I wish we could get some more games done like this. How about Ico and Shadow of the Colossus for the same price, as a tie-in with the new Team Ico game?

Those games didn't sell enough to warrant them doing it. As for GOW2, it was a dual layer game.

FW 3.0 is out. Downloading now.

Ooh, sparklies! And, finally there's a new startup sound.

It takes me a decade to download these things.

is 3.0 a forced download if going online or selectable ?

Nice update, but only problem is now I can't sign into PS network.

I love the look after this latest update.

Yep, same here. I just noticed it.

ok so I am of the camp that if it ain't broke you don't fix it and it applies here

font size should be reduced to previous size or be allowed to be customized
I set my theme back to classic setting as I'm not a fan of sparkles
the grey rectangles for the friends list are overkill unless they plan on tieing in the portable ID tags in the vein of the EU tags
and the fact that they didn't include a free dynamic theme is pure stupidity ... at least give away the LBP theme or something else to start

I like that the clock is no longer blocked but other than that this is a very uninspired rollout

Here's a direct link for 3.0 if anyone needs it:

http://dus01.ps3.update.playstation....8/PS3UPDAT.PUP

Yup, the sizes are just absurd. They look terrible and are way too big.

No problem with the sparkles here, I don't really care that much.

THEY ARE HORRIBLE. They look like crap imo. I like how you can always see what someone is playing but I really hope they intend on adding something to them. If they were transparent, I'd like them a lot more. But for now, I hate them so much.

Seriously, this was one of the big things in this update and not only did we not get a free theme to showcase the new firmware, they're charging $3 for them. Uh, how about no.

There are some decent things here, but overall I'm pretty let down by this update.

And how fucking annoying is all the store icons now? It's just ridiculous. I can't go anywhere without them putting store items in my face.

What does 3.0 add/improve?

Having been burned by the broken .vob support 2 updates ago and nearly throwing my PS3 out in frustration (was fixed a few months later in the last update) I won't be updating the firmware anytime soon. If Sony forces a firmware update that breaks a feature that I depend on, I'll be ditching the PS3.

The multiple audio out is huge for me. My receiver doesn't have HDMI so it's hooked up via optical. Most of the time I just use my tv speakers though, so it was a pain to change the output every time I wanted to use my receiver. Whatever you think about the other features they added, overall, 3.0 is a big win for me.

Oh, and there is a free Africa animated theme on the Japanese PS store.

thanks for the info on the Africa theme.

thanks as well for the Africa theme. that's pretty cool.

something i just noticed, maybe it's been this way before, but if you are not connected to the psn... all your sent and received messages are still there to read (in case you want to). As far as I know, this is new to the new firmware.

Fucking A Sony! That update took me EIGHT FUCKING MINUTES! What the hell am I supposed to do while I have to spend eight fucking minutes staring at a status bar on my screen?

8 minutes? Do you have a super fast 8 TB/s down connection? :O

Themes can be shared and downloaded correct, for people that do not want to create a foreign account.

Is this a forced update? I realize the last one was not, but every time before that it forced me to update in order to sign onto PSN.

4 minutes here, total including reboots, d/l, install...

Fuck! No way! What the hell is wrong with PSN? Did you write in to complain like I did?

Does anyone know if I can do anything to stop my controller from being assigned to slot 2 after turning the PS3 on/off? It's getting annoying loading up a game only to have to quit the game to reassign the controller.

Do you have any USB adapters for other controllers (guitars, etc.) plugged in? If so try unplugging them. Also, if you have Blu-Ray remote control, that may be getting picked up as the first controller too.