As PlayStation 3 owners lament yet another recent, apparently pointless firmware update, perhaps it’s time to look beyond minor bug fixes and ‘security updates’ and – somewhat whimsically and hopefully – look ahead to what Sony are working on for the next major point release: firmware 4.0.
Four’s a weighty number. It seems to warrant a fanciful command, a sense of purpose – but let’s be honest, the PlayStation 3 has been caught in a kind of cat and mouse cycle with hackers and insignificant patches for a while now, the developers seemingly unable to really push forward with the kind of innovation that brought us DTS over Dolby, or proper upscaling, or – yes – the rather backwards removal of OtherOS.
Hey, at least people were talking about 3.21 (the infamous Geohot response that saw Sony strip out Linux, raising a middle finger to those that wanted to keep their alternative operating system and play online) – who really knows what’s happened with the last three or four? Well, apart from you.
[drop2]The first one is obvious – Vita. Sony’s big black hope isn’t that far away in Japan (releasing at the beginning of December) and it wouldn’t take a massive leap of faith to assume that Sony have something planned to coincide with the new portable.What that might be is anyone’s guess, but we’d wager that a shift in the way the XMB (the PS3’s user interface) is laid out to more closely match that of Vita is a given. Naturally there’s no touch screen controls, but we wouldn’t be surprised to see enhanced launch pages for PS3 first party stuff like the Vita has, for starters.
And then there’s the cross platform play, and the ability for the Vita to act as a remote play device. Sure, it’s embryonic just now, but it’s coming – whether or not this feature requires a firmware update on the PS3 side is anyone’s guess.
We’ve heard rumours that there might be an option to skin the Vita’s UI the other way though, to make it more closely resemble that of the PS3’s floaty curves and simple plus-shaped approach. I’ll be honest, I don’t really care much for the bubbles currently messing up the Vita’s fancy touch screen, so if I can change them then all the better.
Some things are a given, though – at some point at least. PlayStation Suite compatibility must be in the pipeline – why would a service that looks set to really ignite Android and Vita skip over the PS3? It won’t, not in my opinion anyway. Cross platform functionality seems key just now in Sony’s plan, so don’t be surprised to see PS Suite games and applications making their way over to the PlayStation 3.
Look out for a new browser, too – well overdue and surely not that big an issue for Sony to finally ditch the tired old Netfront web application and head for something a little more modern and standards compliant. We’d be hoping for something running Webkit but – really – anything will do.
Other things are probably just wishful thinking – we’d love for Trophies to automatically sync like they do on the 360 (which is probably never going to happen) and we’d kill for proper, full game installs rather than the slightly piecemeal and unpredictable amounts we normally endure everytime we throw in a new PS3 game.
But what are you hoping for? PlayStation 2 games on the Store? Dreamcast games?
skibadee
just a better browser happy with the rest.
revilo13
i want ps2 games on the store =] lol a new look for the XMB would be cool too
R4U Eldave0
I’m pretty happy with it as is but I’d prefer a few more customisation options:
Trophy lists:
1. Remove games with 0%; The Splinter Cell HD collection is a buggy un-finished mess, I would like to remove it from my list (and my memory)
2. Put games in a custom order (I hate that God of War 2 and 3 are above the original when the list is in alphabetical order…)
Store:
1. Put prefered game franchises on the homepage; For the most part I don’t care whats on the store, I just want to know when DLC for my favourite games comes out
2. The ability to add less than £5 when all I want is a 20p avatar! :P
XMB:
1. Cross game chat. Honestly, I know they have confirmed in the past it isn’t coming but they are putting it on the Vita so there is no excuse.
2. The option to hide useless features; The only a few options I regularly use, so the ability to hide the extra crap would be awesome
skibadee
not had one bug on any of the Splinter Cells.
MICKY17
Agreed, not played Chaos Theory yet but no bugs so far.
R4U Eldave0
I had lots of problems with it :( Constantly crashing, frame rate drops, missing content (multiplayer), etc. Definately a waste of money in my eyes :( Glad you guys enjoying it though :)
taurus82
We haven’t had a new MUSIC VISUALISATION since FW2.10.
And definitely a NEW browser.
bap10
A good web browser and a better layout for music, as its a bit of a pain when you have a lot of Right Said Fred albums.
JoshHood
A much, much better Store. The laggy in-and-out of menus is awful.
cc_star
A smaller memory footprint, returning a few more precious megs of ram to developers
A standards compliant web browser capable of running the latest HTML5/CSS3 tricks along with latest version of Flash
Over-hauling the friends
cc_star
I’ve started so I’ll finish…
Over-hauling friends and having an XMB based party system that allows friends to meet-up and go from xmb to the same lobby in a game & back to the same lobby on the xmb ready to launch another game together and make it mandatory for devs to support it on multi-player games
More services like Sky Go
And finally a slimmed down context sensative version of the XMB for in-game use, so if you get a message a wuick press of the PS button displays the msg and not a slow bloated full xmb
But of course all we’ll get is more stability updates & maybe some more peak-time SCEE downtime
MICKY17
Ooh Sky Go on PS3 would be awesome.
deadwelsh
search option for xmb
Better Browser
job
just a decent web browser and better music search option.
Bladesteel
Better download history in the store. Sorted by category game/mini/demo/theme/…
Right now it’s a pain to redownload stuff
kivi95
A BIG +. with over 700downloads it’s a pain to find anything.