PS3 Firmware 3.41 mandatory update available now

@Giggman It takes time (and for some people, money) to download and install the update. That means time they aren't playing games... Which is the reason they bought the console. Unless the update provides value to them, it's a pain in the rear.

(Some people don't have 'unlimited' internet and have to pay for the amount of information they transfer.)

@Giggman.

True, and they ALWAYS throw in free extras which they don't write about (though I'm not sure why they do this?).

I wonder what the easter eggs of this update will be. :)

@WC
I understand what you are saying but the key word here is free. There is no better value than a free update on a free service....for free. I've had my PS3 since launch and if you are old school like me you will notice that the PSN has came a long way, and it cost me a grand total of nothing.

I'm not saying I don't understand where you are coming from, I'm basically looking at the complainers.

@Giggman

I agree, it's lame to complain. If you were around to remember consoles of old and their inherent flaws or lack of features that required POS hardware purchases ie 32x to experience them. I'd think you'd do nothing but applaud free updates that extend the life of a console. Nice to get trophies/netflix etc without buying a new console or anything for that matter.

@Giggman Very true that is is free and a great thing to have. But for some people its a bit more difficult to dl the updates. Hell i had to go to a friends house to dl the updates because i didn't have internet access to my ps3, only my pc.

The only problem i had at the time was that when i bought Rock Band 2 it would not play on my PS3 unless i had the update first.

But its all good now. But yes, in a way it does kinda suck that in some cases we don't have a choice but to dl the new updates.

@WC

I recall firing up MotorStorm: Pacific Rift one night to grab a few quick games before my brothers and I headed out to eat, but I had to sit through 45 minutes of some update that, after done, I had no idea what it had actually changed. It was at that point that I realize that...Sony really sucks when it comes to software updates.

@Giggman

Free or not, it takes time, and on the PS3, it takes too much time, especially for stuff you're not using. It's odd that the company with by far the longest update process has by far the most frequent updates. It would be nice if they'd package all these features that most of us will never use into several, larger updates rather than releasing a 15 minute download/install process for some new font color or whatever they feel like doing. Wouldn't you find it pretty lame if you logged onto Joystiq today and found out that you had to sit through a 15 minute install process because they added a new link to the footer, or something else you'll never use?

It's worst when you have both a game update and a system update at the same time. I get some gaming in over lunch sometimes and when there is a game and console update on the PS3 I literally just have to skip playing games at lunch that day.

Of course, this is all semi-moot now with PSN plus's auto-download feature, which is totally worth the price of PSN plus all on its own.

@WC

Most firmware updates are so small it wouldnt even register..and how exactly does a free update cost you..when your already paying for internet service?

Your kinda reaching.

@Vcize

Id check your connection if l was you..this update took me a grand total of 5 minutes to download and install.

@Giggman The value of adding services to a free service only works if the added services have value. What some people are saying here, is that the added service here has no value to them. I gotta agree.

Someone can take a dump on your front porch. It's free, does that mean you can't complain about it?

Sony is paying people, actually paying real people to work on these updates. And Sony has been getting bombarded by very good suggestions of how to make this service better by customers, by bloggers, and by press. This has been happening for years. PS3 magazines do whole features on how to make PSN better, blogs do it, people on twitter do it. Sony even spends tons of money on surveys and focus groups asking us what to add.

But instead, Sony is taking these people that they actually pay, and telling them to make new features for this service that NOBODY wants. That is where our frustration comes from. Text chat? Digital game selection recommendations? Really? That is why people get upset. And just because it's free, doesn't mean people can't complain.

@Vcize
So basically what you (and others) are saying is that once every couple of months or so, your gaming routine is hindered by a PSN install?

Call me crazy but that's no reason to get pissed. I don't mind turning on my console to look in the top right hand corner to see that an update is available. I can choose to play offline or if I have time (which I usually do if I have decided to sit down and play something) I run the update. I usually stay pretty up to date and have rarely seen an update that takes longer than 5 or 10 minutes (my own personal experiences).

Taking 5 or 10 minutes to update your system every couple of months to me isn't a valid reason to get upset. Come holla at me when you go to cut it on and it doesn't boot.....

@HITnRUN
Looking past your taking a dump on the porch comment (seriously what does that have to do with this, although it would warrant a free ass whooping) you're right Sony does pay people to do these updates. Sony pay these people, technically I don't.

I as well as others pay for Live, does that mean that we get all of the features that we ask for? If Microsoft decide to throw in adds do you get a say-so just because you are paying for their service?

I think not....

@Giggman
People just need something to say. Sony does a lot of little updates and hardly ever any major updates that people ask for since the PS3 came out. All the time they put into little dumb stuff like this is time they could have been putting toward cross game chat.

@Giggman

People are complaining about seemingly pointless mandatory updates, not updates in general. I don't mind updates, in fact I really look forward to them when they are substantial.

@WC "It takes time (and for some people, money) to download and install the update. That means time they aren't playing games... Which is the reason they bought the console. Unless the update provides value to them, it's a pain in the rear.

(Some people don't have 'unlimited' internet and have to pay for the amount of information they transfer.)"

Let's look at this from a different perspective. It's ok for Microsoft to shut down XBL for an entire day, wasting everyone's precious game time, but when Sony releases a mandatory update that takes a few minutes to install and download, everyone is upset? Yes it's an update for the PS Store, and yes it seems pointless. But when the update is all said and done we all can go back to our games. The service isn't shut down for the day, and also yes the world will still be intact. CALM DOWN AND ENJOY YOUR DAMN GAMES!

@Giggman Technically you do pay these people, this lack of understanding may explain your apathy the situation. You think the PSN engineers get paid from the digital camera profits?

Profits from the PlayStation division are used to fund the projects of that division. Thus, the money you are paying every time you buy a game or a system or a shirt in Home is party used to fund these updates. The people that actually understand this are allowed to be upset that Sony is focused on the wrong things and basically wasting money on stuff that nobody wants.

If someone gives you a free plate of crap, nobody is saying that you can't gobble it up and ask for more, I just don't understand why it's a problem for others to ask for something else from the kitchen.

@Giggman

No one is complaining about getting free stuff. It's having mandatory, useless updates so often that gets annoying. If this new feature were an option update that you could choose to download for 10 minutes of your time, 99% of PSN users wouldn't bother to download it. Getting trophy support, cross-game invites, etc were great. But there's no reason that 90% of the other stuff they've released mandatory updates for couldn't have been rolled in with those kinds of major updates, or at least rolled together into one big update instead of seven little ones that take just as long.

I don't play my PS3 that often so yes, it annoys me because pretty much every time I try to go online with the thing I have to do an update first, which is a slow process on the console. And we haven't even talked about the fact that more than once, PS3 updates have caused major, major issues. You'd think, again, of all the companies to bundle stuff together and release updates less frequently, it would be Sony with all the issues they've caused with updates in the past.

Again, use my Joystiq example. Remember a while back when the site was down for a little bit during the big re-design? Now imagine if that happened every 3-4 weeks, only when it came back up it wasn't a whole redesign, but rather some new hidden feature off the side that you will never, ever use and would have just skipped if it were optional for you.

@HITnRUN

But your wrong crap is something that nobody wants and benefits nobody this is just a free icecream that's not your flavour but other peoples flavour

http://fc02.deviantart.net/fs70/f/2010/037/0/7/HATERS_GONNA_HATE_by_spikewible.jpg

@repented7 You could've just used a storage media. And if you didn't have internet, you wouldn't be forced to update anyways. Games that require updates also have updates on the disk.

@Giggman

I also agree that it is lame to complain about free updates. I have come to learn that gamers are some of if not THE whiniest people though... so I always anticipate it going in to read these comments.

@zefur I don't know about this being anyone's flavor. Of the 52 comments here, nobody is happy to get this new feature. There are no positive reviews of the feature itself. The comments that are positive just seem more like they are happy that the update didn't break their system and didn't take too long to download.

But if we stick with the ice cream analogy, then this is like someone asking you want flavor you want, then buying you the other flavor. If they were just going to pick the flavor, then why did they ask what we wanted? (they asked through the survey and focus group and official blog)

And why did they pick dog crap ice cream? (see what I did there!)

@ijustw1n

Ordinarily, I would agree it's lame to complain.

But it's not free. You paid for this online service when you bought the games and the console. The 360 charges in a different way (and they charge a lot more), but you can expect a certain quality. Is a mandatory update every month OK? I only play games on my PS3 on weekends. When I turn it on, I want to play the stupid games now. I don't want to wait 30 minutes.

If they were not mandatory (and it doesn't sound like this one should be), then I could just update when I'm done playing. I don't care about this feature and I don't complain that Sony should add any other features. I just want to play my games when I turn my machine on.

One solution would be an option to turn on the PS3 every Tuesday at 3am to search for updates and install them.

@Giggman
seriously...me either. they're free upgrades, and since they have the auto shutoff feature after the upgrade, they're relatively painless. for all those people that complain about the TIME it takes to upgrade it. wtf are you doign on PSN thats so important that you have to play IMMEDIATELY.
if you're playing online w/ friends or something, and have scheduled a meeting in some game, i'm sure someone would tell you about it so its not exactly a surprise. So when you get home, first thing, run upstairs and start the update. By the time you change, use the bathroom, make a sandwich or w/e, i bet it'll be done unless u have a bad ISP or a slow ass connection. Better yet, if you're coming home from work/school...downloading it from a work/school computer, throw it on a flash drive, and update from USB. i swear some people like to complain for the sake of complaining. negative nancys

@Giggman

It's not even once ever couple months, it kinda feels like every single month. And it is a pain in the ass cause it takes a long time. Sorry, but 10 minutes of watching a progress bar is not acceptable.

Have you done an Xbox Live update? It takes seconds for a minor update and maybe 2 minutes for a major update (like when they released NXE).

Xbox Live only does updates once a quarter, if at all, and they always include several substantial improvements.

Know what surprises me? Is how many people think that being free makes this kind of irritating shit acceptable. What excuse are people that will pay for the premium PSN service going to use?

Sony needs to take note and roll this minor shit together into a single update once or twice a year.

I also forgot to mention that every time they do an update there is potential to brick your system or cause games to stop working. So doing these unnecessary updates is a large concern cause literally every single update there have been issues for someone.

So even though the update is available now I have learned that I have to wait a week so they can release the real update that fixes whatever shit they broke on the previous update.

All the more reason to have fewer mandatory updates.

@fohf
I don't get it... You complain about doing an update for 10minutes, but are more than willing to wait a week before you actually update your system?

@Giggman
WOW most flame wars don't have arguments this long...
So let me just break this down for you so that you can all stop complaining.

1. Why was this worked on?
this is acctually a suggestion on the share blog and has a possative rating. meaning the hardcore PS3 users actually think it's a decent idea... these are typically the users that spend the most money on PSN and who PS+ was targeted for so stop saying that no one wants it. If you think it's so bad an idea you could be more active in the community.
http://share.blog.us.playstation.com/ideas/2010/03/19/recommended-titles-for-users/

2.Why is this mandatory?
It's mandatory because it is an update to PSN and not just an update for your individual console. having multiple PS3's with outdated software code hitting the same online functionality that may or may not work on each system would cause more harm than good and be much harder for sony to maintain.

3.Why was this worked on above one of the other share ideas?
Different software updates have different ROI's attached to each of them. A highly requested feature may require a huge investment while a less talked about feature that some people may be asking for may require little to no investment to add. Also multiple dev teams will be working on different feature sets. A feature like recomendations may be compleated rather quickly where a feature like cross game chat would require a change to the back end infastucture which could have VERY negative effects to some of the games or services and require a LOT of testing.

4.why not role up the updates into larger updates?
Again going back to the hardcore PS3 consumer they seem to prefer getting features as soon as they are available. and don't like the idea of quarterly updates.
http://share.blog.us.playstation.com/ideas/2010/04/23/static-firmware-releases-dates/
in fact they are asking for MORE updates to the system.
http://share.blog.us.playstation.com/ideas/2010/03/21/more-firmware-updates/

Hope I helped make some people understand how software development works.

@Viglin
IIf your running on wireless you need to make some adjustments to your router to optamize for the PS3 once I did this I got a better connection on my PS3 than I do on my xbox.

@zefur
THANK YOU!
@HITnRUN
It's more like green eggs and ham and not at ALL like crap or crap flavored icecream your trying to turn your opinion into fact. This is on PS Share and it has a possative rating so there are people that want this. Just because you don't want it doesn't make it crap.
@Vcize
Sony's doing a good job of targeting their console and thier updates to the people that use their console the most. They're the ones that are paying for this sort of thing cause they're the ones buying a lot of stuff on PSN and to that type of a consumer... (PS+ member, who buys a lot of PSN content) being able to see recomendations is great. I didn't really get into PSN content until I was in Costa Rica for 3 months early this year and cause games there cost so much I started downloading stuff on PSN and to my surprise I liked a lot of it... now I also bought some stuff I wish I hadn't so things like recomendations and a rating system I think are welcome additions to the PSN cause they allow you to find good content that you might not have found otherwise.

@Victoryismine52 You're right someone wanted this on the official playstation forums. And it had around 200 positive votes. Cross game voice chat has almost 18,000 positive votes. PS2 software emulation has over 16,000 votes. Wow, even text chat in arabic has 10,000 votes.

So around 8,800 more people want text chat in arabic than this waste-of-space advertising feature. According to your links.

The bottom line is that while there may be different teams working on different upgrades of different complexities and ROI forecasts, Sony is still focused on burning cycles to create features that nobody really cares about, while ignoring the things that people really want. And they are doing it with our money. Enjoy your new game recommendations.

@The Spy Yep, well at least the trailer we had on PS4 was quite the real thing. http://2su.de/w3x -- I guess, we just need to wait for it in the future.

@Giggman people like to complain

you give em something that improves theyre stuff and they think ur messing with them

thats a learned trait, probably from a parent, or maybe a sibling wanting to help and ruining something

its human nature and you cant change it with sneaky EULAs and NDAs. everyone worries about the 30's recession is gonna come back (itll be that bad i mean) and thats why everyone is hording like they went through it, or were taught how to survive not trusting the world

course we like knowing who to fear is across the world

@FamousLastX Yeah maybe now, but i remember when i got Rock Band 2, it didnt. And it forced me to update my system. It sucked nuts, till i realized that i could do an update though my pc and use media.

@baby sea tuna You can use the PS3 without updating. However, you won't be able to log on to the PlayStation Network and play games online, or download anything off the PlayStation Store.

@baby sea tuna They can't force you to update, but they can lock out functionality until you do.

@baby sea tuna

The last time I updated my PS3 was when Uncharted 2 came out.

@boomanchu
Except PS3 updates have bricked systems more than once. When I first got mine a couple months ago, there was an update, so I updated. The update took an hour and it looked like my system was gone the way of the dodo bird, but then randomly decided to turn on and work again.

@mbarriault

Updates shouldn't take an hour no matter what, and ALL firmware updates for ALL devices (video game systems, phones, operating systems, etc.) seem to occasionally do something real bad so a small percentage of people's hardware. It's a fact of life in a technology-filled time, so complaining about the occasional bricking of a few systems after an update is pointless. Just update and hope for the best (and if you have a guarantee, hope it gets fixed and sent back promptly).

@(Unverified)

Yeah, but it's happened what, two or three times on the PS3 now and never on any of the other systems?

@boomanchu

No other consoles have had updates that bricked it???

http://www.joystiq.com/2006/11/01/update-brick-your-360-speak-up/

Wrong.

@golfs4panzys i never said it doesnt