PS3 firmware 3.7 brings auto cloud saves and Trophy sync (for PS Plus members)

by Richard Mitchell on Aug 9th 2011 9:15PM

An upcoming PS3 firmware update will enable automatic syncing of Trophies to a player's online profile. Before everyone gets too excited, know that the feature is reserved exclusively to PlayStation Plus members. Another PlayStation Plus bonus: automatic online game saves will now be enabled. Upon first playing a game, players will be asked whether or not to enable automatic online saves for that specific title (otherwise, they can enable it from the XMB later).

In the category of "everyone else," the update will add a new recommendation feature that will allow users to recommend specific PlayStation Store content to friends. A new "TV/Video Services" section will also be added to the XMB. The new category will house online video services like Hulu and Netflix. Videos purchased from the PlayStation Store, however, will still be found in the same "Video" section of the XMB.

A handful of updates are also being added to allow for expanded capabilities when watching 3D Blu-ray movies as well.

Firmware 3.7 is scheduled to launch "soon," so stay tuned.

Source: PlayStation Blog

Tags: firmware, firmware-3.7, playstation, playstation-store, ps3, psn, trophies

Reader Comments (74)

So we can use cloud saving with any game? Or is it only certain games that support it?

@Vcize All PS3 save data functions with cloud storage. Certain files only allow you to copy it once per day from the cloud, but you can upload as much as you want within your 150MB.

Yay

I'm always excited to read about a New Playstation 3 Update.

I get unexcited when its;

1. A Security Update
2. Every feature is exclusive to Playstation Plus members.

I'm still seeing this thread going to payment-require online for PS4. They are just soften the blow, little by little. Good deal for people who primarily play on PS3 tho.

@xiLeShadow Not every feature here is exclusive to PS Plus. You apparently didn't read far enough down the article.

@xiLeShadow I also think we can expect paid online for the next PS gen. There's just too much money in it for them to not implement it...

@xiLeShadow A full featured online eco-system costs a ton of money just to maintain. The reason Microsoft has been able to not only maintain but constantly improve Xbox Live is because a lot of people paid for Gold, myself included. As a company, Sony simply can not afford to match XBL feature for feature and still be financially viable.

In addition, asking people to pay 50 bucks a year for a discount card is not going to bring people running to your service. Offering them quality services will. With these new services, PS Plus officially becomes something I would be willing to pay for, as these are features I would like to have.

@Equal Opportunity Dork

I think you are over-exaggerating how much it really costs. Plus, Sony and Microsoft make a killing profit off every PSN/XBL purchases. They take a good portion for each digital content sold. (25% - 35%)

That is easily enough to maintain the online system and still get a huge profit.

The reason why Xbox LIVE is better then PSN is because Microsoft actually planned all the software moves beforehand and easily made the Xbox LIVE system very upgradable. Sony however, failed to carefully plan that.

Steam doesn't charge for anything and its better then Xbox LIVE and PS3. They also don't control the PC, so they can't get license revenue like Microsoft and Sony.

@xiLeShadow how is Steam better? outside the Valve games everything is based on 3rd party companies running the servers for the games.

@xiLeShadow

i think you may be downplaying the operating cost a bit. sure, running a few servers doesn't cost much. however, add virtualization, networking, firewalls, databases, etc. and it starts adding up. and that's just the infrastructure. add in all the support staff of technicians, developers, engineers and support staff and the cost soon begins to get into the millions of dollars a year cost to run these services.

Sony is a good example of what happens when you try and cut corners. they didn't beef up their security to what was necessary in order to try and reduce cost of it's service. The only time it makes sense to have a completely free service is if you have some sort of revenue coming from somewhere else, for example, YouTube and it's ads.

@(Unverified) No different then ps3 or xbox. The whole xbox has all it's own servers is a big lie. Only if the game is made by Microsoft or one of it's babies.

I think it's a nice update.

I just hope us PS3 owners will be given the ability to change our PSN IDs soon.

Please, Sony! PLEASE!

@MLC

The only update I want to see is the update that makes the updates faster. It's stupid how long it takes for PSN to download an update and then install it.

It takes like 60 seconds on a 360 and about 5 minutes on a PS3.

@arkweld from what I understood the PS3 doesnt do a simple patch like the 360 does....its a complete re-install of the firmware...right?

Eh. I am OK without these features. If people want them, they can pay for it. Only feature I want out of Plus is the automatic updates which is funny because I will have to watch the update for this patch that won't benefit me at all.

While I know this is far from top priority, I'm guessing that after the hack we'll pretty much never see that Google TV implemented on here huh.

A man can dream, Leela.

@TerryMasters - No, you'll never see Google TV, at least not without Google changing the requirements.

I worked in sales for Sony's online store for a year & the answer I got in regard to Google TV is that it can't happen because Google requires Google TV devices to have an HDMI input for connecting a cable/satellite box, which the PS3 doesn't have.

@Mcmax3000

The PS3 does have a hdmi input.

@This Little Man Says His Name Is

isnt it the HDMI out, not in?

@This Little Man Says His Name Is

No, it has an HDMI OUTput. There's a difference.

Sounds fair. Cool feature.

MORE COOLNESS:

This also adds:

support for 3D special features on 3D Bluray disks
DTS-MA while watching 3D movies
support for 3D photos

Cloud saving makes perfect sense as a Plus bonus. Trophy synching? Not so much.

@RickGhastly Agreed.

@RickGhastly
It's not as great as you think.The only reason it is Plus only is because it is linked to Auto-Update.Your trophies will only auto-sync when your system auto-updates.it's not like they just automatically updates themselves.Which BTW they should

@Gigatyrant Yep, that's the distinction to make. Trophies are NOT being synced when you get them, just once a night. Which is totally pointless. I just sync after I get out of a game anyway, so this is useless for me. The auto-sync for saves is pretty good though.

@RickGhastly Yeah, what the hell do they mean by trophy synching? Do they mean that you don't have to manually synch your trophy, it will do it just like Xbox live has been doing for years?

This is exactly what I didn't want when they announced PS Plus. I didn't want to see any new "policies" where every new feature worth a damn was going to be locked for everyone except for their "exclusive treehouse club".

Automatic Trophy syncing as PS Plus "exclusive"? Are you kidding me?

@PointlessPuppies

At least you aren't losing services. What if they made online gaming a PS+ exclusive. Isn't that a dumb idea?

@PointlessPuppies That was entirely the point of PS+ haha. Premium features for premium users. What would be the point if it was the same shit you get for free?

@Jason B
I do agree with that, it would be even worse if they take out services but I doubt they will.

Still, I guess I oughta get used to the fact that Sony's not going to add any more functionality to anyone but PS Plus members. Not a very strong way to end the feature list of the PS3... -_-

@DustbinK
Automatic trophy syncing should never be considered a "premium" feature, though. Trophy syncing as it stands is something that should be fixed for everyone, not a select few. Extra features I get, but the improvement of a feature that was crappy to begin with isn't "extra", that should be basic.

That's like charging people for patches that have better load times. That kind of stuff should be free for all people. Basic functionality.

Auto-sync should have been there day one not touted out for your "give us your money" program. Trophy syncing is still pathetically slow, it's the year 2011 but the amount of time the PS3 takes to send that small bit of data makes me feel like I'm back in 1998.

@Gmail Calendar Rep
trophies themselves werent there day 1. Look at it this way- Sony is giving you a lot of services and updates free to a point, but everything after that needs to be paid for. That's actually quite fair, especially since all the important stuff is covered (free online gaming, Netflix access, trophies, etc)

I think PSN has come a long way. People like to pretend that it's terrible and xbl is where the cool kids hang out , but the service gets the job done and it keeps improving. I think this gen, Sony are getting the kinks worked out. By next gen, they might have it licked.

@civil civ - That's great but by the time Sony "has it licked", Xbox Live will be in its third generation.

I'm not saying PSN is bad by any means but it feels like they have a long way to go to catch up to Xbox Live.

Microsoft has managed to make a cohesive experience that feels like you're really connected to a community. When I play online on PSN, I feel so disconnected from everything that is going on because the experience is so different across every game.

It's not at all bad but it honestly feels like Xbox Live did on the original Xbox whereas Xbox Live as it currently stands feels like its miles ahead.

@Mcmax3000 Arguably each game being disconnected is a benefit. This is why we have Steam on PS3 and not on 360.

@Mcmax3000

Well, I still see PSN in it's infancy, and I'm willing to give it a chance rather then write it off. MS had 2 gens to get Live up and running. I think Sony deserves some time to get it right too.

By the way, you know how dustbin brought up Steam. It seems like the Steam Service does more then Live, and it's free. Why is that?

@Mcmax3000

I'm sure Sony and MS will be just fine next generation.

Ah, very cool. Auto cloud saves will be nice, and hopefully a roll out to all PS3 owners will come before the Vita releases (since that system will feature it anyway, there's no way it won't be for everyone right before the system releases in any given territory).

The sony motto seems to be:
"Anything Steam can do we can charge ~$5 a month for."

There is a new Sony TOS as well.

I for one am happy they aren't instantly syncing and just once per day, I wouldn't want it to say on facebook after every trophy I get, I'd rather it say I got x amount of trophies at once.

Although there should be a system that makes both these things happen.

@AntsPai
You can turn that Facebook thing off, most people don't want to read about all your trophies anyway.

The ps3 is free I don't c anyone else given free stuff so iam very happy

@blizy1978 - But in the case of these features, they're not giving you anything for free. These features (at least the headline ones) are PS+ exclusive.

@Aguiluz

Also, spambots are now spamming other spambots. We are caught in the crossfire of a spamming war :(

@fghjfghdfgj
Did an ad just advertise to an ad?

I have PS+ and I'm even sick of seeing these PS+ exclusive features. I want everybody to be able to auto-sync their trophies. I can understand the online saves being PS+ only because it takes money to create the space for each person (although it's only 150MB), but why can't everybody else auto-update and auto-sync their trophies? I really hope this isn't the direction their going with PS+ by withholding features from non-PS+ customers.

@Ospov

Because it just puts more stress on their servers. Patch size usually isnt insignificant. Now imagine that patch getting pushed out to every person with that game even though they might not play it again. Same with auto syncing trophies, not a lot of data to sync but when you got 50 million+ people trying to sync, it's going to hit your servers hard.

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PS3 firmware 3.7 brings auto cloud saves and Trophy sync (for PS Plus members)

Reader Comments (74)

Posted: Aug 9th 2011 9:19PM Vcize said

Posted: Aug 9th 2011 9:42PM LionheartAce said

Posted: Aug 9th 2011 9:20PM aytch66 said

Posted: Aug 9th 2011 9:22PM xiLeShadow said

Posted: Aug 10th 2011 3:29AM spin cycle said

Posted: Aug 10th 2011 5:12AM Pure Black World Tendency said

Posted: Aug 10th 2011 7:23AM Equal Opportunity Dork said

Posted: Aug 10th 2011 8:59AM xiLeShadow said

Posted: Aug 10th 2011 11:26AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Aug 10th 2011 11:57AM LexStewther said

Posted: Aug 11th 2011 12:54AM kujospam2000 said

Posted: Aug 9th 2011 9:22PM MLC said

Posted: Aug 10th 2011 10:41AM arkweld said

Posted: Aug 10th 2011 11:02AM Chris DPSN AggieCEO XBLThe Aggi said

Posted: Aug 9th 2011 9:23PM FriedConsole said

Posted: Aug 9th 2011 9:25PM TerryMasters said

Posted: Aug 9th 2011 9:36PM Mcmax3000 said

Posted: Aug 9th 2011 9:42PM This Little Man Says His Name Is said

Posted: Aug 9th 2011 10:01PM Faenix said

Posted: Aug 9th 2011 10:02PM ACLerok212 said

Posted: Aug 9th 2011 9:26PM Ezio Auditore da Firenze said

Posted: Aug 10th 2011 12:17AM Mr Hett said

Posted: Aug 9th 2011 9:27PM RickGhastly said

Posted: Aug 9th 2011 9:32PM Shafnitz said

Posted: Aug 9th 2011 9:42PM Gigatyrant said

Posted: Aug 9th 2011 9:50PM whatisdelicious said

Posted: Aug 10th 2011 8:32AM sykane9 said

Posted: Aug 9th 2011 9:45PM PointlessPuppies said

Posted: Aug 9th 2011 9:52PM Jason B said

Posted: Aug 9th 2011 11:33PM DustbinK said

Posted: Aug 10th 2011 12:15AM PointlessPuppies said

Posted: Aug 10th 2011 12:17AM PointlessPuppies said

Posted: Aug 9th 2011 9:46PM Gmail Calendar Rep said

Posted: Aug 9th 2011 11:20PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Aug 9th 2011 10:00PM civil civ said

Posted: Aug 9th 2011 11:23PM Mcmax3000 said

Posted: Aug 9th 2011 11:36PM DustbinK said

Posted: Aug 9th 2011 11:56PM civil civ said

Posted: Aug 10th 2011 9:55AM eat it said

Posted: Aug 9th 2011 10:01PM Nobledevil Gaming Optimist said

Posted: Aug 9th 2011 10:02PM akeso said

Posted: Aug 9th 2011 10:07PM Jason B said

Posted: Aug 9th 2011 10:10PM AntsPai said

Posted: Aug 9th 2011 10:36PM NoPantsToday said

Posted: Aug 9th 2011 10:22PM blizy1978 said

Posted: Aug 9th 2011 11:24PM Mcmax3000 said

Posted: Aug 9th 2011 10:47PM Ospov said

Posted: Aug 9th 2011 10:50PM AltairtheAssassinwhokillstuff said

Posted: Aug 9th 2011 10:53PM Ospov said

Posted: Aug 10th 2011 12:52AM Kodros said

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