Millions of Playstation 3 owners can rejoice finally as the Holy Grail of firmware updates hits this Wednesday, July 2nd. Firmware 2.40 brings in-game XrossMediaBar (XMB) access along with infrastructure for the achievement trophy system. If you have eight minutes to kill, watch the video above for a walkthrough of the XMB features, otherwise here’s the Cliff’s Notes version of what you can actually do with the new XMB access in game:
- View your friends list and send/receive text messages
- Play your own music stored on the hard drive while playing a game that supports it (The list of games supported is unconfirmed right now)
- Connect/fiddle with your bluetooth device settings – this is most likely going to mean hooking up your bluetooth headset for voice communication in game
- Check the progress of your queued downloads from the Playstation Store
While this goes a long way in bringing the online feature set of the PS3 to parity with the Xbox 360, it’s still missing a few key features. Namely:
- Private voice chat
- Voice message capability
- Invite friends to a game
Arguably, these features are the most important for an easy online gaming experience. I always use private voice chat whenever I’m playing with a buddy because you can talk with them through game loading screens and such – something that you can’t do if you simply use the in game voice communications. Text messaging on a console is just a pain and being able to send invites directly from a friends list is a no-brainer. Still, one shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth, I guess, as being able to see and communicate with your online friends in any form is better than the status quo.
Sony is also introducing the Trophies system with this update, which looks essentially like a carbon copy of the Achievements system on Xbox Live. Only a few first-party titles will support this at first:
- BUZZ! Quiz TV
- LittleBigPlanet
- MotorStorm Pacific Rift
- NBA 09 – PS3
- PAIN
- PixelJunk Eden
- Resistance 2
- SOCOM: U.S. Navy SEALs Confrontation
- Warhawk
The main differentiating factor of the trophies system seems to be that instead of a composite “Gamescore,” you’ll be gaining endless “levels,” much like a MMORPG. There will also be three tiers of trophy “difficulties,” bronze, silver, and gold. Platinum trophies also exist, but you can only receive one for collecting all the other trophies in a game. It’s nice to see such a system in place, achievements have been a runaway hit in providing gamers with new goals to achieve and show off to their friends. Ideally, you would receive retroactive trophies for games you’ve already completed. Time will tell if that will actually happen.
Realistically, I see all future games for the PS3 supporting trophies as it’s low-hanging fruit for developers to bring further feature parity to cross-platform releases.
Sony hasn’t shown whether or not you can show off your PSN trophy profile on the web like you can with your Xbox Gamercard. Hopefully they’ll build in that community functionality as almost half the charm of achievements is being able to show off your e-penis to your friends and world when you’re not at your console.
Firmware 2.40 is a huge step for Sony in making us take the PS3 seriously when it comes to online gaming. However, it’s still missing some key features and hasn’t differentiated itself as being superior than the Xbox Live system in any way yet.
Here’s a video of Eric Lempel from Sony walking through the trophies system:
