Last week, the PS3′s Firmware was updated to 2.80. The story was the same as it always is. People went looking for all of the changes under the hood. The generic line from Sony was “the playback quality of some PLAYSTATION 3 format software has been improved.”

The PS3 owners themselves struck first. Following the comments on the official PlayStation.Blog, the second comment started in with “does it have friends party chat?” – no. #3: “is the os footprint been reduced?” – no (though, admittedly, this is probably more of a misunderstanding of how hard drive sizes are measured. Poster 8 of the over 600 comments kindly stated: “one day i hope to see a full set of release notes, no matter the length. just knowing what’s REALLY going on would be great.” But it wasn’t long before comment 12 struck back asking for yet another feature that wasn’t planned for this release, and #40 commenting on a ‘dream features list’ for 3.00, though stating it more like a fact.

#66 chimed in with a list of features the 360 is supposed to be getting this fall. Then the 360 fanboys start in like sharks on chud. The PS3 owners strike back with a few level headed posts, for example #349, stating “We all will be satisfied sooner or later…and yall should really stop rushing this xgame chat, comparing it to 360..maybe if its not rushed it will end up being better than expected.“

Fact is, it does boil down to the fact that there have been a series of weak updates from Sony. A lot of long-requested features have not yet been added, and some minor bugs that one imagine could be an easy fix (or never should have happened in the first place) have been ignored, including the long standing battery-over-the-clock issue, which, Lempel recently said, will be fixed soon. Using this numbering system for their Firmware updates, I certainly hope that Sony’s 3.0 update, whenever it happens, isn’t just another release, but really contains the updates that many of us have wanted for a long while.

Sometime, I’ll get in to it with the Wii System Updates. Perhaps someday a real friends list will show up on the Wii, and they’ll make it more than just a sofa-couch social experience!

SkyDrive, MyPhone, Hotmail, Live Mesh… all of the Microsoft “products” give you free webspace for your files. Websites like Meebo manage millions of accounts for users, free of charge, all with massive friends lists. At the time of writing, Google is offering 7.3GB of space with a GMail account. Microsoft offers “cloud computing” on a large scale through services like Azure, for a fee.

“Cloud Computing” has become quite the buzz word, lately… though the concept has been around for quite a while. I’m a huge computer geek, but I’ll try not to get too technical: “The Cloud” is basically any network that is generally spread all over the world, and is sometimes just a generic term to define “the Internet.” If something is saved/stored in “the cloud” you can access it “over the internet” at any time. As cloud computing grows in popularity, several companies are still wondering how to benefit from this, while shelling out for massive amounts of data storage, all in an attempt to impress their customers. If you can have access to your information at any time, why wouldn’t you want that ease of access?

“What does this have to do with gaming?” I hear a few people starting to mutter… the answer is already on the lips of most readers: everything. Through podcasts, written interviews, comments, forum discussions, and phone calls… we have all heard, time and time again, that the Xbox Live Friends List “is what it is.” Sticking users with a limit of 100 friends. Now, true, 100 seems manageable… the majority of us don’t LITERALLY have more than 100 friends, and the “Players” list should facilitate any users that you play with on a regular basis, but aren’t quite friends. But how is it that I can have 7 GB of email space, but the folks at Xbox can’t give us more than 100 friends? AOL’s Instant Messenger gives you 500. But this just isn’t your typical rant about the Friends List. Cloud storage goes so much deeper. Right now, the Xbox team does an amazing job at helping you track and display your Achievements through Xbox.com. You also get to share your digital self, as your avatar and gamerpics are available through the website.

Now, true, having more information available over the internet, and the ability to Recover my Gamertag at any location (if I’m patient enough) is also appealing. I can hang with a friend and be myself, from his couch or mine. Now comes the tricky part. The Playstation is getting better at doing all of these things as well, and PSN is also still free. “Here we go again,” you sigh, “another Xbox Live should be free rant.” Not at all. Now pay attention, because this is where it gets tricky. A lot of people think Xbox Live should be free… fine, whatever. I don’t mind paying for it – but the biggest benefit of paying for live is the MultiPlayer aspect. I’m not a big multiplayer gamer, to this day. I love storyline driven games, and playing when I don’t have to worry about whiny voiced brats, or staying up until God awful hours of the morning when my friends get out of work. Trade me features. Make multiplayer gaming free for everyone. But if you do that, nobody would ever pay for Xbox Live again. Unless, another feature was offered in its place. What feature am I talking about? The Xbox Cloud.

The Xbox Cloud would be a featured part of Xbox Live. Much as it exists now with Xbox originals, if you want to download a game and play it, have fun. Do I want to do that with “any” game? Maybe not quite, not yet… but it is a nice benefit to be able to delete the game from my local hard drive, and redownload it later without an additional fee. The Xbox Live Marketplace does a fantastic job with that. But the feature that I would gladly pay for: access to my Saved Game data, via The Xbox Cloud. That’s the highlight, the supreme feature, the boldest bullet point of my argument. Some people may be rolling their eyes, but I would hope that this would expand to “Games for Windows Live.”

You see, this past weekend I reformatted my computer’s hard drive, backing up the “My Games” folder – then reinstalled Windows Vista, reinstalled Gears of War for Windows, copied my “My Games” folder back over, and yet my saved game was gone. I get to start over, and I was all the way to General Raam. Frustrating. This would be a wonderful feature for Xbox Live, Games for Windows Live. You could easily free up space on your Xbox 360′s hard drive, never have to worry about going back to a game and worrying about whether or not you deleted files related to that gaming, never expecting to play it again. It would protect you against hardware failures (although, admittedly, Xbox 360 hard drive failure rate seems astonishingly low). For people upgrading to larger consoles and not bothering with Data Transfers, this would be an easy way to access your old saved games, or would facilitate faster transfer by giving you the ability to move saved games from your local drive to The Xbox Cloud before the transfer.

A feature like this isn’t likely to ever happen, as storing save game data for 20 million users would actually pile up. Perhaps some sort of statute of limitations, like the file must be access within 36 months, should be in place. It would take quite a bit, but I often wonder if every single Gmail user actually claimed all 7.3GB being offered, if Google could actually handle it. Again, that’s another free service – so why can’t at least some of my Xbox Live Gold subscription dollars go in to The Xbox Cloud storage feature? One can only dream. With the next generation of console we’ll see more titles available through digital distribution, but why not something to keep track of saved games? Just something to think about, next gen developers!

The game is a genius concept and was one of the most anticipated titles of all of 2008. The Playstation 3 exclusive was being looked forward to by all of the critics as a family friendly game, a new approach to video games, and a nod to creative players everywhere. Instead the game became all about a controversial recall and Super Mario Bros. level remakes.

I, myself, try not to buy in to the hype that surrounds games like this. If still have not seen the 2000 movie “Gladiator” because everyone said it was the best film I would ever see… I don’t like being letdown, nothing is ever as good as the hype. So I waited a while, passed up a few deals in the Sunday paper, and added LittleBigPlanet to my Goozex queue. After a little more waiting, the game finally arrived. The anticipation was over. I slapped the disc in… and waited. Evidently, I had been missing out on some 200+ megabytes worth of updates. So, once all of that was out of the way, I grabbed my controller and ran through a few tutorials, listened to the charming introduction and narrative that would follow me around. I completed tasks of varying difficulties, and unlocked the ability to play online (a feature I had yet to even look for, and hadn’t realized you had to play to unlock… quite a nuisance to other players, I’m sure).

With a scoreboard that makes little to no sense and trophies that requires true dedication to the inhabitants of this LittleBigUniverse, I found myself not caring about that aspect of the game. Which leaves… traversing through some sort of afterthought storyline, or playing levels designed by amatures. Neither of which sounded appealing. And then I stopped. I have stopped playing. I added the game back in to my Goozex trade queue, and within hours have seen a request pop up. I will probably even be shipping the game out this weekend.

A moment of silence to reflect. The base of the game is brilliant, lighting schemes, physics engine, the nearly limitless power to create… if you have the patience to work your analog stick and build everything in your world brick by brick. I did almost no level designing because my creativity doesn’t inspire me – other people’s does. I’m a writer, not an architect. As a kid, I got frustrated by Lego sets and G.I. Joe toys that had “some assembly required.” I built a desk upside down, once. I am not mechanically inclined. I wanted to see what the developers of the game could do – but evidently, beyond building a cool new engine with some fantastic texturing… not much. It’s like writing the world’s best novel with no main character, or the best painting ever of a bowl of fruit. It’s wonderful to look at, but not for long. There is nothing there to hold my interest, to keep me coming back.

I am by no means the first person to think of this game as a let down, but for being one of the saviors of the Playstation 3, I force myself to think that these really are dark times for Sony. Well, there’s always Resistance 2 and Killzone 2. The Killzone 2 demo didn’t make me think it was anything ground breaking, but I will give the full game a better shot at some point. Resistance 2 is waiting for me at home (since before LBP arrived), and I should be diving in soon. Both of those games excite me more, not just because they are action and First Person Shooter titles – but because they have engaging storylines.

It was a game that I was so anxious to play, and the fastest turnaround I have ever had for a game. I feel almost bad letting it go so soon, but I am comforted knowing that if I ever need my LittleBigFix, I can get a similar experience just by visiting the LittleBigPlanet website.