The PlayStation 3’s latest firmware update, 2.80, has come under much scrutiny and been tagged with having “secret features” which have gone unannounced by Sony. At last week’s Comic Con, Naughty Dog’s Sam Thompson, producer for Uncharted 2, stated that the latest firmware, despite having no visible improvements to end users, actually gave PS3 developers more internal memory to work with.
“…You know if you look at the game itself with the 2.80 engine update, you know we’re adding more memory, so we get a lot more utilization of the SPUs, so we increase our optimization of the Cell processor as well…“
However, SCEE has denied the existence of any “secret features” in the latest firmware. An SCEE representative stated the following:
“There’s no secret in firmware 2.80. Naughty Dog were actually talking about their engine 2.0, but in the ComicCon rush they simply got confused and said 2.80 referring to the latest firmware.
It’s just one of those minor firmware updates.”
Even Naughty Dog is changing their stance on the issue, as community manager Arne Meyer stated that Thompson incorrectly worded his statement, and that he was unable to fully respond due to the hectic environment found within Comic Con.
“This was just a typical blunder with all the info and people coming up to us constantly at the PS booth at San Diego ComicCon.
He was actually referring to Naughty Dog Engine 2.0 updates we made. We had just been making sure at the event that all the PS3s brought in were on FW 2.80, since that is what that build needed to run on, so I have no doubt it was top of mind.”
Sounds plausible enough. Make sure to stick with PlayStation LifeStyle as we’ll keep you up to date on all the latest firmware developments.
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