I'm important

Yep, Firmware update 3.00 for the PS3 is finally here. Sony skipped 2.90 for some random reason, probably to use the hype behind the “mysterious 3.00 update that will fix everything” rumours floating around the internet to their advantage, which i never understood. Just because it is a full number means nothing at all when it comes to firmware updates for the PS3. Our biggest update yet was 2.40, ’nuff said.

Anyway, no – 3.00 didn’t “fix everything”, but it made some nice changes. It didn’t “cross-game chat” or “party chat”, which i still stick by saying it has a negative impact on games. But that is besides the point, we know it will come eventually, so there is nothing i can do about it. This update was focused on giving the PS3 a new look. They removed all signs of the old “PLAYSTATION 3″ logo in the spiderman font from the original start up screen, which they replaced with the new “PS3″ logo and completely removed it from Game start ups.

Original

New

It does seem like Sony are taking this whole rebranding the PS3 thing seriously, the only thing they need to do now is to go around to every owner of the original model PS3 and either physically pick off the old “PLAYSTATION 3″ logos off their consoles and chisel in the new one into that piano black casing, or just give everyone free PS3 slim replacements and their job is done!

One of the “big” new features Sony has introduced is a new information board, which represents the original view of what it was supposed to be like. It now has some fancy animation, it shows the last three games/apps you launched and lets you relaunch into them from there, it also links to some articles on the playstation website about various subjects and it also links you to some games or content in the PlayStation Store. When you start up your console, it now automatically starts on this tab while doing a fancy scrolling animation thingy. It has been designed very well.

There is now, as you can see from the first screen shot on this post, a little information box at the top of the page. This includes your avatar, number of online friends, number of unread messages, the date, time and a little clock that tells you the console is working. Oh, and it also works as a little news ticker for the Whats new section.  But of course, the big thing it fixes – that the battery icon does not cover the clock while you’re in a game and press the PS button!

Dynamic themes.. at time of writing this post – i only have access to one dynamic theme, it is the “original” one. It has little sparkles in the background that are always moving.. and sparkling! What is also nice, is that they will be affected by what you are doing on the XMB, say you launch a game – they will sparkle off the screen, or if you just moving around the menus – the flow of them will be affected slightly. The real dynamic themes are yet to come, but there is a LittleBigPlanet one that has been demoed on the US playstation blog.

It has sackboy running around a planet while the sun and the moon rotate around, but the interesting part comes in, the themes can change with the time of day, and presumably the time of the year. Already though, just with the default theme, it has added life to the XMB – i have had my PS3 on for hours now, just sitting on the XMB!

One noticable change is the friends list, ugh, its horrible. Basically, each friend on your friends list has a huge grey box around them which displays what game they are playing. But something makes me thing something is supposed to be on there, you know – like simple trophy information, but they have not got around to adding it, but then comes the question, why would you throw those boxes in if they were not finished? Anyway, i’m not happy – they’re big, ugly, and empty. One plus point is that you can see what your friends are playing easier without scrolling on to them.

But still, those grey boxes are making the XMB look that much more Mix and Match, which was my one problem with the look and feel of the XMB. Seems more like a step back in design to me, unless they put those grey cards to use, which then i’ll be happy.  Next, everything is larger, fonts, icons, etc. Some people disliked it at first, i did too, but i like it now, makes for better view further away from the TV. That is about it for visual changes, the rest are all other small changes which i cannot be bothered talking about at the moment, other than the overall speed of the system has been improved, trophies load up instantly, little to no in-game XMB lag and the regular XMB seems to run slightly smoother now.

Overall, it is a good update – included a few of my requests in there which i’m happy about, but does have the ugly, and useless (at the moment) friends list. I’m sorry about the bad spelling and grammar in this post, I’m writing this post after being awake for nearly 24 hours, I’m absolutely fucking knackered.