A few days ago, we brought you the latest feature list to be included in the PS3 firmware. Today, we offer insight and a bit of speculation as to what awaits PS3 consumers (and developers) in the months to come.
Our first prognostication involves memory. Sony has continued to make strides in lowering the memory consumption of the base OS. We expect this effort to continue over the next 6 to 12 months, and for additional memory to be returned to developers.
In our previous article, we also mentioned the availability of new music and picture utilities for developers to tap in. Sony will continue to expose such features to developers. The next step is to offer a video utility to developers, empowering developers to allow users to export video capture of their game play experience. We expect users to eventually be able to share the content they capture from any PS3 title. In the same vein, the music and picture utilities will continue to be expanded, allowing users to export music from games to their profiles. This creates a whole avenue of possibilities. Imagine being able to save your musical creations from a PS3 version of Electroplankton.
One of the biggest changes - anticipated since before launch - is a revamping of the invitation system. Currently, the invitation system does not allow cross-game invites, as our previous commentary indicates. You can only invite a player if they are already playing the same game as you, and are logged on. The Xbox 360 allows any user to invite a friend to join a game session regardless of what game that friend is currently playing. Well, PS3 consumers can rejoice, as that functionality is finally coming to the PS3.
Developers will finally have access to a flexible API which will allow them to deal with invites across titles. Such a feature is important; it is after all a requirement for Home, which portends to allow users to launch any multiplayer game from the Home lobby. The only remaining concerns have to do with how quickly this feature will be rolled across the various PS3 titles and whether or not it will be made core requirement for every PS3 title to support such a mechanism (we suspect it won’t be).
Other than this, what we observe is a continuing integration of the various system utilities into a more cohesive and consistent experience, and a general improvement of the PS3 experience. Sony continues to work hard at providing new functionality and improving the user experience.
