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Firmware 2.40 impressions: nice and now well and truly broken

July 2nd, 2008 at 10:39 am · 30 Comments

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UPDATE: For now, 2.40 has been pulled because it’s breaking a lot of PS3s. So it’s well and truly broken, not just halfway there. Regardless, enjoy my preview/review of PS3′s latest system software.

So, as you’re probably aware (if you’re a PS3 owner at least) the firmware of your big black behemoth has now reached version 2.40, adding features such as the long-awaited in-game Xross Media Bar and Xbox Live Achievement-style Trophies.

It’s all nice and that, but there’s a few disappointments here and there, not least with the in-game XMB. Read on for my assessment of firmware 2.40.

First off, the big feature that everybody’s been hoping for over a rather long time is the introduction of the Xross Media Bar (the PS3′s menu system, the one with the Music, Video, Game columns and so on) inside games. With 2.40, the entire menu is accessible with a tap of the PS button in the centre of the controller. From here, you can send messages to friends and access your settings to alter accessories, for example pairing up Bluetooth headsets, all without exiting your game. You can also switch to another game from within another, saving a little bit of time rather than quitting the game you’re in and waiting for the menu to load before you can select another one to play.

Unfortunately, accessing your PS3′s inbox and pairing up your headset is about all you can do from this in-game version of the XMB. Even custom soundtracks, presumed to be available, since the entire XMB was opened from within a game, haven’t made the cut unless the game you’re playing supports the feature. Wouldn’t it be simple enough to let music play as if you’re doing something such as browsing the internet or viewing photos, and allow the player to turn down the volume of the in-game music manually, at the very least? It would have been nice to have had this feature at least, especially since a few games already support custom soundtracks by themselves; it can’t be too hard to implement, one would have thought.

At first, I suffered a minor panic attack as I thought that the new update had broken some of the icons on my XMB. However, I calmed down a bit when I realised that the theme I was using didn’t support the new icons. Whoops. Moving swiftly on from my silly mistakes, my impressions continue on the next page.

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Tags:
Categories: News · PlayStation 3

  • http://n/a Joe

    Your icons aren’t available since they’re new icons that didn’t exist before, and your custom theme was not designed with those icons in mind, thus since they didn’t exist at the time of creation, they don’t exist now either. Change your theme and your icons will return.

  • Makidian

    I still haven’t played around with it much yet, but I have a feeling I’m gonna be d/ling updates and patches for awhile. At least they added custom music to PAIN. All I wanted was trophy support but your blog is pretty spot on, 2.4 is still a bit lackluster

  • Submish

    @joe

    Thank you for clarifying this for these whiners. How could you have not figured that out? I knew as soon as I saw the question marks that those are new icons that aren’t auto-skinned by the theme. Way too many people are whining about 2.4, this is only phase one…

  • MacMan2001

    I agree – Sony are too busy playing catch-up to realise the features they bring out are still crippled., like the in-game music (or lack of it). I’m no fanboy i got all 3 consoles, but it’s a fiasco.
    You’d think in game XMB meant in-game music for ALL titles (like XBox) and the ability to do more than sync accessories + reply to mail.

    Sony need to take the initiative and do what MS is doing – but BETTER – rather than adding half-baked 360 features to their system.

    End of rant.

  • Keith K

    You know who is laughing all the way to the bank today?

    Housemarque

    (Google it if that makes no sense)

  • Rob Hayes

    From what I understand, the issue with Sony implementing the custom soundtrack from the XMB has to do with Microsoft’s patent on the technology.

    At the very least, we are able to check our friendlist, and check/respond to messages while in game now. The only feature I need them to add to in game XMB is cross game voice chat. I’m happy with everything else… the only thing I was really wanting were the trophies anyway. And I’m diggin away at SSHD already.

  • sion

    Ohh god CMON!!!!
    everyone knows by now that microsoft has a patent for a console that supports custom-soundtrack via the OS. That’s why PS3 games need to patch themself, because the GAME in this case must support the custom-soundtrack so they wont break any copyright laws. Dah…

  • Ozonez

    @sion

    MS only has a patent on how they did it. Sony had/has other option available to them on how to do it.

  • mike

    This is a retarded article. That if it was half ass researched would never have been posted. Final straw. Done with this website. It’s just about posting. Not about quality.

  • DaveShoutsAtStupid

    Half of it is broken ? You just lost any credibility you had, if you had any to begin with.

  • NYfanatic

    wow you sure seem to be a nintendo/Xbox fanboy…..

  • ThisArticleSucks

    OMG, shut up…

  • http://donthaveit.com GudNjus

    Wow that is some really poor journalysm.

    1) I think the new music player is spot on, simple, small, easy to use, effective.
    2) All your music complaints are lame, since you can now do averything from the new music player and you don’t need to go to the control panel, like adjusting volume, skipping tracks… all done from the XMB now.

  • Eddiemilz

    Jeez all you guys bashing him sound like fanboys yourself. It’s a good article highlighting the positives and negatives of the update, and showing his opinion.

    Just because you don’t agree, don’t call him a fanboy..

  • http://www.ut3mod.com LarryL

    Just so you guys know, check out a few of your themes that you’ve downloaded in the past. Some of them, like you said will just display the “help” icon. But I’ve discovered that certain themes will show the new Icons as they are if they don’t recognize it. So instead of showing whatever the “help” icon looks like in that theme, it actually shows the Trophy that Sony added. I guess it depends on how the creator made the theme.

  • Brian

    Boo hoo. I’m fed up with idiots who complain. I’m sure Sony could have just delayed this update for a couple more months so your wanted features would be included. Just be happy we got this update and let Sony keep adding more features. From the comments I’ve read from PS3 owners most wanted the XMB in-game access so they could send messages back and forth without quitting games. It looks like Sony has delivered what most people wanted. This doesn’t look like a broken update to me. It looks like Sony prioritized and got out what was ready.

  • http://www.sarcasticgamer.com Yamster

    Can I clarify a couple of things before my head is chewed clean off?

    I’m not a Nintendo or MS fanboy; I’ve owned nothing but PlayStations the whole of my gaming life. Before you accuse anyone of writing something fanboyish, check their credentials please; a quick glance at my forums profile would reveal no Wii friend code or XBL Gamertag to speak of.

    Also, how can an article be poorly researched if it’s a hands-on report?

  • Krelith

    It’s a well written article Yams. I think what most people are forgetting is the current trend in the Video Gaming industry – which is to say it’s a new trend in terms of consoles – in that developers have the opportunity to release a base for their software and build upon it through future patches. I don’t believe for a second that Sony are calling this their final release of the in-game XMB, they’re simply responding to the major demand first – in-game messaging. I’m confident that isolated voice-chat within games and other desired features will come along in the near future.

    For those comparing this to Microsoft’s in-game Blade, remember that they’ve had a lot longer to patch their version of this software (and they have done… a LOT). Sony is simply giving us a basis for their ongoing work.

    I own both consoles and I have to say in terms of online features the 360 wins hands down everytime right now. But that scale is beginning to tip slightly, beginning to even out.

    They’ve got a lot of work to do to compare to the 360′s in-game Blade but at least they’re finally getting off the starting line.

    Give them a chance to play their full hand people, because right now they’ve only laid down the first pair.

  • http://www.sarcasticgamer.com Yamster

    @Kreith: That first paragrpah you’ve written was my main point in my other article about Sony today, just a couple of entries above this one.

    I’m not saying this is the final version of the in-game XMB, but merely the foundations on which the software can be built.

    But still, that music player? It just feels like change for the sake of change..and I miss being able to fast forward at all and being able to swiftly navigate through a few tracks rather than scrolling to Music, waiting for the icons to appear, selecting the mini music player, waiting for that to load, then finally being able to navigate. It’s like Sony were trying too hard to add lots and lots of change and it feels downright unnecessary.

  • http://christian.com Jesus

    dude.. stop bashing the ps3.. for a while you guys where ok-ish .. but you’ve started this ps3 bashing again..

  • Patent-lawyer

    Microsoft does NOT have a “patent” for custom soundtracks, Microsoft has filed a patent application several years ago, but the patent was never granted, hence you do not see an issue date and patent number in the filing.

    Therefor all the blabber about Sony not being able to use a custom soundtrack system is worthless blabla from people whith close to zero understanding of our patent system.

    As far as Sony explained the custom soundtrac feature is now part of the API devs use to make games on, like the savegame dialog that looks alike in every game. Devs can choose to use the new provided tools to make the ingame music, and by using that you will be able to chose custom soundtracks. But without the dev using it you can’t interefer with the devs implementation of the music. FFS you don’t even know HOW the devs implemented the music playback, for all i care it could be a closed routine that puts out a MIX of sfx and music to the PS3 soundsystem, therefor the OS has ZERO chance of muting the music to play the custom ones.

  • http://www.sarcasticgamer.com Lono

    These days Yamster, if you have an opinion, you’re either a Fanboy of this or that, because it’s the easiest way for someone to attempt to discredit your opinion, when said opinion differs from theirs.

    At least you have an opinion and aren’t some lap dog licking the arse of some game company that could give two craps about that person.

    Great article.

  • http://insomniaradio.net KillYourFM

    Well, let’s all AT LEAST admit that Yamster was on to something, considering that the 2.40 is now MIA worldwide :-)

    (via:

    Wonder if it has anything to do with the Sony site getting hacked this morning? Probably just coincidence – but if Sony saw fit to remove the latest firmware update less than 18 hours after it’s release, something is screwy. . .

  • http://insomniaradio.net KillYourFM

    Also – if the freaking PSP has RSS subscriptions, complete with auto-downloads, etc, why can’t they implement this for us on the PS3? It’s the perfect machine for, say, subscribing to the SG podcasts, or various video podcasts.

    Way overdue.

  • http://www.sarcasticgamer.com Lono

    Looks like Brian ate his words, big time. I mean, he ate ALL of his words…

    Wow… the shame must be unbearable to be so ABSOLUTELY wrong about something…

    wow.

  • atreyu_-

    Great article , i thought the same thing after i downloaded it last night. And why cant i turn off the clock it completely ruins all my backgrounds

  • Jimmy

    I would like to address a couple of topics:
    1)“Research” – You had a chance to inform your audience on WHY the icons are ‘broken’, and how they could fix it. If you spent a couple of minutes looking around the Internet and researching it, it would have greatly improved your ‘hands on’. You could raise the point and then tell the solution. You just would have had to delay the article another 20 minutes. You make a invalid criticism, and then the community has to correct it. Oh course they are going to take your head off about it. Because it’s ground work you should have done. It’s somewhat lazy in my opinion, but I don’t run a website so take it for what it’s worth.
    2)“Firmware got pulled so we were proved correct!” – In all honesty the way in which the firmware was ‘broke’ was not the same way in which the article says. Nowhere in the original article do you criticize that 2.4 it bricking consoles. So you guys get a somewhat lucky break and you desperately, and it looks very desperate, seizing on the “SEE I SAID IT WAS BROKEN!” line. Honestly you, I, and the other readers know that wasn’t what the article was about. It looks bad when you start having to reach to cover your butt.
    3)Man up – When you make the mistake own up, and don’t lash out at your readers / commentors in order to save face. The article had some problems. Man up and eat the crow, all of it.

  • bueatifulraven

    man I gotta agree… I have almost twenty million artists and I listen to the used a lot. So… I have to spend like ten minutes scrolling to the top just so I skip forward the song, or even pause it. Or Poetic Tragedy has been playing for a good while on repeat, time to turn on shufffle….. scroll… scroll… It really does seem broken during web browsing. Also in game music was a dissapointment too. I turned off music in the game just to see if by some miracle… but no.

  • minas

    you cant fast forward/rewind a track while on the internet browser…from mini control panel,or anywhere else…cause u cant access the main control panel (the one with the earth animation) while on the internet browser…thats terrible…hope they fix it quick!!

  • minas

    you cant fast forward/rewind a track while on the internet browser…from mini control panel,or anywhere else…cause u cant access the main control panel (the one with the earth animation) while on the internet browser…thats terrible…hope they fix it quick!!