PlayStation 3.0 firmware released

By Tom Bramwell Published 1 September, 2009

What's New, iPlayer, Friends overhaul.

Sony has updated PlayStation 3's firmware to version 3.0.

The bumper update - supposedly the last big one of the year - promises dynamic themes, avatars, a "What's New" panel, a redesigned status indicator and a Friends list overhaul.

For users in the UK and Republic of Ireland, it also introduces BBC iPlayer as an application, although we'll be interested to see how that's implemented...

According to Sony Worldwide Studios boss Shuhei Yoshida, What's New - the new default pane, instead of the Games menu - was envisaged as a way of combating the increasing volume of content.

"There are more and more contents on the PSN store, so you may miss something that might be very relevant to you," he told us at gamescom last month.

"The games you're playing every day, new content might have just appeared, but is buried in the layer of menus on the store. So things like 'What's New' are trying to customise the experience so what you do gets reflected in what you see the next day."

It's also possible to dig down into Trophies in new ways, making it easier to get a sense of which ones are left to collect.

As with all such updates, it's a mandatory download next time you log onto PlayStation Network.

Picture of Tom.

About Tom Bramwell

Tom is Operations director of Eurogamer Network and Editor-at-Large of Eurogamer.net. He joined the company in February 2000.

Read more articles from Tom by visiting the Tom Bramwell archive page.

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Comments (48) Latest comment 2 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • Loser #1 2 years ago

    I might be still asleep but where is the iplayer application?

  • RageBoy #2 2 years ago

    The iPlayer can only be used for radio in ROI - TV programs aren't available. This is direct from the BBC website anyway. Would be great if TV programs are available from the PS3.

    Just tried iPlayer on my PS3 and it still doesn't let me watch TV Programmes - i get a message saying that it is available in UK only. This is from Dublin anyway. Oh well
    Edited by 1 at 01/09/09 @ 17:39

  • Goodfella #3 2 years ago

    The iPlayer link will be there, you have to manually reboot the PS3 for it to appear.

    @ RageBoy, I've been streaming programmes using iPlayer so not sure what the BBC website is on about

  • brombeer #4 2 years ago

    It's hideous! The fontsize is too big on a 40" HDTV, the sparkles are annoying and when turned off, still show up when booting/exiting a game or browser. The new boot sequence is cheap. The PlayStation 3 splashes have gone when booting a game. You can't access the XMB when playing music anymore. The What's New can't be turned off, despite the option available to do so. The friendslist is a mess. The boxes are a pain in the eye. It flickers, it gives me a headache. PlayStation Store three times on XMB? What the...?! Annoying ticker with TWO clocks? But the juice meter of the controller still remains the same? It's an incoherent, adware, teen update. FIX IT SONY! This is a major, epic fail.

  • lambtron #5 2 years ago

    Let's hope the friend's list actually works now! Tried it the other night with a mate (just trying to join voice chat) and it was a nightmare.

  • Goodfella #6 2 years ago

    Brombeer, slightly overboard there but in some respects I agree, it's a pretty messy update.

  • Greebo #7 2 years ago


    Does the iPlayer app allow downloads?

  • Loser #8 2 years ago

    @Goodfella

    Cheers, manual reboot and it's there!

  • Doctor_What #9 2 years ago

    So basically they've made it so you can't avoid adverts when you boot? Bleh. That was one of the reasons that I loved the XMB so much - no adverts spamming me constantly like the 360's dashboard.

    At the moment it doesn't sound like they've added anything that I'm very interested in, and might have made a few things a bit worse. Sony have generally added very good features with each update, so I hope they polish this one quickly.

  • SeesThroughAll #10 2 years ago

    -1 to the firmware coding team for now shoving ads down people's throats. Actually, -1000 to the pricks who decided on that!

  • brombeer #11 2 years ago

    @Doctor_What: There's an option to disable the What's New channel, but that doesn't work. It's always on and the PS3 boots into it. Whether you want it or not. This is bad. Furthermore: This is the only item with it's own background. It's very annoying when navigating the XMB when you cross this item and your theme starts switching back and forth. It's inconsistent and unnecessary.

    @Goodfella: Where it once oozed elegency and minimalism it now is a crazy, messy, yelling piece of crap. I really, really hate it.

    Does Sony even field test these things??
    Edited by 1 at 01/09/09 @ 08:47

  • Goodfella #12 2 years ago

    It does have a rather random thoughtless approach to it but to be fair the 'adverts' will only appear if you have 'what's new' selected.

  • reelbigkris #13 2 years ago

    The I Player is a good addition. however, the friends list is atrocious. as for the rest of it, i don't spend enough time on the xmb to really care. I was hoping that we will see cross game chat soon. is that ever actually going to happen?

  • LetsGo #14 2 years ago

    Apprently the iPlayer is just a link to the website and not a application.

    pish.

  • brombeer #15 2 years ago

    @Goodfella: Yeah but that option doesn't work mate! It's bugged. If you want it off, it will stay on.

    And looking on the official PlayStation Blog I'm not the only one with these sentiments! The Americans, usually good for kissing a**es have gone haywire! 90% dislike the new update! Is a nice read everyone!

    http://bl og.us.playstation.com/2009/08/3...
    Edited by 1 at 01/09/09 @ 08:52

  • SeesThroughAll #16 2 years ago

    I was hoping that we will see cross game chat soon. is that ever actually going to happen?

    Rumor has it that the firmware team can't implement it without breaking old games.
    Edited by 1 at 01/09/09 @ 08:51

  • Bazfrag #17 2 years ago

    http://www .youtube.com/watch?v=ijuTgUj8lSQ

    When do us poor Europeans get that kind of stuff?

    "I was hoping that we will see cross game chat soon. is that ever actually going to happen?"

    Actual rumours suggest EA kicked up a shitstorm because some of their games would be incompatible, and they would rather pull support than have those games appaer inferior. Just a rumour, though...
    Edited by 1 at 01/09/09 @ 09:05

  • SproutWinkler #18 2 years ago

    I get a nagging feeling brombeer doesn't like the update...

  • patch #19 2 years ago

    Re: Cross game chat, the rumours were all BS purporting to be from a Sony bod. There's still no official (or unofficial) word aside from Sony saying "we want it (at some point in the future)".

    I'm hoping the new firmware isn't as bad as people (ok, mainly brombeer) say it is. I was hoping for something good. When I first read about the What's New section I shivered a little. Something I'll want turned off as well I think!

  • SeesThroughAll #20 2 years ago

    I also don't believe that EA had anything to do with it, they even supported the PS3 better than I expected in the past, in fact. I don't think they'd mind patching half a dozen games for a new firmware.

    The problem probably really is that the firmware team can't make it work reliably atm.

  • SeesThroughAll #21 2 years ago

    It used to so MP4 fine until an update a few months after launch which broke it for me, and nearly everyone else.

    Since I used streaming software that converts the video on-the-fly to AVI, I never noticed this bug. It really annoys me that they'd be careless enough to break old features. I wish people would be more vocal complaining about such bugs than a stupid battery indicator overlapping the clock!
    Edited by 1 at 01/09/09 @ 09:40

  • peterfll #22 2 years ago

    iPlayer works well, albeit it is just a glorified link to the a PS3 browser optimised link. Having to quit music playback to access the XMB is a silly backwards step. And I was also hoping for a new visual player that had been secretly included, but no.

    Bah.

  • only_one_t #23 2 years ago

    been watching Iplayer via my PS3 for a while. Does anyone know what the new Firmware changes exactly?

  • Arwin #24 2 years ago

    Hmm, I looked at it too, but I was a little less hasty to judge. ;)

    "It's hideous! The fontsize is too big on a 40" HDTV, the sparkles are annoying and when turned off, still show up when booting/exiting a game or browser."

    Ok, may be. Only have a 32". I did also turn off the sparkles but hadn't noticed yet that they still show up sometimes. But I figured as much.
    The new boot sequence is cheap. The PlayStation 3 splashes have gone when booting a game.
    The old sequence was very nice, but this one is basically a condensed version. There was a clear choice made here to speed up both system and game boot time. I think that's a good idea, to be honest. And while I'm sure you don't care about it, it will also help with Home 1.3's boot any game from Home feature.

    "You can't access the XMB when playing music anymore."

    I thought this too for a moment, but that's actually due to the fact that DTS 5.1 sound output with upscaling up to 176Khz is now supported for music on the HDD and memsticks as well. Previously this option was only available for CD playback. If you select 48Khz output instead, you'll be able to browse and listen to music at the same time again. Of course it would be even nicer if they could support both at the same time, but that would require upscaling very low quality sounds coming from the browser into the mix, and it's understandable that they don't support that yet. Maybe in a next firmware update.

    "The What's New can't be turned off, despite the option available to do so."

    Really? Weird. I don't think I have that problem, but I'll test it.

    "The friendslist is a mess. The boxes are a pain in the eye. It flickers, it gives me a headache."

    I guess that's a matter of taste, though I agree that they don't look great and could have been better. I don't get any flickering though.

    "PlayStation Store three times on XMB? What the...?!"

    That to me is a good thing. It's there because those are shortcuts to the different content. So under games, you'll directly see the latest games in the PSN store when you select the store, and can select one of the new games to go to that game in the XMB directly. The same goes for video content, etc. I think it's a good addition.

    "Annoying ticker with TWO clocks? But the juice meter of the controller still remains the same?"

    The analog clock is basically also a unified 'busy' meter. For instance if you're browsing and a new page is loading, the analog clock will start spinning, instead of the separate busy icon that the system would otherwise show. So it's not as superfluous as you might think. They're just bringing all these icons into the same confined space, cleaning things up. I think that's good.

    " It's an incoherent, adware, teen update. FIX IT SONY! This is a major, epic fail."

    Well, I still don't see much adware to be honest. The What's New thing is nice and useful - now I don't have to go into the store each time to see what's new. But the function to turn that off should work - if it doesn't then they need to fix it. Similarly, it seems that if you had the notification ticker off before the update, it stays off after the update. But there's no option to switch that on anymore - at least I can't find it. That's an oversight, and I think they'll fix it.

    It will be interesting to see how much a theme can influence the new XMB layout. That could solve a lot of people's problems, which after all many of which are a matter of taste (but I agree that especially with the purple background, the way things are now aren't aesthetically. Functionally though it seems fine with me.

    Also I'm very happy with finally being able to see messages from friends directly from the friends list - to see that there are new messages there but then have to go to the inbox to read them was really annoying. The new video speed controls are also pretty neat, and the sound upscaling for mp3s and such is very, very good (but then I just bought a new amp and speakers a little while ago).

  • mattdoc30 #25 2 years ago

    Disappointed! When there are updates to the XBOX, there seems to be genuine excitement which is generally lived up to in my opinion - this update for the PS3 is a bit of a let down. As far as i'm concerned, that attempt at a so called 'iPlayer App' is pathetic. Why not just called it what it is, a shortcut to PS3 specific iPlayer website, where the quality of streaming still looks awful on an HDTV!!!

    It's things like this that leave me unconvinced that Sony will be able to deliver the 'Entertainment Centre' they say they are creating, if they really wanted that then they would have created something we could have truly called an iPlayer App! It cannot be difficulty to create an App that downloads iPlayer content while preventing piracy on a closed system such as the PS3. I mean, just from a Maketing point of view, how cool would it have been to say that on your PS3 you can now download BBC HD content!?

    Finally the XMB, already useless for large quantities of information, now looks cluttered and cheap. Sony, either ditch the XMB and design something that works with large amounts of data or bring back my nice sleek, simple XMB!

    I think in the end we have to say that this is another example of how Sony is a hardware manufacturer and Microsoft is a software house. For all the hardware faults on the 360 its OS software, in my opinion, eclipses the PS3!

  • Goodfella #26 2 years ago

    Hmm, I have the same problem brombeer has, disabling 'What's new' doesn't actually work. Oh dear.

  • SeesThroughAll #27 2 years ago

    I knew there would be stupid bugs. This usually happens with major firmware releases.

    I'll just wait for 3.20 or so.

  • schnide #28 2 years ago

    I wouldn't be too surprised if there was another update in the works for this year as a 'special treat'..

  • onyxbox #29 2 years ago

    The big font is not nice. The XMB has always looked slick and very high tech and I can't help wondering if it's just going to end up being a cluttered mess (a bit like NXE).

  • Burkey123 #30 2 years ago

    The friends list is just hideous! What were they thinking?

  • Goodfella #31 2 years ago

    The friends list doesn't look great but I believe it's paving the way for future enhancements.

  • Arwin #32 2 years ago

    Check out the free Afrika theme from the JPN store, pretty cool:

    http://www .youtube.com/watch?v=50uxmLtzXBw

  • Bigglesworth #33 2 years ago

    @SeesThroughAll

    Did you get kicked off the firmware team, or something? =)

  • antony_williams #34 2 years ago

    Turning what's new off only means that when you boot the system you will begin in the game section rather then the what's new section as the default is to open directly into what's new. Turning it off will certainly [and perhaps obviously] not make the entire feature go away

  • SeesThroughAll #35 2 years ago

    @ Bigglesworth:

    LOL. I'm just underwhelmed by what the big Three-O had in store for us.

  • Bigglesworth #36 2 years ago

    Why aren't these 'huge fonts' showing up on the videos already on the net? Is this a peculiarity to SD displays?
    Anyway, surely we can still change the font from the Settings, and it'll change according to the active theme anyway, won't it?

  • brombeer #37 2 years ago

    No, the large fonts are on HD screens as well. It's foogugly, just like playing on an old CRT monitor again. Why this firmware got the green light is beyond me.

    @Arwin: The flickering occurs when you start scrolling in your friendlist (a sidebar appears as well, to see where you are in the list). The grey boxes in the bottom of the screen start to flicker, because the PS3 doesn't fill them up fast enough. It's terribly annoying. Where I once could read the person's name I was looking for while scrolling, I can't now. It's an unreadable, gray flickering mess. Didn't you notice?

    The XMB went from class and elegancy to cheap overnight. But it's synergetic with the Slim model, really. That looks cheap and ugly too, compared to my 60Gb model.
    Edited by 1 at 01/09/09 @ 11:16

  • Bigglesworth #38 2 years ago

    So is this the large foogugly font of which you speak? Doesn't look any different to me.

  • brombeer #39 2 years ago

    Looks like it, but now some options even go as far as the right corner of the screen with it's text. I don't know if it's the same in English, but Dutch needs a lot of text to explain something. In real life on a 40" screen it is just TOO big. My grandmother of 102 years could read it without her glasses. I would say the font's size is about 2 to 2 and a half times bigger then the previous one.
    Edited by 1 at 01/09/09 @ 11:20

  • Darren #40 2 years ago

    I've installed the firmware update and have mixed views about it as it really is a case of the good, the bad and the ugly.

    The good stuff is the animated theme feature, which is nice (try the Japanese Afrika one, it's free), and the fixed the battery indicator overlapping the clock and added extra info in the top left-hand corner.

    The bad is the decision to default to the [What's New] section, which can at least be disabled (shame we Xbox 360 owners cannot do the same for the Spotlight section). Also I've noticed that if I play a song, I can no longer press PS to return to the XMB to, say, view Pictures or the animated theme. Pressing the PS button prompts you if you want to quit playback! At first I thought it was because of the animated Afrika theme I was using but, no, even with the Original theme you cannot have music playing anymore while navigating the XMB. :(

    The ugly is the enlarged font which cannot be changed so my previously lovely 1080p XMB now looks like a lower resolution equivalent. Long song titles for example under Music now appear with fewer visible characters and it just looks hideous IMO. It might aid readability but surely we should be able to switch between the original and new as an option?

    Yeah, I know it's just a firmware update, there's no requirement for Sony to add anything new to the PS3 so I'm not complaining about that, just that it's disappointing when they go and alter the look of the XMB, making it uglier in the process with no option to use the old font size.

  • makeamazing #41 2 years ago

    also the ps3 does not play a lot of video/dvd files i download of the pirate bay but the 360 does why is this?

    @Donnie, this happens cause your a loser who doesnt buy dvd's.. but is a knock off nigel! Get a life and buy your movies rather than being a pirate loser... that is all

  • Bigglesworth #42 2 years ago

    @Darren
    Someone else in the 'large ugly font' camp =/ Could you point me to a video that shows this?

    Also, see #26 above for details on the 'play music after PS button' issue.

  • yegon #43 2 years ago

    Anyone have a link to a download? The website is still at 2.80.

  • Darren #44 2 years ago

    @Bigglesworth - "@Darren
    Someone else in the 'large ugly font' camp =/ Could you point me to a video that shows this?"

    Firmware v2.60: <a href="http://www .youtube.com/watch?v=LxOpmkkYn7U
    ">http://www .youtube.com/watch?v=LxOpmkkYn7U
    </a>

    Firmware v3.00: <a href="http://www .youtube.com/watch?v=8kuFRgVb5Kc
    ">http://www .youtube.com/watch?v=8kuFRgVb5Kc
    </a>

    The increase in font (as well as icon) size was immediately obvious to me from the moment my PS3 restarted post-firmware install, particularly as I was scrolling down my Music list, many of which have long names. The larger font size means that fewer characters are visible as I scroll down the list. Not good IMO.
    Edited by 1 at 01/09/09 @ 13:29

  • Bigglesworth #45 2 years ago

    @Darren
    Thanks for the comparison, I do actually see the difference now. I hadn't realised the font was so small on HD displays!

  • yegon #46 2 years ago

    For those who wish to update via usb;

    [link url=http://dus01.ps3.update.playstation.net/update/ps3/image/ us/2009_0901_c049de7a6a4b03d53e7f9fde04e0fc08/PS3UPDAT.PUP
    ]    http://du s01.ps3.update.playstation.net/...[/link]

  • NinjaWilliams #47 2 years ago

    where's this bravia sync option then and the LBP dynamic theme?...

  • izekial #48 2 years ago

    Some features such as the what's new section are good, there should be a dedicated section within there (and the playstation store) to show what content there is for games that i have played, just like on xbox marketplace, it makes seeing content relevant to ME much easier.

    The friends list is terrible, really dire and spoils the view of the background when it is on. It should be reverted back to how it looked before, text, no background box.

    The iplayer integration is poor, i have a bookmark already for the iplayer which is integrated better than the newly added one, the aspect of information borders within the iplayer are spilling into each other.
    Also, the fact i now have 1 icon on the XMB called TV is cluttering up the XMB, i would expect to see expansion within that column.

    Also, no iplayer HD??? Virgin Medias TV service (UK) includes the HD iplayer, why cant my Blu-Ray playing, HDMI connected, Cable Broadband running 1080P TV use the iplayer in HD?

    Then there is the new font sizing.
    Why?

    We really need the ability to change font size and also font colour.
    I have some really cool background images i would like to use but cannot due to the font colour scheme.

    PLEASE TAKE THE ABOVE ON BOARD SONY.