Japanese giant responds to users' complaints about its most recent firmware update

The recent 3.0 firmware update was something of a controversial issue. Thousands, if not millions, of PS3 owners have been venting their frustrations on forums about new features such as ’sparkles’ and ‘no chime when booting a game’ and, worst of all, THE FONT SIZE IS TOO BIG. See what we did there?

Anyways, Sony has been listening and has posted this handy FAQ on its blog to address some of these issues. Read on and find out what the hell it thinks it’s doing!

I don’t like the “Fizz”. How do I turn it off?

To turn the fizz off, go to the Theme Settings under Settings on the XMB, you can choose different themes from here. “Classic” is the default theme without the fizz.

Where’s the game start chime gone? Why would you remove it?

One of the reasons we removed the PS3 jingle is that it was created to indicate the start of a game, but now we’re offering non-game content such as Vidzone in addition to games. More importantly though, this change makes the loading time a bit quicker than before, which we think will be a noticeable benefit for all game users.

The BBC iPlayer icon hasn’t appeared on the XMB. How can I get it?

There are 2 criteria for the presence of the iPlayer icon on the XMB:

(1) A PSN account or guest account as a UK resident

(2) A PS3 console sold in the UK. If you don’t have either of them, the icon will not show up. You can access the BBC iPlayer without the icon, by using the PS3 browser. The quickest way to get around it, is to type “iplayer” in the Google search shortcut on the XMB and click “iplayer” from the search result. You will be redirected to the PS3 special site of iPlayer, where you can then press “Select” to add to your bookmark.

For a better experience in the future, we are looking at the possibility of removing point (2). However (1) is required to identify your country of residence.

I don’t like the size of the font and the icons. Why can’t I change it back to its old size?

Based on your feedback, we are looking at the possibility of making the changes optional.

The US and Japan have a few Dynamic Themes available already. Where are ours?

The Dynamic Themes were supplied to all three regions at the same time, but unfortunately, due to the complexities of the PAL region’s PlayStation Store publishing process, they missed our publishing window last week. (Remember, we have 29 stores across 25 countries, which require the use of 13 currencies and eight languages, so it’s more difficult for us to publish last-minute content than it is for either the US or Japan). We can confirm that some Dynamic Themes will be made available on the EU Store this week, and we have a little surprise prepared especially for our PAL readers that we hope you’ll agree is worth the wait!

I used to be able to surf the net and listen to music simultaneously. Now I can’t. Why?

The PS3 extended the upsampling capability to audio tracks stored on HDD and storage media with v3.0. Some function on the XMB such as the internet browser and photo gallery outputs with 48Khz only so you need to set audio outputs as 48Khz to enjoy music and net surfing.

The first thing I see when I turn my PS3 on is adverts. What does this offer me?

… continued

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