2.40… Firmwhere? 

“PS3UPDAT.PUP” (133,507Kb) withdrawn due to installation issues. 

Wednesday 2 July 2008… the day when Sony’s console caught up & surpassed the functionality offered by the comparable Microsoft platform… but perhaps not as intended. 

As reported on the ’semi-official’ non-US Blog site for the PlayStation 3, ThreeSpeech.com, yesterday at 5:41pm (as the clock is an hour behind UK time), Sony have tried to justify the reason for the removal of the recent firmware revision (2.40) from their download servers on Wednesday this week: 

“We are aware of a number of consumers experiencing an issue with installing firmware 2.40 on PS3. While our consumer services department has seen a low volume of calls on this topic, we are committed to enabling the community and XMB access features delivered in the 2.40 update. In order to further assess the issue, we have temporarily taken the firmware offline for further testing. We are working diligently to isolate the problem for those few consumers and to identify a solution before we put the firmware back up.” 

“back up” as in ‘to annoy’? 

From the comments on the (full) official US Blog, it looks as if Sony took a full 24 hours before sanctioning an official update to the European customers via ThreeSpeech.com. I certainly read the statement above at 8:30am on Thursday. 

Although I rarely criticize SCEE, SCEA, or any of the Sony divisions, as I think they receive far too much negativity, the message here is that there is nothing like good customer service.  (Add your own punchline).  Maintaining a good communication channel in times of trouble should be essential. All registered PlayStation Network e-mail addresses could (and should) have been contacted with the statement (above) to reassure those who had downloaded the update.  I am presuming that Sony would be able to track which PSN Id has what firmware revision but, even if this is not the case & was an oversight during development of the console/network, then all customers could be contacted as a matter of course anyway. 

Well done to Sony for having the conviction to withdraw the 2.40 firmware revision, given the bad press they know it would generate.  If this were an Xbox 360 update & Microsoft took the same decision, then the problematic release would be seen as a minor glitch, and the whole issue not mentioned again thereafter. 

Sony does seem to always be on the defensive end of justifying their actions (or lack thereof). 

To their credit, however, on the previous occasions when firmware updates have proven to not be completely satisfactory for all installations, then Sony have quickly turned around these issues & released a newer, more stable, firmware revision in a matter of days. 

With this in mind, I would very much doubt a further update would be available before this weekend, so we can but hope for some better news next week. 

If anything, the current events should demonstrate how complicated the global release process is, and why Sony typically stages releases throughout the local regions to minimise risk in affecting all customers if an unforeseen issue occurs. 

Good things, of course, are worth waiting for.  The features in the latest firmware revision have been planned for almost twelve months, so a few days or weeks longer is not a problem in the relative scheme of what we do have available on the PS3 console at present. 

I am still waiting for the last update to “Tekken Dark Resurrection Online” (from March 2008) to be available in Europe (before “Tekken 6” is available), but am ‘consoling’ [arf, arf] myself with the fact that the “Cagney” update for “Burnout Paradise” is due in 6 days time. 

Just keep the information flowing, Sony. Some news is better than no news, even if it is not positive. 

BFN, 

fp.

(1upGamers.com Forums ModeraNtor)