PlayStation 3 Firmware (v3.10) Update Preview

@kizalini
I couldn’t agree more. Those who got the PS3 early on (at launch, in my case) can measure the progress Sony have made. The experience has improved consistently over the past 2.5 years.

I have no interest in Facebook personally, but a lot of people do. Why would anyone complain about additional, optional functionalities? Because they’re not made for “me, me, me”? Because of some strange need to focus on little things that do nothing for your gaming experience and that you’ll most likely stop caring about the second you get them?

And I must say: to see something that was touted as the Second Coming when it was announced for the 360 months ago arrive on the PS3 at the same time, almost hush-hush, with little fanfare, confirms my belief that the people working behind the scenes are focusing on the right things.
I like that they don’t put much emphasis on nice-but-not-crucial bonus stuff like Facebook integration. This tells me that, hopefully, Sony are focused on more important matters.

Yeah, things aren’t perfect. We’re all waiting for That One Feature that will finally bring eternal joy and bliss into our life, but in the words of the wise Kevin Butler: “Come on!”

Nice that you have improved the web browser! A big thumb up! The Photo visuals look great too! And it’s always nice with some color in the friendsbar!

Hey whiners, the Facebook stuff is optional. Nobody is forcing you to use it. Stop whining!

O P T I O N A L !

When is there going to be Cross-Game voice chat? You can’t hide it forever.

Will this service be available to all PS3 users or East-Europeans will be left out like last time (What’s new)?

Ok, i’m only gunna say this once and once only, not voice myself any further on the subject as there have been countless posts (voicing) themselves over the months and years for this one little feature.
Playstation 3 NEEDS cross chatting.
This only little thing, is what i believe is lacking from this side of the fence and need urgent attention.
Everything else i believe you guys are making a tremendous effort, and ARE.
The cross chatting makes the player/chatter feel more connected to the “console” and to “other people”, whether it’d be just chatting with real mates just to save a phone call to even just organizing gaming sessions with them and some randoms etc.
The Invite system on some (alot) of games on the Playstation 3 is SHOCKING, but….
Having a cross chatting feature will void these little hassles/troubles because the feature will allow the player/s to still feel connected in their connecting of gaming.
You need to priorities the features better.
Cross chatting should’ve/should be, on top of your “To Do” list for which the basis of gaming is built for first. Gaming.
For whatever the reason, this hasn’t been done.
Get it done… (in the nicest tone possible :p)

This is a great update, I’m just curious if this means there is an API which can be used by developers for other purposess (Such as a facebook application with a dedicated Playstaion Stream) or weither its more like installing facebook connect on PS3s?

PLEASE CAN YOU LET US FILL OUR COMMENT BOX???

At the moment it only lets us put in 21 characters but it looks wide enough to fit at least 42 characters.

People stop complaining, cross game chat is coming. Didn’t you see the post where the Naughty Dog dev leaked it by accident?

Eric Lempel said during a recent interview (in OPM, i believe) that cross game chat was being worked on. No doubt they are having trouble working around the patent that MS supposedly put on it.

crap!

Offering a rainbow of colors for Friends List entries sounds like a nice little tweak, better than bland grey only.

Hopefully an increased range of XMB avatar options will be next. I think we need a greater selection of avatars to choose from.

What about Last.fm integration to update our music informations?

Facebook said in french sounds like buttock-goat.

Where is the Cross-Game-Chat / Party-Chat function?
COMON!

I don’t need Facebook. As someone said before: Twitter would have been the better choice. This is a gaming console, not a multimedia superstar, especially when all the features are only half cooked!

great update… NOT! I don’t want Facebook on my ps3, i don’t use it and never will. I use my PS3 for GAMEING. I want stuff on there where i can enhance my online gaming like cross game chat and invites etc. What i cant understand is you listen to people and you add Facebook and minimal colors to the friends list but WHERE ARE THE AVATARS!!!!!!!!!!!!!! You promised there on there way 5 months ago and I’m still waiting. Forget Facebook! Argh!

New update huh? uhuh,ok for the facebook,ok for the redesing of the Photo category but WHY add more features on the Friend List? Wannah add more features? Give the option to change the friend list to the old one (before 3.00)! That’s gonna be a mess with a different colour on every ID :S Just add an option when you click triangle on your ID then “Change Friend List’s Style” or just “Style” and then “Classic or Original”. I don’t want it now but in the future many of us will want it!

Another so-so update, nothing earth shattering. Good to see that 99% of the grey friends boxes are now going to disappear. Colour-wise it’s no biggie, would’ve preferred it if a) they wouldve enabled you to have a longer comment in your comment box, and b)a more in-depth profile of yourself instead of limiting it to 21 characters. Why not simply have your countries flag in top by your name, get rid of the psn id field (do we really need to see our name twice on one page??), push the languages field up one, and put them all on one line, then use the huge space below to write a better profile.

As for cross-game chat not being there (unless it hasn’t been mentioned yet), i’m not surprised. There must be a reason why we haven’t got it yet (god knows it’s mentioned by users ever update), but it would be nice to have an official word on it (ie “we are working on it, but …”) I personally wouldn’t use it, i only want it so that people stop complaining all the time that we still don’t have it.

The facebook thing looks cool, my g/f keeps pressuring me to get facebook (facecrack?) maybe this will be what tips the scales finally.

However,(you knew it was coming) cross game voice chat and new avatars? Come on guys…

Im shocked they havent added even more store icons! C’mon SCEE, 3 is not enough! We need more spam from the store clogging up the XMB!!

More seriously, maybe the time is right to fix some important stuff :

A Eventually add those 44 missing latin characters in PS3′s fonts
B Ability to select other languages in PSN profile (like Vietnamese for instance, but not only)
C Last.fm scrobbling

where’s the ability to choose the size of our icons/fonts that were supposed to be ‘fixed’ in this update?? why do we still have to put up with those ugly as sin boxes on our friends list??

they were the big issues with 3.0.

listening to consumer feedback my a–e.

Cmon Sony:

*Party Voice Cross Gaming Chat!!
*Custom Ingame Music Support for every PS3/PSN Game.

FaceBook?

Ok Sony

The very first comment couldnt of put it better.

“I gave up on social networking years ago when I realised it wasn’t productive to my social life a all.”

Well said.

I cant help to think SCEE are almost more worried about casual gamers with there addiction on social networking and Showing off of photos no one really cares to much of

Please sony, think about me, the hardcore gamer, you can look at my trophies and see i buy gmes on the store, i buy all the new realses, Im a online vet, so why cant you give me and those LIKE me what we scream about???

Cross – Game – Chat

Wait a minute, does this mean I can’t see what my friends are playing anymore? Why did they remove that?

The coloured box on friends is still ugly to be honest. And no sign of changing the font/icons back to their old, smaller sizes?

Oh one more thing.

I must say thank you sony for removing those ugly gray box’s even if you didnt do it intirely.
It just proves your listening, Yet still parhly deaf, most of the time.

SCEE motto: “Lets take two steps forward, one step back”

Even though i welcome firmwares i do reckon we need one that will rock peoples world. but i have yet to seen one yet.

But like the motto suggests least were stepping in the right direction, almost.

KAP

Many people will be happy about FB being added, I’m not one but hey ho. Started a FB account years ago and still can’t delete it.

Also, while I understand that this information is brought from the US, why must you always slap us in the face with a video showing a WORKING news ticker? Where’s SCEE’s version of this?

This update also adds POLISH language for users from POLAND

Well that’s nice for people who still use facebook. I deactivated my profile some weeks ago cos I just got sick of it all. Prefer Twitter myself if I got a lil bit to say. Less crap on it too and Uncharted 2 posts to it

I just wish there was a way to only allow voice chat to friends on the PSN list for everything. I’m just sick of having to mute everyone each time I play or constantly pull out my PS Eye when I don’t want people to hear me in certain games that don’t seem to have all the necessary options (the otherwise fantastic Uncharted 2 is lacking here). I loathe voice chat and it’s by far and away my most hated feature of modern gaming.

By the way has it been changed back so that the names of files other than the one you’re currently selected on do NOT fade into invisible. Can fade a lil bit ok for focus, but it’s a pain in the butt trying to manage all my songs and videos when the titles keep disappearing and I’m having to constantly move the d-pad up and down to keep them ‘fresh’ on screen.

I agree with poster #33 and #72

Why this (colored) boxes in the friendslist? It looked so much smoother without the boxes. It just doesn’t fit with the rest of the menu’s..

lol the same day as the “other guys” big update…
I love how MS made a big deal out of the Facebook/Twitter update and you guys roll it out like it ain’t no thang.

Anyway must upadte both my systems today. You gotta love shiny new firmwares \o/

Where is the cross game chat ????????????????????????????????

Awesome. I’ve wanted some sort of FB integration – XBox users get an app on there for achievements but this is better as its an official update. Will FB show retrospective trophies? It would be awesome to be able to have your PSN “Gamercard” visible on there or a trophy list like on the PS site.

Next on my list is Skype and Sky – XBox users are relishing the fact they got Sky and we just got the iPlayer but I aint gonna complain – I love Sony n my PS3 to bits…I may need to hide my purchases on the PSN Store on FB however…the Mrs will flip if she sees how much I spend on there – dont want FB givin the jig up! lol

This looks great! Not everyone will use the Facebook feature but i sure will and the profile colouring looks great! I’m glad it got changed so soon!

great thanks

Thank you ! but “Where is Cross Game Tchat ?”

Ok Sony,
i like so mutch twitter,
but The Question is: “Where is Cross Game Chat?”

IN GAME SKYPE
Thats the only want…
James do you hear?

when is this going live then?

CROSS GAME CHAT and PARTY SYSTEM????????

3.01 to 3.10? Not much happening on the front end then?

Please Sony, provide cross game chat in WHATEVER form or method JUST to shut everybody up, both PS3 users and XBox users for gods sake!!!

This is pretty sweet!!!

So, let me get this straight…

After all the negative comments you received last time on breaking the consistency and sleekness of the PS3 XMB by resizing fonts and icons and adding pixie dust backgrounds and enormous useless grey boxes, you promptly decided that it would be a very good idea to ‘counter’ these complaints by making it even MORE inconsistent by having *other* people choose what *my* friendslist will look like?!

I am truly amazed.

I read on another site that it goes live for Europe on Thursday…

Son have been working on FB integration since before Microsoft, this has nothing to do with being competitive.

nice update btw.

It would be great to associate your facebook friends with PSN ID’s. I recently got a HTC Hero which intergrates all your friends social networking info, feed and pics into their single contact on my phone. Would be amazing to see something like this in my PSN friends list.

About the news ticker:

It’s enabled in the US and a lot of people wish it could be disabled. It’s always scrolling and a bit distracting.

So before deploying the ticker in the EU please implement an off switch.

Always nice with updates though I don’t care about FB…

What about:

- MKV support. (Even Samsungs TV’s with a DLNA server support it now…)
- Video playlists (Should be an easy thing to implement)
- UI font/icon size settings

Thanks for the update, the picture view looks really nice now, and I’m happy that you fixed the friendslist a bit.
Can you please add ISO standard time format?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601
As it is now it’s just wrong.
And please add a setting for camera invert X/Y per user so games can pull that info automaticly from the system so I don’t have go in and change it every time? Maybe some more stuff as well (brake/accelerate buttons, southpaw, subs on/off).

@racedriving you can turn it off in the system settings.
@Zaphloo mkv support. try ps3mediaserver (google)

Sony:
-Custom “Party” Game Chat maybe Skype Support
-Better Notification Support (dont want to see if a friends goes offline)
-Custom Ingame Soundtrack for every Game