On October 13th, Sony announced a firmware update for the PS3. It is version 2.5 and was sent out without a ton of fanfare. It is actually pretty significant from a few perspectives. Here is why:
1) The new official headset for the PS3 is now supported. I got mine when I purchased SOCOM Confrontation (the version with the headset). Yes it works, and does so quite well.
2) Now we can grab screen shots in game with upcoming titles. I have not tried this yet as I am not sure which titles are supported. Sounds like a cool idea though.
3) The Trophy interface has also been updated. This was a good change as well.
4) Power save feature.
Let’s discuss number 4 a bit more. With this update, we can now go into the Cross Media Bar (XMB) and under the System Settings select this feature. We can set a timer for inactivity. When that time has been reached, the system will shut off automatically. This is not too far from what we discussed sometime ago.
Is it the ideal situation? Quite frankly, no. But, that said, it is progress. We have to make a conscious decision to “opt in” to turn this on. It would have been better for Sony to set a time (X hours) as a default and allow us to opt out of the feature. There will be millions of users who do not even know this is an option for them. Honestly, I had the update and did not realize that this was a part of it. I have to admit, I was more focused on the headphone support.
So what can we do? Well, we will first appreciate Sony for adding this feature. They are getting it. Next, we will continue to provide you, dear readers, the information you need to make intelligent choices. Hopefully, after reading this, you will opt in and activate this feature. Finally, we will continue to discuss ways of making this feature more like an opt out program for future updates and future platforms.
Did you know this feature existed? Will you activate it on your PS3?