Long time no blog Dtoid. It's been nearly a month now since I last blogged as I've just been lazy and playing games, as well as having nothing that sparked my mind into creating something. I'm not sure how to start this so I'll just delve right in with a list on how Sony can improve the PS3 and it's popularity.

1) The XMB (Xross Media bar)



For those of you who don't know, the XMB is the vertical and horizontal navigating system with which you do all your tasks on the PS3. Personally, I think it looks gorgeous, and looks very nice. However, there are issues which are constantly trying to be improved by the Playstation team (I hope).

Loading Times

The first issue is Loading Times. Generally navigating around the PS3 is not an issue, however, loading up the profile should be instantaneous, unfortunately, it isn't, it's fast, just not Xbox fast. Another area that should be instantaneous is your friends list whilst in game. Do you know the main reason why it loads slowly? Because of the avatars. Every time you look at your friends list, it has to load each image. I'm all for the avatars, as they provide a personally touch to your name, but they should not be such a hog on a very powerful system.



Of course however, developers and Sony are always learning about the PS3's architecture (as with the Xbox and Wii I'm sure), and some of these issues may be wiped away eventually. But Sony need to get their act together and listen to the community.

Trophies and Syncing

Trophies also used to be an issue, but Sony fixed their loading times fairly well. They could be a tad faster in game, but it's nowhere near as bad as it used to be. There is one thing that bothers me, Syncing.

Say you are playing Street Fighter IV, you check your Trophies, then switch to Dead Space. If you check your Trophies again, you will have to do a short Syncing process which shows a progress bar from 0-100%. It doesn't take long, but the point is, it shouldn't be there in the first place. Sony need to get on with research into how to get rid of that process. Changing game should not mean "Syncing" the trophies every time you do. If anything, this process if it cannot be removed, should be done in the background (like PC's do and possibly Xbox's do) either whilst the game is loading or as the game is being played.

Make Vidzone more noticeable.



I'm note saying "Force it in our faces Sony", but make the default top XMB symbol on the Music category like on the image above. This is just a minor annoyance as the service is a really good one at that. It lets you browse pretty much ANY music video that's ever existed, free of charge, with reasonably good video quality, extremely good audio quality and a great streaming loop.

By default, the default music XMB symbol is Playlists. Now I know that's only one down from Vidzone, but it just raises the awareness and usage of the product if it's the normal symbol. I would understand if the reasoning for not putting it at the top is because then people might constantly keep loading it when they just want to play normal music tracks, but i don't think that's how Sony thought about it.

System Settings

Allow System Settings (or at least some) to be changed whilst in game. Now I'm no PS3 software engineer, but I know for certain that some of the settings could be changed whilst in game. I won't list them as their are too many little options that should be adjustable.

RAM

Reduce the RAM usage, or fix the XMB to work in the way a PC works, with background processes going on so that nothing needs to load. At the moment the PS3 uses 74 MB of RAM, whereas the Xbox only uses a tiny 32MB, half of that of the PS3. Did you know the XMB reserves 48MB of RAM AT ALL TIMES? That is atrocious and is more than the Xbox alone.

If you don't know, having a lower RAM footprint is better :) Now it seems in the last mystery PS3 2.80 update, they improved it's RAM usage slightly, but not enough and it needs to be made even smaller.

http://www.gamezine.co.uk/news/games/u/uncharted-2/the-real-secret-in-ps3-firmware-2-80-$1314390.htm

2) Home

There are three main issues with Home at the moment.

Game launching.

There are simply not enough games that support it. This isn't Sony's fault, as shown here:
http://www.thesixthaxis.com/2009/07/22/game-launching-in-home-not-sonys-responsibility/

But they should be contacting the game developers to make Home spaces and to include the Game Launching ability when they release a game or as an added patch. Instead they are relying on us, the community, to do it ourselves. Doing it this way takes much longer and is not a guaranteed method. All Sony have to do is implement one rule. This rule is to force developers to include Game Launching, just like they did with Trophies, therefore making any game release after 2009 to include Trophies.

Making Trophies takes a lot longer than creating a simple code to start up a game from a Invite or Request, so I believe it is just Sony's laziness that is the cause of this.

Ghosts.

If there's something strange, in your neighbourhood. Who ya gonna call? GHOSTBUSTERS!



Just....just....get rid of them Sony. Make the clothing and face features less resource hungry on your internet connection and the PS3.

Trophy Rooms.



THIS. This is what Home needs more than anything I think. At first I thought these rooms might not be practical, but they are damn cool! But these spaces would provide a few purposes. You can talk about the game in hand to people in the room. 90% of the people there would be there because they want to talk about the game, want to pick up the game and find out more about it, to Game Launch from that area, to compare trophies, to browse around and see what trophies they are missing or want or that just look good or to just socialize.

Sony, if you ever see this blog, there are about 10 reasons that I will give you for free as to why to implement Trophy Rooms/game spaces as a priority and as a mandatory rule to game developers. Surely Sony has some people sitting around brainstorming somewhere, and if they don't, hire me and people here with great ideas god dammit!

3) Adverts.

Since I've owned a PS3, guess how many adverts I've seen for it? FOUR.

Four adverts. In 3 years. That is ABMISSMAL. Sony, how do expect people to notice your product, when they've never even seen it before? The four adverts I have seen are two This Is Living adverts, one being the grenade one, and the other being the crazy puppet circus/latex-fest combined with fluffy dogs advert, and the game Transformers and Harry Potter.

This Is Living adverts were a complete waist of time, and did not get across the message that the PS3 is a game and media machine combined. And the two games adverts weren't exactly good or popular games. They need to advertise in Europe more like they do in America or Japan, such as these:





The thing is, I've never seen these adverts in Europe, I had to go on Youtube to look them up in the past, and I only found two. That's pretty bad. These below are not the way to advertise a console:






I'd buy this game Sony.

Just some tips Sony, take 'em or....lose your market share :]