PS3 Firmware 2.40: Don’t Look Back, You Can Never Look Back

You’ve got the PS Blog to fill you in on PS3 firmware 2.40’s walkthroughs (XMB and trophies), and Joystiq’s dismemberment of the feature lists and trophy explanations with their hands-on time to look at, so I’m just going to be quick and tell you what I love, what I expected, and what I don’t like about this new PS3 firmware coming July 2nd. I know I’ll be hitting System Update over and over again up until that day comes.

Love it:
Text messaging.
Headset and bluetooth configuration.
Google searching (Update: Can’t use browser in-game, PS Blog.)
Friends list capacity doubled to 100.

Expected it:
Trophy support needs to be patched into existing games.
Soundtrack support needs a patch.

Hate-it:
Must replay games to get trophies! GAH!
Just one PSN game to have trophies at launch?! I love Super Stardust HD, but cmon!

More?
And not to be greedy or anything since this is a big list, but I hope there’s more stuffed in there. I’m still pining for RSS support so I can have my PS3 manage all those downloads and just throw’em on my PSP from there without needing a PC to do it.

Needing to re-play a whole game that gets patched for trophy support just means that almost no developer is going to bother doing it. I’d love them to prove me wrong, but I don’t think they will. From July 2nd forward, though, we’ll be watching carefully for the first wave of games with trophy support.

Virtual Control: Which one to choose?

If you’ve got a Wii, and you have an interest in retro gaming, you’ve got a significant decision to make regarding game control. The Wii Remote controller is pretty different from the controllers that were used on the consoles that originally were home to the games that are appearing on the Virtual Console. As a result, you are likely to need another type of controller to play those games effectively, if at all. I’ll run through the majority of your options, and hit the strengths and weaknesses of each one.

Read the rest of this entry »