It’s not changed that much since launch, but here is what the XMB originally looked like
Everytime any firmware update for any console is released, there is always a geeky optimism that it will do something awesome that will rejuvinate the console. For the Xbox 360, there was a series of smaller updates untill of course, the big dashboard update “changed everything”. The Wii has seen the inclusion of new channels and all that jazz, but it has been the PS3 that has been the butt of the hilarious “firmware jokes”, with updates to “improve compatibilty with existing Playstation 3 titles” and add the equivilent of a very limited IRC server. But apparently, firmware updates are not just for the users anymore.
Although many are still waiting for the fabled PS2 compatibilty update, including me after the spectacluar death of my original 60GB model and cross game, party voice chat, Sony are still attempting to support developers through there firmware updates.
2.80, the latest update, appeared to do very little, with the people at PS3Attitude discovering that there was now a character limit on chat and TheSixthAxis found that the update was primarily for Vidzone, the music video application that you can download from the PSN. Nothing exciting there really, just adds a bit more stability. However, according to an interview by TQcast over the Uncharted 2 Beta and the improvements following it, the producer for UC2: Among Thieves Sam Thompson said:
“Naughty Dog is constantly working to improve every aspect of the gameplay; be it animation, lighting, sound, texture fidelity. You know if you look at the game itself with the 2.80 engine update, you know we’re adding more memory, so we get a lot more utilisation of the SPUs, so we increase our optimisation of the Cell processor as well. So we’ve got from the engineering side all the way up to texture fidelity, artists adding in even more…I mean there’s really not a singular aspect that’s not been improved in the game,”
Now, the XMB has always been a bit heavy on the old RAM, causing a major software headache when the in-game XMB was introduced. The good news for you users is that with the increase in RAM for software, it not only should be more stable, but allow existing and new games to take advantage of it. Whilst the PS3′s “dashboard” is still using around 70mb compared to the 40mb of the Xbox dash. Either way, PS3 users are still probably after more user features, but maybe this “lighter” XMB will pave the way for more features. What do you guys think, tell us by commenting!
If we haven't bored you, here is some more:
- Something big happening for the PS3 Firmware?
- Nothing like a Tuesday morning PSN update
- Xbox 360 Dashboard to get Ads?
- “Other OS” functionality being removed from PS3
- Sky on 360 hasn’t quite gone to plan…
Comments
Leave a Reply
