PS3 firmware 2.80 included improvements for game developers

Remember the recent and not so important 2.80 firmware update for the Playstation 3? It has been revealed that there are a few features that Sony have quietly added for firmware 2.80, mainly benefiting game developers.

According to this GameZine article, 2.80 has brought an increased character limit in text chat, as well as improvements to the VidZone service.

More importantly though, it is thought that the PS3 now has more RAM memory following a reduction of memory consumption for the PS3′s operating system.

For more evidence, check out these comments from the producter for Uncharted 2: Among Thieves:

“Naughty Dog is constantly working to improve every aspect of the gameplay; be it animation, lighting, sound, texture fidelity. 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 utilisation of the SPUs, so we increase our optimisation of the Cell processor as well.”

The news will certainly make us think more next time we see a basic ‘security update’ or ‘playback quality’ update in the future.

Let us know your thoughts on this.