Firmware 2.80 For Developers Only?

Why the gaming public will have no use for the latest firmware.
Published 24/06/2009 at 12:30 by nofi
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Yesterday’s firmware release was an odd one.  Without fanfare or much warning (apart from the file being available for debug machines for a little while) and with a tiny changelog promising nothing more concrete than better support for an unnamed number of PS3 games, speculation has started to rise around just what the firmware update actually did.

Well, apart from oddly locking the Microphone level to 3 (you can’t change it now) on the surface it appears the update has done nothing at all.  However, a post from Gaming Age’s Jim yesterday suggests that whatever the firmware has updated behind the scenes, it’s purely for developers right now. “It has at least one thing in it that people will want,” he said, “but the feature won’t be immediately useful.”

This had lead to further speculation around the web that the update has allowed developers to start to work on cross-game voice chat, something that everyone has been asking for since we realised the PS3 could get firmware updates – if indeed this is the case then this might explain why, at the time of writing, there’s not even an automatic prompt for the user to get 2.80 – there’s simply no need to.  Yet.

Comments

Please note that all comments are the opinion of the individual author and not TheSixthAxis.

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  1. Hopefully it’s something that devs will actually use unlike Game Launching or custom background music, I think you can count on one hand the number of titles which support these features


    • It seems like unless Sony make it mandatory to have a certain feature, most devs don’t want to take the time to implement that feature.


      • Don’t lose sight of the fact that many PS3’s may not have the latest firmware on them anyway, with about a third (according to the last figures I saw) of PS3s sold never having been connected to the Interweb. So it may not be as worthwhile for the devs as you think.

        As an aside, do any Blu-ray games have firmware updates on them like UMD titles do? I’ve not heard of it if they do, but does anybody know? Would seem an obvious thing for first party Blu-ray titles to ship with the latest firmware on disc.


  2. Its only really recently I’ve found the attraction of cross-game voice chat. Surely they could set some kind of room aside (like the text chat) where two consensual PSNers can get together, and maintains that room through all games like the text chat is?


  3. Weird how it locks the mic level. Hope it’s something good they can work with.


    • My mic level isn’t locked… I can change it.


  4. it will be some useless update like all the others


    • How can you call all the other firmware updates useless?


  5. Maybe the feature isn’t “immediately useful” as we’re waiting for a short spell of PSN downtime for “maintenance” to switch it on? (Just conjecture. Nofi’s more than likely correct.)


  6. I still don’t know why cross-game chat is that important…
    I mean, if I play my game and someone else plays another game, than the only things you’ll hear and say is some sort of ranting why you died again and the other party is pretty oblivious to what is happening and you loose concentration (or at least some focus) of the game you are playing yourself.
    On the other hand, perhaps I am not social enough for it? I dunno.

    I do think it is good that Sony keeps putting in the updates, just to make things in the future possible, although the mic-level-lock-thingy will keep me from updating to 2.80 (as it is not mandatory)


    • I could count on one hand the number of times I’ve used cross-game chat on my 360. The number of times it’s been truly useful is smaller than that.

      The only real reason I can think of that people keep saying they want it on the PS3 is simply because the other console has it. Feature parity is nice but only when the feature’s useful.


      • when im playing a game im normally online so i am normally talking to anyone that has a headset in that game mostly boot camps also if this gets put in i will have thousands of invites from a very anoying friend and how can i join every ones chat when i get sent 1 from different people i doesn’t bother me one bit that it doesn’t have it.


    • Good point.

      Why when I’m playing FIFA 10 would I want to hear from a mate who’s struggling to get an online game in PES 2010.

      Sounds like a pointless feature to me.

      XMB voice chat-room meet ups with game launching is needed, but I suppose all the development on that front goes into Home, and that hardly making a breakthrough


    • What if you are trying to organise a game with a friend and he/she is currently in a game? It is quicker and easier than phoning, texting or sending a message from the XMB.

      Its a feature I used regularly on my 360, and one I definitely miss on the ps3.


      • But annoying as hell if you’ve just lined up a long sniper shot.

        I don’t see why people go on about it


    • Same, this feature doesn’t mean anything to me. I’ll likely use it on the first day, announce how good it is then proceed to never use it again.


  7. I’ve already updated mines, wish I knew it didnt lock the mic, otherwise I wouldnt have bothered!

    Lets just hope that it is cross game chat, that would be handy for such things as TSA boot camp stratagies :S lol
    A suggestion?


    • Uhm…. while playing the game?
      Than you talk to your squad (and all surrounding people) and cross-game-which-is-also-in-game chat with your faction to talk to one another, even if right now it is sometimes to hard to hear what someone is saying because there are to many people talking at the same time (lets not start about echo-feedback)?

      And if you mean before the game starts, than it is also not handy, coz you need to switch the cross-game-chat on and off depending if you are playing or not…. this could get confusing….


      • wouldn’t it mean that we can’t shout at the person who killed you because your in a chat out side the game like on the xbox if you are in a chat people in game can’t hear you also if we all went into a chat we would know what the other team was saying. also as rad said it would turn into a big squeek because some one had their TV on too loud


  8. i noticed that the update increased the character limit on messages in the XMB-Chatrooms from 32 to 64. Much better :)
    The word-filtering is still as annoying as always tho.

    Join the unofficial TSA XMB Chatroom!

    http://www.thesixthaxis.com/forum/general-chat/ps3-chat-room-feature-tsa-room/


    • Thank god! That’s much appreciated. Anyway, keep working on that XMB Sony, get that ram usage down so you can finally have enough power to move that battery indicator. :P


    • Oh good, I might actually use that more now.

      I might even join the Unofficial TSA chatroom


      • ooo final the tourney chat room will make some sense in sted of having to pick out what one person has said inbetween all the rest saying some thing :d


  9. This would make sense, and its intriging why they have locked the mic level. If cross-game chat is coming then this might be something they need to control. Personally i have never noticed any difference changing this setting!

    As for its usefulness – When playing on the 360 its great been able to come online see what your friends are playing, and either talk to them to see if you can join the game or its about to finish, how long they on for etc or invite them to your game. It leads to lots more spontaneous gaming sessions rather then be here at x time for x game. I often make plans to join games with my clan mates but something crops up which means i cant make it, i can leave them a voice message etc. Yes i could send a text message but who can be bothered typing all that out!

    Another thing to remember is that with each Firmware update they give more memory back to the developers so they can implement new features or make better use of the systems power.


    • They should use some of the HDD for virtual memory (if they dont already)

      This would give them extra memory to make up for some shortcomings relating to XMB RAM usage during games etc.

      I’d gladly give up 1gig of HDD space for the battery to move from over the clock :)


      • No no no no no… Anyone know how slow a PC runs when it has to use HDD space as virtual memory because it doesn’t have enough RAM?


  10. They do have the ability to release firmware to just dev units though. Devs got 2.40 and in-game XMB several weeks before it was released to the masses. So I’m not convinced this was only for them.

    It’s more likely this was just an updated device driver or something. Possibly firmware support for an EU movie store to be launched at some point in the future (Gamescomm?). I don’t buy the 3.00 cross game chat idea at all.

    I expect the microphone thing is a bug and we will soon be seeing 2.81.


  11. If they are permanently taking away our mic volume setting, why leave it there but locked, why not just remove it from the screen?
    My guess is that 2.80 includes some sort of analysis tool to feedback to Sony on Voicechat performance. It has locked everyone’s mics to 3 to keep consistency while the measure takes place, and will be unlocked again in a future update… The results of the study will then feed into the cross-game voice chat feature, to ensure it is optimised for “real world” performance…

    Or, possibly, I’m just reading too much into it.


    • you think about things too much :)

      But actually you are also a swine!! You nicked my idea :) was going to post a long speil about the very same thing and you beat me to it!! CURSE YOU!


      • Actually, I posted it earlier but it’d didn’t go through :)
        (my work PC + Firefox + TSA is not a happy combination for some reason)


  12. I can change my microphone level :s

    I think Sony loves me the most ;)


  13. Firmware doesn’t interest me too much, I just let them add what needs to be added and let them get on with it.


  14. Typo alert:

    “everyone has been asking for since we released the PS3 could get firmware updates” – I assume you mean “…we realised the PS3…”


    • Don’t you mean that he meant to put ‘we released’ because thats not what he meant


    • “everyone has been asking for since we realised the PS3 could get firmware updates” – I assume you mean “…we released the PS3…”

      I think that is what you mean


      • 3Shirts was right, and Nofi has corrected the article.

        Turn the sentence round and you’ll see it makes sense.
        “Ever since we realised that the PS3 could be updated with new firmware, cross-game voice chat is something everyone has been asking for.” i.e. no-one was asking for it at the beginning, because we didn’t know about the firmware updates.


  15. I can change the mic volume level, also the character limit in text chat has doubled, but if its for the devs and its text chat wouldnt that mean that it would be like trophies and only a few games would have this ability which would be bollocks and would ultimately mean me giving up on PSN.


    • Trophies are mandatory now…


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