PS3 FW: 3.50 Will it bring cross game chat ?

Sony has just announced at the Tokyo Game Show that the next PS3 update 3.50 will include support for Blu-ray movie playback.
The new update will be released on September 21st and make all 38 million PS3s worldwide compatible with Blu-ray 3D discs.

[Pennywise]

It was just a matter of time some idiot wrong this artic- ugh Blog.

XGame chat is big enough that Sony would announce it. It won't be a hidden feature.

[butterfinger]

I don't see cross-game chat being a hidden feature in one of these updates. Sony will be very proud to announce it when it is available.

[avengers1978]

I really don't care. If they bring it then I would use it, but really it's not that big a deal to me.

[n4gno]

you are not alone, only xbox's fanboyz try to believe it's a big deal, like the backward compatibility, but most of gamers don't care.

[jwk94]

I'm longing for XGame Chat and I own a ps3 and not a 360 dude, don't make assumptions.

[WildArmed]

Agreed.
They said they'd be small additional features..
why can't people just fuking wait..
they said they'll go into detail about fw 3.5 update very soon -.-

[FACTUAL evidence]

No. XGC won't come til around 2012. Be patient for another 2 years please.

[BrianB]

its amazing how a feature thats so demanded by the ps3 fanboys, is also downplayed by them when arguing against XBL, hypocritical fanbase

[raztad]

Why do you talk as is the same person speaking both sides?

Some dont care, some do. It is as simple as that.

BTW. Pointless speculative article fails.

I'm more concerned about performance than anything else. PS3 OS memory footprint is big enough as it is right now (50M or so). I hope Sony find a way to free some more memory, which can only benefit new games..

[JD_Shadow]

Maybe because PS3 gamers see it as a good feature that if they don't have it won't cause them to hate everything about it, while the 360 fanboys taunt them by claiming X-Game chat on the 360 is the second coming of Christ that will absolutely KILL PSN if it's not in there.

In other words, it'd be a nice feature to have, but it's not like they're demanding refunds of their PSN+ subscriptions because of its absence.

EDIT@raztad: He's probably just trolling. We all know that's one way of getting started (leaving a trap so people can "expose" their "hypocrisy" by claiming there's no middle ground on the topic. As you can clearly see, it's not a well thought out trap).

[WildArmed]

stereotypical much?
I dont think you understand what opinions are... and how stereotyping a group makes you look stupid.

Once you do, come back and re-read your sentence.

[Cots1]

Maybe 3.60

[yoghurt]

and I STILL don't see why people want cross-game-chat, strange if you ask me

in what situation would you want to talk to someone, while you are playing a game and they're playing something different?

[RPcinemas]

if you have friends maybe ?
its not necessarily a different game cross chat, some people would like the idea of private chat in say call of duty without some annoying kid screaming down the mic every minute.

[8-bit]

I play Killzone 2 a lot and I'll do the same with KZ3. The games have the ability to do voice chat. I play with a clan and often we are logging into the game at different times and still need to talk while it's loading. Finding a room or a clan war would just be easier if we were in a cross game voice chat so that we could be spread around instead of waiting in the same lobby. Just makes life easier.

[yoghurt]

Ok, so I think I see why now
See I just text/phone to arrange games etc, but I guess this feature just makes it easier to do in one place

[FFXI101]

It depends I guess. For example, I was playing COD4 while two of my friends were playing Blur I found it was annoying to listen to their conversation.

We are playing two different games and to hear them talking about the stragy only distract me while I was playing COD4, therefor I would not use this feature if we were playing different game. but that's just me.

[XactGamer]

no

[jay2]

I wish, but Sony are so stubbon they won't listen to what people want.

[RPcinemas]

i dont think its because they are stubborn, i dont think that the xmb is capable of allowing multiple programs?

[dosgrtr]

why not?motorstorm:pr and a few other games have custom soundtracks and ac2 had an in-game browser i think

[BrianG]

oh they never listen to the people, remember those grey boxes on your friends list? Why did they change them? idk, maybe cause people asked.

They try to do what they can, something like XGC is not an easy task, same as universal in game music. It would be quite the change to the OS and will probably come in a nice size update. Plus getting every developer from the past and future to agree to implement the feature? Probably not going to be easy 4 years in.

Maybe revenue from PS+ will give them some needed money to work some magic and get some features out the door. But for now I am perfectly happy having an ever evolving console, I mean think about it, did our PS2's have firmware updates haha. Lets enjoy the little things.

[oldjadedgamer]

No.

Rumor still is that EA games are holding back cross game chat.

[Petro89]

They had it in writing on the official PS site before that it was coming as part of PS Plus.

That doesn't just happen by accident...

[divideby0]

please bring it so we dont have to deal with nitwitts who keep writing blogs and articles about it..

they make it sound like this is the end all of all features

psst... REAL GAMERS WANT TO PLAY GAMES ONLINE FOR FREE, NOT features

[JD_Shadow]

"psst... REAL GAMERS WANT TO PLAY GAMES ONLINE FOR FREE, NOT features "

Psst...real gamers would want BOTH: free online play WITH the extra features. Why should one HAVE to choose there, and why would asking for special feature DQ you from being a "real" gamer?

[Lipscomba]

No! Unless they say it will!

[bobdog626]

Do Microsoft have a Patient on it .Would you Pay for crosschat .Just don't know?

[punisher99]

Patented doesnt mean anything. If you infringe on a patent, you just pay royalties to the Patent owner.

[SolidSystem]

you can have a patient for how its done, but that doesn't mean there arnt other ways to do the same thing. someone has a Patient on blu-tooth wireless controllers, but MS still made their own version.

computer programs are cool like that.

[SolidSystem]

disagree... over common fact? looks like my stalkers might be back.

[Scotland-The-Brave]

Its PATENT not patient.
BTW i didnt disagree

[XactGamer]

MS most likely owns the patent like they do with custom soundtracks for every game. MS was probably working on cross game chat a couple years before the 360 launched. I'm even sure cross game chat was around for the first Xbox but it couldn't run it. Sony probably didn't even know about this feature so they had no one working on it and didn't design XMB to add it later on. No one even knew when these consoles came out that cross game chat would be such a desired feature. It's should be obvious by now that there is somthing preventing Sony from adding cross game chat.

[JD_Shadow]

And to think that the reasons why a patent doesn't prevent Sony from delivering on ANY feature (and thereby proving your last sentence completely wrong) has been explained on here COUNTLESS times, can be Googled beyond belief, and could be explained by just about everyone.

Hell, two people, in this very comment thread, even brought the counterpoint up.

[yewles1]

Ugh, again with this crap. Why don't guys start asking Sony JAPAN for the feature, since THEY'RE in charge of FW's. There's obviously NO communications with the other two regions going on, and people need to see that.

[PrinceOfAnger]

hope its true.

[Desz]

Firmware 3.50 should bring XBox live service to the PSN, there, cross game chat fixed.

[punisher99]

What you guys dont understand is. Its very very hard to implement a universal mandatory feature such as cross game chat and in game HDD msuic once the console is already out. Because you have to back log it to work properly with every single game. And when they find a game that it doesnt work properly with, it slows their progress down. And they have to get it to work with that particular game because the developers and publishers don't want their game to seem inferior. Sony knows people have been asking for x-game chat and in game music. They have been working on it for quite a while. But unfortunately its a very very very tough thing to do once your console is already out and has had a ton of games already on it.

[SolidSystem]

not necessarily. music was different because it over wrote the games audio with what you were listening to. Xgame chat is just a function of the OS and has nothing to do with the game. the only possible problem might be RAM and processing power. you cant hand the devs part of a cake, tell them they can do what ever they want with it, then take away another chunk of the cake after they made something for it.

[punisher99]

The thing is. They had cross game chat ready to release at one time. But a certain developer, it was either EA or Activision forced them not to release it because it wasnt working properly with one of their past titles. And they threatened to sue sony and even drop all support of playstation.

[SolidSystem]

@ punisher

any evidence of this or just rumors?
X game chat is part of the OS and as such doesnt touch the game. they make changes to the in game oS all the time, they even made it smaller. as long as X chat doesnt start eating into resources that the game needs, it will be fine

[punisher99]

Go to google.com and search this exact phrase. "anonymous email from Sony about cross game chat" This was months, probably atleast 6 months ago maybe longer. When you google that phrase. Lots of info comes up. This link is something from Kotaku as well. http://kotaku.com/5347123/i...

[rekof]

Improve Internet browser (fucker crashes PS3 sometimes,.. outsource it), .MVK container support, maybe online saves backups, (cloud)..

I shit on cross-game chat,..

[problemchild84]

I notice that the browser causes the PS3 to freeze sometimes too. It seems to freeze alot less often (at least my PS3 anyway) when you wait for the loading indicator in the top right corner of the screen to disappear

[Allen46]

OMG not this again look people it's been almost 4 years and there's no X-game chat it's not going to happen the PS3 just can't do it. The thing lags when you bring up the XMB never mind X-game chat. NOT GOING TO HAPPEN

[SnakeShady]

features?
it's THE feature.
not an additional one.

[mcstorm]

Well yet anther fetcher I will not be using on my PS3 im not into the 3D stuff I just don't like or see the point in having glasses on when playing games and I don't use bluray as I stream all my movies from my server. Give the ps3 owners what they want rather and stuff they don't want and really how many ps3 users have a 3d tv because only around 30% of people with a TV have a HD tv so to have 3d you looking at at the most 5%.

[BrothaDave]

I'm to the point where I don't care. CGC is annoying, I rarely even answer invites or go in parties because I actually want to pay attention to the game I'm playing. It comes in handy but the feature is not that big of a deal. All mp games have chat for that game and that is what matters most imo. I just want netflix on the xmb, which netflix themselves said would be done for this update....so tic, toc

[xAlmostPro]

its a bigger feature than people think, they'll probably need to create out of game parties aswell as the structure for allowing x game chat..

im personally not fussed for it, i hate playing say singleplayers and having people talk to me unless there in the room of course.. but if i need to talk to somebody while in a different game a message is enough for what i usually have to say.. i mean when i want to play and talk to people i use in game party chat because we're playing the same game, i usually play games they dont have to get away from that and just chill out.. i wouldnt want spammed with chat invites everytime i play a single player game or already when im already in a party lol in game invites are annoying enough when you in a party

[MaximusPrime]

Seriously, I dont care about cross game chat...

[btk]

Maybe because it is the only thing that the XB360 crowd can bring up in the barrage of Move vs Kinect news.

And still I ask: Why? Why would I want to talk to someone playing CoD while I am playing LBP2? It is a minor feature that is not that big a deal.

[RPcinemas]

its not only different games you can have private chat in the same game ! least you wont hear idiots shouting every 2 seconds

[SolidSystem]

as RP said

i would also like to add, i just like talking to one of my good friends often. even if hes not playing halo with me, or i'm looking or checking out demos, we can still talk about what we thought of reach.

[Scotland-The-Brave]

Its still not an essential feature. Its simply not needed. You want to speak to someone, email them or phone them.

I wish my PS3 could make beer, should sony release an addon for that?

[DarkFantasy]

No,No it will not.don't hype FW updates lol

[Hyperguy20]

FFS! NO! OF COURSE NOT!

[Dellis]

Cross game chat is stuck in HOME

[NarooN]

Lol, hell no. Sony doesn't really care about it because several insiders revealed last year the real reason we don't have it. (Drop me a PM as I don't feel like explaining it now) The 3.50 update will most likely ONLY add in the 3D Blu-ray stuff and maybe some super minor feature like always.

[LeonSKennedy4Life]

Who cares?!?

Will any of you use this?

[Blaine]

I sure as hell don't.

I'm pretty sure everyone who claims to care about it aren't even interested in using it, they just want to be able to say "PSN has X-Game chat now too, suck it Live." It's just immature.

I wouldn't use the feature if it were available.

[LOOK_AT_THIS_I]

you dont care about xg chat but you comment on the article...dumb

For the life of me I dont understand why you idiots don't like free added features that some people might enjoy. It adds value to the product damn.

My reason for wanting it it to just be able to communicate with my buddies while playing COD/MOH etc....that way I dont have to waste time trying to mute all the obnoxious, racist, douchebags who want to scream inot the mics and play their crappy ass music.

Its a pain in to have to go through every individual who abuses the mic in the room just so I can hear my team/clan/friends in a game. Most of you who complain about xg chat and how it ruins your gaming experience piss and moan about not getting to listen to your music in game. Is that not distracting as well? If the developer had in mind for you to listen to lady gaga while you play COD im sure it would have been added in right, it adds value to your experience xg chat would add value to others.

YOU DONT LIKE IT, DONT USE IT. If I wanted to use a phone I would, this is about pure convenience.... (steps off soap box)

[drdre74]

why are people still talking about cross game chat with every update? This is dumb its not going to happen its been damn near 3 years

[mac4u10]

Omg when will people stop with this Xgame chat rubbish

[GigaGaia]

It doesn't need Cross Game Chat. In fact, I hope it never get it. Why would you speak to someone who is not in the same game as you? So retarded.

[Belasco]

I dont really play online with my PS3 so cross game chat doesnt matter to me, at least. Its more of a hardcore machine that I enjoy single player exclusive games on, like Demons Souls, Uncharted 2, Ratchet & Clank, etc. I feel their are alot of PS3 owners out there that are the same.

[gamer8179]

You might as well give up on cross game chat. One of the reason the psn is free is so sony can be lazy and not add real features, but instead give you a party text room, or instead of demos, give you a rating system. Playstation plus is so half-ass done its not even funny. Instead of creating new games for you, you get discounts on old games, and free trails on really old games. Oh, I almost forgot about the 24 hour exclusive demos you sometimes get. That right there is worth the $50 a year.

[iamnsuperman]

Cross game chat isn't a concern for me partly for not talking while playing online and I like to talk to my friends in person soooo......but for the thousands of PSN users who want it, it will be a welcome feature but for me not so much rather have other features like 4od and things like that

[Dreadknux]

Brilliant. Not only has this story copied word-for-word my own article at SPOnG.com - http://spong.com/article/22... - but it took the last line of said article, which was clearly a joke, and ran it as a headline.

I am disappoint.