Editorial: Really, Sony? Where's the Upgrade?

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Last week, the PS3’s Firmware was updated to 2.80. The story was the same as it always is. People went looking for all of the changes under the hood. The generic line from Sony was “the playback quality of some PLAYSTATION 3 format software has been improved.”

The PS3 owners themselves struck first. Following the comments on the official PlayStation.Blog, the second comment started in with “does it have friends party chat?” – no. #3: “is the os footprint been reduced?” – no (though, admittedly, this is probably more of a misunderstanding of how hard drive sizes are measured. Poster 8 of the over 600 comments kindly stated: “one day i hope to see a full set of release notes, no matter the length. just knowing what’s REALLY going on would be great.” But it wasn’t long before comment 12 struck back asking for yet another feature that wasn’t planned for this release, and #40 commenting on a ‘dream features list’ for 3.00, though stating it more like a fact.

#66 chimed in with a list of features the 360 is supposed to be getting this fall. Then the 360 fanboys start in like sharks on chud. The PS3 owners strike back with a few level headed posts, for example #349, stating “We all will be satisfied sooner or later…and yall should really stop rushing this xgame chat, comparing it to 360..maybe if its not rushed it will end up being better than expected.

Fact is, it does boil down to the fact that there have been a series of weak updates from Sony. A lot of long-requested features have not yet been added, and some minor bugs that one imagine could be an easy fix (or never should have happened in the first place) have been ignored, including the long standing battery-over-the-clock issue, which, Lempel recently said, will be fixed soon. Using this numbering system for their Firmware updates, I certainly hope that Sony’s 3.0 update, whenever it happens, isn’t just another release, but really contains the updates that many of us have wanted for a long while.

Sometime, I’ll get in to it with the Wii System Updates. Perhaps someday a real friends list will show up on the Wii, and they’ll make it more than just a sofa-couch social experience!