Whilst there are no major changes in store here and no sign of the much-anticipated Playstation Home release, there are a few little tweaks to make life easier and increase your options and enjoyment.
First up, the account creation and management screens have been redesigned to make them more attractive and user friendly, they’ve also added explanations and help files for these options. It is also now possible to manage the user accounts directly from the XMB, instead of having to first go into account management online.
Some of the settings have had a slight overhaul too, with new ones being added and others being renamed. For example, ‘BD/DVD Settings’ has been renamed ‘Video Settings’, other sub-level branches of these settings have had slight name alterations too.
But naturally these aren’t the juiciest parts of the 2.50, so, on to the good stuff!
A much needed update to the web browser now means that Flash 9 is supported, which is a massive step forward for what was previously a slightly lame-duck interface. It seems that this isn’t the only thing that the Sony people have been listening to the fans on (and they have been baying long and hard for better flash support for a long time now) as they have also improved the trophy system both in terms of functionality and synchronicity.
Other highlights include the addition of screen capturing options so that your moments of in-game glory can be snapped for all to see! Support for this feature will be game dependent though and a full list of games that will support it is yet to be released, with no word on backward compatibility as yet.
There is also extended support for the official Sony Playstation headset, looking likely to be bundled with SOCOM: Confrontation as well as sold separately. The latest firmware offers ‘High Quality’ mode (HQ) which claims to deliver ‘clear and wideband online voice chat’ as well as adding on screen indicators to show battery status, volume level and HQ mode.
In terms of video options, the ability to register your PS3 for DivX VOD has been added under system settings and the option to ‘scene search’ videos is now present too, though the content needs to be chaptered and longer than one minute.
There are actually quite a lot of little improvements dotted throughout this update, and my brief overview is by no means exhaustive. Perhaps there is little to get massively excited by, but there are definitely some features in there that will make a lot of PS3 owners happy. It’s also nice to know that the relevant people at Sony are listening to the users and implementing features that have long been requested.
Roll on Home and cross-game chat.