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PS3's 2.4 firmware dated News
PlayStation 3 News by Tom Bramwell
Sony has announced that the 2.40 firmware for PlayStation 3 will be released this Wednesday, 2nd July.
The update will introduce the long-awaited in-game XMB functionality as well as "trophies" to "recognise players' achievements in the online arena".
Yesterday Sony posted an in-game XMB video on its blog showing how you will be able to pause your PS3 game and see who's online, read and send messages, change (some) settings and even switch games.
The blog's been updated with another video today to explain how trophies will work. "Many online games will have gold, silver and bronze trophies - with platinum available for those who snag all three - all displayed on the XMB for everyone to see," says Sony.
Super Stardust HD will be the first game to offer trophies, and others to follow include Buzz! Quiz TV (out this Friday, 4th July), LittleBigPlanet, MotorStorm Pacific Rift, NBA 09, PAIN, PixelJunk Eden, Resistance 2, SOCOM: Confrontation and Warhawk.
As previously mentioned, 2.4 will also up the friends list limit to 100 people and add a "mini-control panel that you can use while playing music" and a Google search option similar to the one recently added to PSP.
2.4 will also introduce "a few more minor enhancements", but we'll have to wait until Wednesday to see what they are. A pony!
We found some PS3 firmware 2.4 pictures you can look at, too.
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the_dudefather
30/06/08 @ 12:22
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in b4 someone swaggers in and says something like 'lol the 360 has had this for ages'
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Chaote-Imagicka
30/06/08 @ 12:25
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Can't watch video at work, can anyone whose seen it tell me if it says whether or not the update will read my games saved data (if I've kept it) and award Trophies based on that, or will people be expected to redo things?
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MasterNameless
30/06/08 @ 12:28
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Will we be able to have voice chat across games yet? Developers seem to be really bad at including this even within a single game, so to be able to chat across games like you can with Xbox Live would really improve matters!
I've had nightmares trying to organise online games with friends on the ps3 so far. To be fair, I only recently got a ps3, but the 3 online I games I have, it hasn't been easy. With Everybody's Golf - which doesn't include any voice chat whatsoever - my friend and I even went as far as using the 360's private chat whilst playing on the ps3, that can't be a good advert for Sony... This new update does seem a step in the right direction though, even if it is a little late. Let's hope they keep up with these improvements. |
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kangarootoo
30/06/08 @ 12:29
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That trophy system looks cool. In particular the platinum trophy is a nice edition, so that actually completing all of the trophies in one game is worth more than completing half the trophies in two different games. An extra level of detail over a basic points scale which I think is of benefit.
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kangarootoo
30/06/08 @ 12:30
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@penhalion
Sounds like we see the same thing from different view points. I like the extra complexity of this system over gamer score points. That said, I don't much personaly care for achievements or trophies, but I can see the benefit for gamers that do. |
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Trophies demoed in part 2 :
http://www.joystiq.com/2008/06/30/ps3-fi... Ok, it's a HUGE achivements rip-off... I must say... more ammo for the Sony/PS3 haters ;) |
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CannonAnBall
30/06/08 @ 12:36
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For me, Sony HAD to do something along the lines of achievements simply because for those people who own both systems they were choosing the 360 for the scores and achievements. It makes sense.
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Ooooo, nice. A lot earlier than I expected too. I bet we'll be able to download this in the early hours of Wednesday morning too as I've always found it quicker to do firmware updates at 8am rather than at 5pm when everyone else is also trying to download them. It's never taken more than 5-10 minutes tops for me to get the updates that way. :)
The Trophy system sounds intriguing too if only because they're not attached to some pointless score like the 360 so there's less reason to cheat and exploit your way through the games just so you can show off your Gamerscore to a world where no-one else cares about it but YOU! LOL |
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@GamerG - This is why you pay for Xbox LIVE to play games online... taken from Joystiq:
"Our feelings about this latest PS3 update are mixed. On the one hand, there are handy features such as the ability to communicate with friends without quitting your game and on-the-fly accessory adjustments. On the other, the update still seems decidedly behind the curve in several areas. There's no private voice chat across games, no auto-pause when the XMB is triggered, custom soundtracks are not available in all games." As I expected this update only lays the foundation for the ingame XMB but it'll be a while before it measures up to the standard of LIVE's equivalent features. Of course, access to PSN is completely free so you can't really complain too much although it's stupid how the game doesn't automatically pause when accessing the ingame XMB... that's a pretty obvious feature to overlook IMO. |
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GamesConnoisseur
30/06/08 @ 12:51
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Goody!
About bleeding times too! Trophies will certainly add to the replayability as Achievements had done for X360, only disappointed that it came at the same week as I am starting a new big job and thus would have far less time for gaming from now on! Though backdating would help and hope will cover a great majority of games I had played. |
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@Darren
The Trophy system sounds intriguing too if only because they're not attached to some pointless score like the 360 so there's less reason to cheat and exploit your way through the games just so you can show off your Gamerscore That's actually wrong as tropies are attached to your profile level. You gain levels for getting trophies (hence my gamerscore/trophy whore statement earlier). There will be just as much reason for people to cheat, because it will increase their level, thus showing that they have completed more games etc. etc. |
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"...although it's stupid how the game doesn't automatically pause when accessing the ingame XMB... that's a pretty obvious feature to overlook IMO. "
Well... today existing/old games aren't PS-button-aware and doesn't know that the PS-menu is activated. If the XMB just simulated a START-button press, it would still not guarantee a game pause, and just pausing/freezing a running game when the user press the PS-button, could ruin a running game... especially a online game which does not know to handle this. I'm pretty sure this isn't a oversight but a known limitation that they are well aware of. Hopefully future games can hook into the PS-button/XMB-menu-activation and do a clean pause when nessesary... just like 360 games does. |
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One thing which isn't mentioned, do you have to re-earn trophies? Probably shouldn't be a problem with something like Warhawk or Uncharted since it already has it's own awards, but would be nice. Considering the amount of hours I've put into COD4, I don't really want to have to go through the whole single player again!
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@pollster - I believe Sony stopped updating the emulation code around firmware v1.80 (at least the website still shows v1.80 and has done for a year now) but the code is still included as part of the 100+ MB firmware update but presumably only installed for those people with the original 60 GB HDD model. Certainly I can still play PS2 games on my PS3 with the v2.36 firmware so it must be.
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"Well... today existing/old games aren't PS-button-aware"
I'm pretty sure this isn't true, I'm 99% certain I've got a game or two that has paused itself when I've hit the PS button. Assuming games are PS button aware, it's not Sony's job to make the game pause anyway, it's the developer who has to decide how to handle the button press. What about games that don't have a pause mode? Online games don't for a very good reason, so these need to be left playing in the background. Having the PS3 trying to pause one of those isn't going to go down well. |
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CannonAnBall
30/06/08 @ 13:12
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It looks like you will have to start the games again to get your trophies...
TheSixthAxis: "We've just been told that Trophies will not be awarded retrospectively, you'll need to start the game again to obtain any Trophies that game may offer. This is a bit of a shame, but with the ease of save game sharing on the PS3, it's only fair." source
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most recently on 30/06/08 @ 14:13
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@penhalion - Hmmm, I see what you mean and I suppose you're right really.
However, I hope that the PS3's trophy system isn't as easy to exploit as the Xbox 360's near-useless Achievements system which means that one person can play five easy games for 5,000 GPs while someone else struggles to get 250 GPs because they're playing Gears of War, Ridge Racer 6 and three other "hard" games. It's one of the reasons I've stopped caring about Achievements now, particularly as I've noticed people with high scores tend to be those people that have played games like Surf's Up and Open Season, presumably for the easy 1,000 GPs. I did think Achievements were a neat idea at first, particularly as they encouraged me to finish games or get more out of them, but now I barely notice them to be honest. I couldn't even tell you what my Gamerscore is! LOL |
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@Psiloc: If some existing games are PS-button aware (have PS-button-hook inplace), they will continue to pause with in-game XMB also.
Anyway, there's a difference between pausing (a game-specific pause menu pops up) and halting a running process/game. If the system/OS just halted the game, this could cause problems with online games since the online communication would stop. Also if the OS just triggered a virtual press on the START-buttton, this would not ensure that the game actually paused... it could even cause the game to un-pause if the game was allready paused before the user pressed the PS-button :) Basicly the OS does not know that the game is paused, and vice versa. |
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@Beano
I'll have to check later but like I said I'm fairly certain the PS3 tells the game that the PS button has been pressed, and it's up for the game to decide what to do with it. I'm pretty sure this happens on Motorstorm, if you're racing and hit the PS button the game goes to the pause menu, but if you've already paused and hit the PS button the game handles it correctly and knows not to do anything special. Again I can't say I know this for certain as I'm so used to pausing the game first anyway as a precaution. |
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First off, the friends list capacity has already been increased - that's last weeks news
Secondly: "Many online games will have gold, silver and bronze trophies - with platinum available for those who snag all three - all displayed on the XMB for everyone to see," says Sony. Surely you don't have to get all trophies in bronze, silver and gold in order to achieve the platinum trophy. It would make more sense if getting all the gold trophies gives you the platinum one.
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most recently on 30/06/08 @ 14:35
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stevencole7
30/06/08 @ 13:34
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Good Stuff! Bet Microsoft will be very jelly........
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most recently on 30/06/08 @ 14:34
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SeesThroughAll
30/06/08 @ 13:43
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The 100 friends limit is already active, it doesn't have much to do with the 2.40 firmware.
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groovychainsaw
30/06/08 @ 13:46
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They've had long enough to copy xbox live, you'd think they would have figured it out by now (still no voice across games?!). You can see how difficult it must be for sony to reverse-engineer this stuff into their OS, they are going to end up with some games supporting different features which is weird. Still, any improvement is good improvement. I for one, look forward to downloads running alongside my games and being able to manage them as i play, plus the opportunity for music, which is one of the best xbox features...
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@NatAttack - It's weird how the PS3 doesn't support PAL60Hz... I mean even in the early days of the 360, more and more 60Hz games appeared on the platform such that virtually every game now supports 60Hz over 50Hz, especially seeing as all HD games run at 60Hz anyway. Odd that the PS3 should be so behind with the times, even the GameCube and Xbox had extensive 60Hz support from most developers. You'd think it would be easier for PS3 developers to code games that support PAL60 in SD when HD games run at 60Hz as I said earlier. Does anyone know why that is (a developer maybe)? :?
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@groovychainsaw
You can't just "copy" and "reverse engineer" xbox live there's a whole infrastructure in place in the background on xbox live which makes it tick. IIRC all games are on closed XBOX servers too (hence the subscription fee) and not independent servers like PS3 games. Now this makes interoprability between games and unitiy much easier as Microsoft have complete control over servers and the framework they need to use (to actually work on these servers). Saying "reverse engineer" the Xbox 360 is like asking a builder to re-construct the golden gate bridge from a picture without looking at the design plans! |
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