Chat with chums on Sony's PS3

Review: Sony PlayStation 3 {PS3} Update 2.70

Rating: ***\ (3.5/5)

Upside: Text-chat while gaming with friends on the list, normalization of volume across all media, selective backup and storage of movies downloaded from video store, copy/paste functions, larger file attachment can be send.

Downside: Lacks the expected features like cross game voice chat, in-game music; the increased file size still a bit on the lower side

Overview: On April 4 this year, Sony announced its latest update, version 2.70 for PS3. Now, you’ll be able to chat with up to 15 online friends using the Wireless Keypad, on-screen keyboard, or other compatible keyboard peripherals. Not only can you chat with your friends instantly, but you can also access Text Chat while playing PS3 games and even participate in up to three chat rooms.

You can also sort your friends via their online status and attach larger files to the messages you send to your friends (file size has been increased from 1MB to 3MB). The video files that you may have purchased from the PlayStation store can now be backed up to an external storage device and then restored to PS3’s internal hard drive for playback – so you can clear up space on your hard drive and then restore the video anytime in the future.

But the new update completely misses the feature of cross-gaming voice chat as well as in-game music. Though the size of the file to be sent has been increased to 3MB, an increase of up to 5MB could have been a better option as the general size of an MP3 file or a song to be sent is around 4MB.

Nonetheless, with the next update coming after just 3 months, besides being free to the existing users, it is certainly welcomed by gamers all around the world.