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5 Things PS3 Owners Have Gotten Used to, That They Shouldn’t Have

Posted on 25. Jan, 2011 by Freak_c in Articles, News

Welcome to my first opinion article, I am looking to bring you these either once a month or preferably fortnightly. Within these articles I will be expressing my personal opinions on the trials and tribulations of the life of  a gamer.  Some will be rants and others may be raves and then a few will simply be me talking about games, and things within the gaming industry.  I am thinking of a title for my ‘rant’ articles, something like “Freak out with Freak”, which I must thank my buddy Justin for.  Anyway, below is the first ‘freak out’, if you will, and its something that I have been thinking about for a while.  Please leave a comment below if you have any opinions, thoughts, ideas or improvements about the article or for the series, I’d love to hear them.

The PS3 has been out now for over fours years and in the beginning we gamers had such high expectations for game developers and our beautiful shiny new black box that we thought could do anything.  Alas of course the system is not without its flaws and below I have listed what I think the 5 things are that PS3 owners have gotten used to, that perhaps we shouldn’t have. If you can recall, all those many years ago, we actually complained about things that we were not accustomed to nor familiar with (never mind annoyed by) but as time passed we saw more and more of the same and we soon started learning to accept them.

Please keep in mind that these are merely my humble opinions…

1. Game updates
The problem: internet connection!
It seems as if every game released today is in need of some sort of update. Even single player based games are getting updates these days. So the first thing one would ask is: “Is this due to a internet connection and is it making game developers lazy?” Are the developers rushing their products release date to get the sales? Patching and fixing the bugs after the game is released. Some of the updates for the games are released even before the game is, making it the first thing you see when you boot up the game. But why? I can understand the patches for multi-player games as they fix the bugs that the developers may have missed or for preventing booster and cheaters, but single player games, really? We never saw this with PS2 games and the reason for this was the lack of an internet connection.

The Solution: well the first thing that comes to mind would be for the developers to increase the game testing period. More public betas for multi-player games. We have seen great results with games that do offer the public betas, this could resolved the pre-release updates. Think how it could have helped Call of Duty: Black Ops with all the beginning bugs that plagued the game’s release.

Has the introduction of an internet connection to consoles ruined game development? Introducing a new era of lazy developers? I certainly hope not. Oh and something that would be nice would be to allow for background downloads of the updates, this would still allow you to play the game without waiting for the download to finish first.

2. Game Installs
The Problem: Internal Hard Drives!
Ok having an on board hard drive is great don’t get me wrong, and being able to swap it out for a bigger one without voiding the warranty is even better. But plenty of games now come with mandatory installs, ranging from as little as 500mb to an insane 10gigs. I have come across some games that don’t advertise the correct size on the back of the box, stating the required size of the save game rather than the game install size. This brings me to the standard hard drive sizes of the PS3. Many PS3 owners still have their original hard drive of either 40gig or 80gig in their systems. Now say you still play many of your old games that required an install, and on top of that you downloaded some DLC and or game updates for the game, these then would be installed on top of the game data. Recently you purchased a new game and you see you are out of disk space. Not taking into account the other media you may have saved on the system (movies, music or pictures). Obviously you won’t want to delete the old game data unless you don’t mind re-downloading and/or re-installing it. Sure you can argue that you could upgrade the hard drive for a bigger one, but that isn’t the best solution or cheapest and we shouldn’t really have to. Remember when Devil May Cry 4 came out and the outrage that it’s mandatory install caused on the web?

The solution: Well it seems simple right? Release games they have no game installs! Or some sort of buffered install (something that is installed during gameplay and deleted afterwards). Or better still, how about the option to install the game data like Tekken and Gran Tursimo do. We have seen and know what a PS3 game is capable of  even without install; some of best games on the PS3 don’t have any installs; Uncharted 2 and Killzone 2 for example. Why is it that these brilliant games can have no installs but other games require them? Is it lazy developers again?

3. Copyrighted Save Games
The problem: Unable to back up your save games for certain games
Picture this scenario: you have played 80% of a game and want to back up your savegame to a USB flash drive, as you will be returning to varsity for the following week and leaving your PS3 with your little brother. You don’t trust him (obviously) and even though you can create a new user profile for him he may still login into yours and could possibly delete your savegame or write over it with his. Now after a tough week at varsity you are looking forward returning to your game to complete it 100% and hear that sweet sound of a platinum trophy. But to your horror you find that your savegame isn’t yours and realize that it’s your brothers, who played on your profile and over wrote the save game. Now in order to prevent the serious ass kicking that your little brother is about to receive, it could all have been prevented by letting you simply back up your save game.

The solution: Currently the lack of being able to copy a save game is due to the developers of the game as its their choice. You are able to back up many save games for plenty of games currently out there, but there are the few that prohibit it. So the solution would be to either force the developers to allow for backing up save games or allow you to back up your save game to a server somewhere online, which you could then download at your leisure. Further protection can be ensured by use of a password or locking the save games to the users PSN ID.

4. PS2 Backwards compatibility
The Problem: Still no PS2 backwards compatibility
Ok, ok this one may be a little old but honestly is this ever going to happen? Sony keeps releasing PlayStation One games on the PSN, surely by now they are able to give us a software emulator for PS2 games. I would bet cash that many PS3 owners would even buy it off the PSN store. Sure Sony is trying to make up for this with these recent HD remakes of classic PS2 games, though to the die hard fan it doesn’t help. The PS2 library is huge and is very hard to pick which game needs the HD makeover, wouldn’t it be simpler to release an emulator or the game themselves on the PSN store? Sony have released a PS3 that was 100% backwards, the 60gig PS3, remember (which in my mind was the best PS3 ever). It was fully PS2 ready, had card reader slots and still did everything the PS3 needed to do.

The solution: Ah…do I have to point it out? Just bring back the 60gig! With a bigger hard-drive of course.

5. XMB
The Problem: A few
There is quite a bit which I consider wrong with the current XMB (as do many others). Where do I begin: no cross game chat, no in game music, slow, lack of folders and many others. No cross game chat support has been the biggest request from PS3 owners since its release. No in game music is another big one, we can save, even rip our CDs with the PS3, yet we cannot listen to them during our gaming session unless the game supports it? Accessing the XMB during a game as many of you already know, is a simply a pain in the ass, extremely slow and sluggish. Even for a simple task such as replying or sending a message to a friend can be a pain. No folder structure: this one is irritating especially if you have movies, mp3′s and photos stored on your PS3 and would like to organise them into folders. Yes, the PS3 has a few sorting options available, you can sort by date, by album or title etc. but that doesn’t help when you need to have a folder within a folder.

The solution: Well simple, updating the XMB is the first step, perhaps disabling or allowing only the options that you can access in the XMB during gameplay may help speed it up.  But if it hasn’t been fixed after 5 years, I have a slight feeling that it may never get fixed.

Sony has however dangled some hope at us in the form of a website (PlayStion Blog Share). The website was setup around two years ago and not all the features have been attended to. The website allows the community to share their ideas on improving the PS3 experience and other members can then rate (agreed or disagree) with the ideas. This site gave us hope in that Sony will see these features that the community so eagerly wants and eventually give them to us. It’s been two years and not much has happened from Sony’s side. Sony, listen to your community and fix the problems please.

Many features (some really good ones) are featured on the share website so if you have an idea, why not sign up and post it. You never know Sony might build it into the PS3.

After these rants I still love my PS3 and will continue to support it until the next release of consoles. I would just like to say thank you for taking the time to read my article, please leave a comment below if you agree or disagree, if you have any suggestions for the series, tips, ideas for future articles, I would love to hear them.

- Written by Claudio Cecchi

Tags: game installs, game updates, PS2, PS2 emulator, PS3, Sony