Just as I was going to a have quick go on Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare on my PlayStation 3 I couldn't. Before I could go online I had to update to the latest firmware update, firmware 3.0. So I download this and here's what I found.

The first thing you might notice is the start up screen and the background. The start up screen now says PS3 in the new style logo instead of "Sony Computer Entertainment" and the default background (the wavey lines that changes colour depending on the time) now has these nice sparkles floating around. Not really important but does look nice. I've heard that new features have been made available for developers to make interactive backgrounds. I'm looking forward to seeing some nice creative backgrounds. Maybe the man on the desert island I used to love.

Next thing is the clock and date display in the top right. This now shows your avatar, number of friends online, number of unread messages, date, time and a little clock. This is an improvement as before you wouldn't know about new messages unless you saw it arrive. They've also moved the battery level indicator left so not to cover the time. This is a great tweak as you easily see if you've got messages and see the time in game faster. Before when in the heat of battle you had to wait for the battery level to disappear often causing you to die. Also the list of friends has been updated to have a background behind each friend, probably to make them easier to read when using the XMB in game.

The main big update is the What's New application that come up by default. What this does is show you the last 2 or 3 games you've played, 2 when you've got a disc. Also above this it shows you some features from the PSN store and below it shows links to websites about new pages. I've heard that this will link to things like videos and other media in the future. Again a nice looking update and some use. It's clearly a way to promote the store and up coming games but they why it has been done is more to be informative and so isn't intruding. You can change this from being the default screen in the settings. Sony have also added the PSN store icon to the Games menu on the XMB be. Again I think they are trying to push more traffic to the store to get more sales.

The last change I've noticed I believe is a UK only update. Under the new TV menu (not new if you've got PlayTV) is a short cut to BBC's Bigscreen version of the iPlayer. As iPlayer is only available to residents of the UK then I imagine it'll only be there for UK users. It's really good to have iPlayer so accessible and it shows the BBC has added the compatibility for PS3 users. For me it'll solve the problem that I get watching iPlayer full screen my my Mac Mini that's hooked up to my TV. The problem I had was that it would freeze after about 10mins or so interrupting what I was watching.

Over all the firmware 3.0 update is very good one. The addition of iPlayer is great! The message and clock update is the best feature in my eyes. It shows that Sony are listening to users, if not a bit slowly and just in time for the new PS3 slim that's. As for future updates I would love to see some type of universal friend invite system but as a hugely requested feature it should have been added by now.