188w ago - During a recent interview with PlayStation: The Official Magazine (PTOM) in the Holiday '09 issue, PSN Director
Eric Lempel discusses how Firmware update features are planned and released for the PlayStation 3 and PSP consoles and touches on cross-game voice chat.
To quote: "We go about doing that in a few different ways. We do consumer research in addition to following our roadmap.
We've had a very long roadmap that we've wanted to roll out, and clearly all of them couldn't be rolled out day one when the PS3 launched. So we've been implementing these features as we go along and some of them, and some of them take longer than others."
Lempel continued: "Of course time and manpower always factor in because there aren't limitless resources. And are sometimes key features that must go out in Firmware updates. For example, you saw on September 1, we released a 120GB PS3 and we did a Firmware update, and there were some enhancements in that specifically to bring on the new hardware."
The director of the PlayStation Network further explained: "We absolutely read all the feedback that we see on our blog when we do firmware updates. We have people who look across different forums and different sites. And we also do our own testing - some very extensive testing.."
"But in some cases, we can't do complete testing because you never quite know how things will work until users have it."
When asked the question that's on every PS3 owners mind, on the long awaited cross-game voice chat feature Lempel has this to say:
"I think it's incredibly popular. We know users want it, and like lots of other things that work cross-games, technically, it's complicated. But it's definitely something we're looking at."
If you wish to read the full interview, pick up issue 027 of PlayStation: The Official Magazine at newsstands now.
8 Comments - Go to Forum Thread »
this is killing me.. with the new CoD out..I'm so tempted to update.. but I guess im not the only one who hasnt bit the bullet.
Simply beautiful 
Thanks for the update 
it would be neat to have animated avatars or even Playstation HOME avatars. every once in a blue moon Sony comes out with a cool firmware feature, but most so far are pretty lame. i think Sony's biggest problem is the time it takes them to release new features.