Get the XMB on the PS3 at any time, petition-style!

by Nick Doerr { Apr 12th 2007 at 12:00PM }

With a little over 2,000 signatures, it seems like the majority of PlayStation 3 owners have signed this petition already (har, har, har... if you can't laugh at yourself, you'll never smile at others or some such saying). What's the petition say? Here you go, baby birds:

"Sony, we want access to the XMB in game including custom soundtracks. At GDC 06 you showed access to the XMB, and so did early dev kits but they haven't made it to the final console. Early research suggested PS3 reserves 64mb of the main RAM for the XMB, but we currently have no access to the XMB at all. Please add this through a firmware upgrade to the PS3." Ending with a sincerely, the undersigned, you know it's official.

This would be a fantastic feature -- the ability to toss on some music mid-game, send a message, search the web for clues/other stuff made specifically for a game to get you more involved... among other things. Would you want to see this feature? What else could it bring to the table? Oh, and... sign the petition if you want to. But petitions hardly ever work.

Tags: PlayStation 3, Playstation3, PS3, Sony, XMB

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Jay @ Apr 12th 2007 12:24PM

hell yea i already signed it...this is by far the most important feature missing from the ps3

John @ Apr 12th 2007 12:30PM

If you write an acronym, you should probably somewhere in the text say what it means. We can deduce that XMB is something about adding music, some new functionality. Don't know what it stands for, though.

j @ Apr 12th 2007 12:34PM

B.S. petitions never work, what about that Bioshock petition that lead to the creation of a collectors edition: http://www.joystiq.com/2007/03/31/fan-demand-prompts-bioshock-collectors-edition/

John @ Apr 12th 2007 1:00PM

Heres a petition for ya lol
http://www.petitiononline.com/ps3/petition.html

Bland @ Apr 12th 2007 1:04PM

I agree with #2. I don't have the slightest clue what the hell you're talking about.

Macrike @ Apr 12th 2007 1:08PM

@John,

Everyone that owns a PSP or PS3 must know what a XMB is. I mean, c'mon, it's the main menu of the console, and if you use a but of Google you will get the answer in less than a minute.

XMB = Cross Media Bar = The main menu of the console.

ShadowHawk01 @ Apr 12th 2007 1:08PM

@ #2 and #6

Wikipedia to the rescue: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XMB

DirtDiver @ Apr 12th 2007 1:14PM

signed,

Off topic - Any word on anyone getting wireless to work with Linux on the PS3?

hoos30 @ Apr 12th 2007 1:17PM

... or, you could just get a 360 and enjoy these features out of the box. (I keed, I keed!)

Seriously, this petition if useless. I'm sure Sony already has these things high on their TODO list.

If you want to do the world some good, sign the 360 GH2 petition instead :-)

SuicideNinja @ Apr 12th 2007 1:32PM

I'm in. Anything to make this thing have better usability; it desperately needs it.

Signed.

PS for the lazy: XMB = Cross Media Bar (the rather obnoxious menu system the PSP and PS3 uses)

Erick @ Apr 12th 2007 1:36PM

Please add...

RSS support
More video Codec support (I can't watch QuickTime videos?)

Erick @ Apr 12th 2007 1:40PM

#2 & #5

Why are you reading PS3 fanboy if you don't know what the XMB is? Start off with Joystiq, then come back once you've grown into a full-fledged fanboy!

massive_98 @ Apr 12th 2007 1:52PM

I agree with Erick, I can't watch any videos off the internet. But I love the XMB. I had an original Xbox and you could barely do anything from the startup except listen to music or change the date.

Yay for Me!

Travis @ Apr 12th 2007 2:26PM

The problem with this petition is it only works under the assumption that they are choosing not to add this functionality. It seems pretty obvious that this is due to technical reasons, and they are probably working feverishly to fix this or add similar functionality.

Sony needs to do this no matter what, a petition doesn't help or hurt that fact. I mean, as it is right now, there's no way to check messages you receive from friends in-game. That's gotta be something they have long-term plans on fixing.

nick @ Apr 12th 2007 3:28PM

please please please sony add this feature

Twenynge @ Apr 12th 2007 4:01PM

Be careful what you wish for, people.

Currently, XMB takes up 64 mb of XDR memory and 32 mb of GDDR3 memory (video memory) AT ALL TIMES. This leaves only 416 mb of memory for developers to utilize when creating games.

For comparison's sake, the Xbox 360 dash only uses 32 mb of memory, leaving developers with 480 mb of memory.

This translates into lower res textures for PS3 games when compared to Xbox 360 games. Developers have been complaining about this, and Epic has gon on record saying that GoW could not have been done on the PS3 specifically because it doesn't have as much memory as the Xbox 360.

In summary, if you want textures in your games to look crappier on your system than your buddies Xbox 360, by all means sign the petition. Otherwise, I suggest somebody start a petition to REMOVE unecessary features from the XMB and give the memory back to the people making the games.

Nick @ Apr 12th 2007 4:05PM

How do some of you own a PS3 or even PSP for that matter and not know what the XMB is?

scott @ Apr 12th 2007 4:17PM

I thought the ps3 only had 256 mb of ram, Twenynge?

John Ericson @ Apr 12th 2007 4:31PM

Excuse me I'm some what new to the PS3! It would be helpful to me if the article explained what XMB stands for and perhaps included a short description of what it is? Just my advice!

alessandro @ Apr 12th 2007 5:43PM

I agree with Twenynge - that petition would be much more useful! Screw these features if the games may suffer as a result. I dont know why this is such a big deal - if the music in a game is crap I just turn music to 0 in options and get a cd/mp3s goin on stereo/computer

Also if you dont know what XMB is and your a regular here you should be ashamed of yourself.
If these people are smart enough to search and find their way here then they should be smart enough to do a simple search on google or whatever.

Sounds to me like some 360 knobs trying to make ps3 fans seem like dumbasses. Im suprised that there hasnt been replys from the 360 lovers along the lines of " lolz tey don even no therz own menu systemz!!!1!!111! "

vizunary @ Apr 12th 2007 6:17PM

Where is the DVD upconvert update, along with ps2/1 games? Wasn't this rumored to be in this summer's update? Anyone know?

Twenynge @ Apr 12th 2007 8:19PM

The PS3 has 256 mb of XDR "system" memory and 256 mb of GDDR3 "video" memory. Currently, XMB reserves 64 mb of system memory and 32 mb of video memory for its own use.

With the PSP, Sony released the system with a certain amount of memory reserved for the XMB, then subsequently implemented all of the features they wanted to. Once they did that, they realized that they were never using the amount of memory that they had initially reserved, so they released a firmware patch that gave a portion of the reserved memory back to the developers. Games developed after the firmware patch had access to more memory than those developed early in the system's life cycle.

I am not opposed to the feature being discussed in any way. I am merely stating that the more "stuff" that the XMB needs to run while games are being played, the larger the overall memory footprint XMB will need. I'd rather have the XMB be as bare bones as possible so that the PS3 may get some sort of memory refund in the future like the PS3 did. The more useless crap it needs to run while games are running, the smaller the refund will be.

If I have to choose between higher quality games or my XMB running a bunch of trash, I choose games.

My two cents.

Bangbang... @ Apr 13th 2007 12:46AM

I have two questions

1.)Isnt playstation home suppose to add all of that functionality? I thought Home was going to add friends list, cross game chat, cross game invites, and access to a virtual psp(cross media bar) during gameplay.

2.)If it doesnt add these features, wtf is it for?