sun rises and sets before the moon takes over. It looks great and makes the XMB a bit more lively, which is nice. Even that basic wave theme that is the PS3’s default theme will get an upgrade to add some sparkles to it the animation it already had. I’m expecting premium themes to cost more for animation, but you really shouldn’t be wasting money on those things anyway. Old themes will look the same, so there won’t be backlash for invalidating all of the old themes like Microsoft did with the New Xbox Experience. I do hope the user-creation program will be upgraded to allow for animated themes, but I can see the inevitable disaster when the first themes involve pornography or stupid internet memes.
Avatars - Rating: B
Anybody that has an Xbox 360 and a PS3 knows how great it is to have a huge selection in picking your avatar. Unfortunately, PS3 owners have been stuck with a basic set of generic and Sony avatars that haven’t seen an update since the addition of some Haze-related options, which should give you an idea of how long ago that was. Luckily, Sony’s opening up a bit to allow for avatars to be offered on the PlayStation Store for free or for some money, though the smart readers know not to pay for an image that is sparingly used. I’m hoping that PS3 developers are allowed to give away themes and avatars with their games, like Xbox 360 owners have been able to do for a long time. Now I can get rid of that cardboard box monkey that I’ve been using for months, or maybe I’ll keep it because of how awesome that is.
Improved Trophy Organization – Rating: B+
The trophies have been a fairly interesting experiment in doing achievements differently by primarily changing just the way they are totaled into something you can compare with other gamers. It’s been a decent success primarily in being more flexible than achievement in the ease that developers can add new trophies alongside new DLC, which has resulted in a ton more trophies for Burnout Paradise than they were allowed to do for the game on the Xbox 360. Before 3.0, additional trophies just appeared at the end of the list without much way to distinguish trophies for the base game and those that are attached to DLC, so Sony is additional a new organization set up that will separate the original set of trophies from the rest in two separate lists. This makes it easier to see what you can actually get versus what is out of your reach, which will work nicely with the recent overhaul to the SCEA site for public displays of trophies on the computer.
Friends List – Rating: D
The upgrade for this seems so minimal, as it’s just supposed to be a new look of some kind for the friends list. There are no more detailed explanations of what this will entail, though we’d hope for the option to have friends be sorted alphabetically or through a number of other ways like the recent dashboard update for the Xbox 360 offered. There is a silver lining to this feature, as you can now just to the messages a friend has sent you from their profile page, so you will be able to send a message, read messages, compare trophies, or chat with a friend from one screen. This is ultimately the weakest part of what is in the
Firmware 3.0 – Rating: C
Though these additions are nice improvements on certain aspects of the XMB, none of these things are really a big deal to be worth the jump to 3.0 from where we stand at 2.80 right now. These would be a decent update for a 2.85 or 2.90 update, but 3.0 envokes the expectation for more significant additions that include things like a party system, cross game chat, backwards compatability, website browsing and purchases of the PlayStation Store, and even in-game XMB for PS1 games, PS2 games, Blu-rays, or DVD’s. There are always smaller, unmentioned features that are added or fixed in each firmware update, but not announcing anything that’s really significant when Sony had the chance today doesn’t bode well for the update. So when September 1 rolls around, just be glad that the PS3 is now cheaper so more people can buy them and enjoy the large library of titles so this holiday season will be bit more pleasant for the console makers than the bad economic climate has done so far when looking at NPD numbers in the US and the sales figures abroad.
If you want to see some of these features in action, you can see Eric Lempel, Sony’s Director of PlayStation Network Operations, host a guided walkthrough below. He shows most of the features so you can see how they should work when the firmware update is released to the public in about two weeks.
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Comment by JoshS on the August 19th, 2009 at 4:18 am
It definitely is a step in the right direction in terms of updating the service and structure to rival that of the 360's NXE.
Comment by nate-dog7 on the August 19th, 2009 at 4:53 am
XMB was already better than NXE before this
i am looking forward to this update all the same
Comment by killinrod on the August 19th, 2009 at 5:29 am
It sounds like the author is so down playing this update. But from what I've heard it sounds pretty awesome. rome wasn't built in a year you know. Sony is moving in the right direction and is still offering features that xbox isn't. Give credit where credit is due. I really like some of the changes Sony is making and with a nice price drop a lot of other new customers will be happy to jump on board. Remember there online is still free.
Comment by Kai'll on the August 19th, 2009 at 5:36 am
I don't entirely understand how the average grade seemed to be a solid B (save for one D), yet the overall grade is a C.
Comment by TonyP on the August 19th, 2009 at 5:50 am
I had a long talk with our writer about this update, Kai'll, and his main point is that none of the updates are necessarily "bad" but they're pretty underwhelming especially since the firmware version got the 3.0 treatment. Usually in software releases ".0's" bring significant additions to user experience and there are no big additions.
As comparison, the NXE had lots of great additions (along with it's fair share of "meh" additions, as I've never cared about avatars) but it did bring features like Netflix, which by itself validated the entire update.
It seems that Sony still has a long way to go in matching a lot of elements of the Xbox experience, BUT that doesn't take away from the fact that Sony has made HUGE strides in the right direction over the past year or so after their barebones release.
To show how we've treated other updates, we put NXE through the paces when it was released as well: http://blog.gamer20.com/2008/12/nxe-new-feature-a...
Though we created a different kind of post with suggestions to Microsoft (none of which they used). In fact, if you have ideas for how Sony can get past a lot of the patent issues they're facing or any other additions you'd like to see, we'll put together a collection of all of your ideas and credit them to you.
Comment by TonyP on the August 19th, 2009 at 5:54 am
Also, I actually argued with him over the grade, but he made that point and I had to agree. It jarred me too that the overall grade seemed out of place with the individual grades, but his reasoning was that those individual updates weren't bad, were convenient (What's New Section), were downright cool (Animated Themes), but as a whole there was no killer addition that really made it particularly exciting or worthwhile. Thus it got a C, or, an average grade.
Comment by TonyP on the August 19th, 2009 at 5:54 am
Also, I actually argued with him over the grade, but he made that point and I had to agree. It jarred me too that the overall grade seemed out of place with the individual grades, but his reasoning was that those individual updates weren't bad, were convenient (What's New Section), were downright cool (Animated Themes), but as a whole there were no killer additions that really made it particularly exciting or worthwhile. Thus it got a C, or, an average grade.
Comment by TonyP on the August 19th, 2009 at 5:56 am
Also, I actually argued with him over the grade, but he made that point and I had to agree. It jarred me too that the overall grade seemed out of place with the individual grades, but his reasoning was that those individual updates weren't bad, were convenient (What's New Section), were downright cool (Animated Themes), but as a whole there were no killer additions that really made it particularly exciting or worthwhile. Thus it got a C: an average grade.
Comment by Callum on the August 19th, 2009 at 4:01 pm
No in game XMB… if they put that in it would have been worthy of an A+
Comment by Chris Selogy on the August 19th, 2009 at 7:56 pm
Especially for a 3.0 update since that should mean more meaningful additions and changes. They shouldn't be so willing to increase the number so quickly for these kinds of features and fall into the situation that the PSP is in right now at 5.55 even though it has made huge strides since its launch. A D or F would have been for updates that Sony describes as just "enhancing playback of PS3 software" because they provide zero noticeable changes that should just be held back for other things to make it more worthwhile.
The grade for the firmware as a whole isn't really supposed to be an average of the others since it's about what the firmware offers that changes things that need attention.
Comment by Ruben M on the August 19th, 2009 at 8:59 pm
No, the XMB will never be what the NXE is, fanboys can just put that to rest now. Still, this is a step in the right direction.
Comment by jmlcn on the August 19th, 2009 at 9:08 pm
In game XMB has been around for about a year
Comment by Josh on the August 19th, 2009 at 9:14 pm
I dont see any attempts to grade the NXE. and it wasnt an update, it was a complete OS makeover.
This wasn't sony's answer to the NXE. Its just an update and all the features are useful and make it more user friendly.
And how do you give a D to a feature you dont even know all the details about?
And finally how do you put a final grade on an update that hasnt been released?
Sony has been known to sneek in features.
And this Callum guy better be joking….no in game xmb…
Comment by Spook on the August 19th, 2009 at 10:52 pm
I don't think a C is a fair grade since you gave everything but the friends list an A or B lol, but I do agree that this is just some enhancements to the XMB that were needed and should have had before. People talk about in game chat and party invites but there is a premium PSN service that they haven't talked too much about yet, but should be dropping on Sept. 1 with the firmware update since they are also upgrading the store and everything else.
I would give the update a solid B just because they making the XMB "pop" more, and that's what people like about Live. Live is actually pretty straight forward but it's just flashy. I can't wait for the update and the details on the premium PSN service announcement.
I personally have had my PS3 since launch so I remember the days when things were not so good for the PSN but now the online is very stable, baring a couple of games but it is those games not the PSN that are causing the problems, they have continued to add features and they are constantly doing things to improve the OS and XMB. I think it's a decent update but it should have been a 2.9 instead of a 3.0. I have a hunch that there will be more features included than what they say but they will be with the premium PSN service.
Comment by aaron on the September 1st, 2009 at 3:01 am
ever since i did the update my playstation network is not signing in
Comment by Tony on the September 1st, 2009 at 3:13 am
i can't sign in either. why? checked and the i-net connection test ran fine, but failed on the PS Network test. What should I do? Help!
Comment by JoshS on the September 1st, 2009 at 3:57 am
I cant sign in either, although it might be of all the people downloading it and the servers getting adjusted. My guess is to wait till the morning and everything should right itself out.
Comment by Chris Selogy on the September 1st, 2009 at 5:04 am
I got online just fine. It just took a minute to go through.
Comment by Dion on the September 1st, 2009 at 2:18 am
By the ratings you gave it, this should’ve averaged out to a B, which is what I’m giving this update. Website browsing is already on the PSN, and you can already purchase stuff for the PlayStation Store… unless you meant improving how those functions work, then yeah, agreed. But, seriously, a C? I’d give it a solid B.
Comment by Chris Selogy on the September 1st, 2009 at 5:08 pm
Except that it's not an average and nowhere was that specifically mentioned. Each part was rated on its own merits and then the firmware as a whole was rated on what it ultimately added. Having used it now, the grades are pretty much dead on.
If you do have a Japanese PSN account, there's a free Afrika theme that is really cool and will not cost you $3 like the LBP theme SCEA put up for sale last night.
Comment by Amy on the September 1st, 2009 at 6:21 pm
It's a good, balanced review, but from what I read all the way down, I thought you were going to give it a B.
Comment by PS3 Slim on the September 9th, 2009 at 5:06 pm
The PS3 Slim was the cause of this new firmware! I also thought you'd of given a B! Nice post
Comment by PS3 deals on the September 23rd, 2009 at 4:18 pm
I would given it a higer grade : )