Some PS3 Fimware Updates Optional

A while ago, I complained about the annoyance of the regular mandatory firmware updates. If you didn't update, you couldn't play online or use the chat functions to contact your PSN buddies. Very annoying, especially if you want to play at that moment or talk to one of your friends. Of course if you hadn't played in a while and you finally did find some time for online gaming, you'd be required to do the update which sometimes was horrendously slow. In fact, I stopped downloading the firmware updates through the PS3 and instead used a download manager with multiple connections to get the update from the Sony site. From there, I would copy it to a USB stick and update, although the PS3 doesn't always recognize the contents properly, as I mentioned in the previous article.

This has changed with the 2.80 firmware. Did Sony read my post? Doesn't matter, either way 2.80 is not a mandatory update. Kudos to Sony for making the change.

Here's what Eric Lempel, Sony Director of Network operations had to say in an interview with PC World (Why PC world???): "We actually gave consumers the option to update. What I mean by that is, prior to 2.80 you had to update. So you'd turn on your PS3 and it would say, you know, if you want to to in the store, if you want to play an online game, or go into PlayStation Home, it would say there's an update available, please update before moving any further.

With 2.8 it was an option. Users didn't have to update when it released, and actually weren't prompted to do so because there weren't any costumer-specific functionality. I'd say a majority of consumers out there who just wait to get hit by these updates didn't even know about it. They might still not know about it."

About time, but better late than never. Let's have few mandatory updates please, only if they're significant!