At Gamescom today in Germany, Sony have released details of their upcoming firmware for their Playstation 3 Console, to be released this September, coinciding with the release of the Playstation 3 slim.
Adding on to the date and time display in the top right corner of the Xross Media Bar (XMB) will be the Status Indicator. It will now display the avatar used for your account, information on the number of your friends that are on-line and will also have a horizontal scrolling text space that will display news as it happens.
The battery indicator has also been moved which was one of the more annoying, and most requested features of the firmware update.
Replacing the Information Bar that is present in the current firmware will be the "What's New" section. Instead of lines of text with links to websites, the What's New section offers an album art style that will link to either Playstation related news or take you to a section of the Playstation Store.
Your ability to customize the XMB has also been improved, now you will be able to use dynamic animated themes for the XMB. The default theme has been improved to include sparkles that move across the screen, and also shown was a LittleBigPlanet Theme that has Sackboy running across a globe while a night and day cycles on the left.
There will also be a new collection of avatars for you to use for your profile, premium versions of either avatars and themes will be available to buy.
The year old Playstation 3 trophies will be getting an update also; now you will be able to differentiate trophies better between those included in a game, and trophies added in downloadable content after release.
This will let you see the percentage completed for different trophy sections of the base game and any add-ons, this will be included in games that are to be released, but wont affect older games at release.
Other small updates include short-cuts across the XMB for videos, games, etc. that will let you go straight to that section of the Playstation store without having to navigate through to get to your videos or game downloads.
The friends list has also been updated to improve viewing your friends list and profiles and will also show include viewing messages.
The update is reported to go live on the first of September, below you can find a short video of some of the new updates to the XMB.
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