allround geek

Today Sony released the new firmware update 3.0 for the Playstation 3. The new features are welcomed changes from the previous versions but still do not cut it for me as better experience. I do not care about dynamic backgrounds or a million new avatars as the store still sucks and the browser is painfully slow.

A lot of weight on the new update has been put to the access to the Playstation store. I am guessing this is a strategic decision as Sony is starting to shift towards the whole online downloadable stuff store (PSPGo anyone). The thing is the Paystation store remains shity. I 've it used many times to either download free stuff or even to purchase games but I have a really low opinion of it. It reminds me of the Playstation network pages of Playstation 2. It looks old and it is not usable. Xbox Live Arcade or steam are better viewing and buying experiences than this. I cannot find the things I want easily, the menus are a joke and most of the content is cheap-ass DLCs.


Another grudge is the browser. It is still painfully slow. All this processing power playing games with a gazzillion polygons at HD and the browser is slower than running Internet Explorer 7 on a 486 processor. Basically the only reason I use the browser on the PS3 is to view youtube videos on the TV. Default YouTube interface viewed from the TV while managed with the joypad sucks. A few months ago they released YouTubeXL for use with TV screens but it is just unusable in terms of speed on the PS3. It takes ages to load. The interface is much better but I just can't use it. So, please, Sony do something about this.