Everyone's Latest Favourite Talking Point: Firmware Updates.

It used to be that people got hyped up on games and consoles. Now they get hyped over firmware upgrades, touting unachievable lists and moaning when they don't materialise. Still, the fact that people get so excited over their system is a testment to both Sony's platform and the interest in it from consumers. So we'll let everyone off.

Speaking with PCWorld.com, Playstation Network's Eric Lempel talked about the future of firmware updates:
[quote]
We've released a bunch of firmware updates to date, and we'll continue to do that. We're aiming to release them quarterly, and sometimes there are a lot of great consumer features in them, and other times they're just updates to help things behind the scenes. I should say that a lot of times when we do these updates, there's a ton of stuff in them for our developers, and consumers don't see the benefits of those until they play some of those games that come out later on.

I think it's important to know, a lot of people wonder why we do these updates when it just says something about security enhancements or that playability of software will be better. Actually, behind the scenes, there are reams of documents sometimes with improvements for developers, where they can take advantage of a bunch of new tools, or new ways to allocate memory, or other ways to improve performance. So I'd start off by saying that.

You'll definitely see another firmware update this year, but it won't be like what the rumors say. We're working on some consumer features that consumers will definitely like, but it's nothing like what you're reading about, and at this time I don't want to confirm any of those features because they're not completely locked down yet. We're looking pretty good, and timing is a little rough, but just in terms of that rumor, it's not the case.</blockquote>

The interview pushes upgrades akin to Microsoft's NXE but we don't understand where those questions come from. With the greatest of respect to the NXE (which makes the XBOX far superior to it's previous interface) we still feel like Sony's XMB interface is country miles ahead of most consumer electronics menu systems and have no idea why people are pushing for a change.

Still, people seem to insist on breaking things that are already working rather well. Thankfully Eric cites that the XMB is unlikely to go anywhere for a while. Good - that interface needs to be on every Sony product because it's brilliant.