As if the recent release of manic teddy bear themed visual novel Danganronpa 2, or the news of the Tales of Hearts R day one edition wasn't good enough, Playstation Vita owners now have yet another reason to smile with the release of System Software 3.30. The new update brings custom themes to the console, along with updates to the trophy and calendar functions, and a whole host of little tweaks.
By far the biggest update is the aforementioned themes, letting you give your console that personal touch. Affecting the background music, application icons, start and home screens, themes have a similar sort of effect to those on the PS3, only more far reaching. Sadly, rather than being freebies, it seems paid theme downloads will soon be available from the Playstation store, with non-gaming themes such as Four Seasons, Stitching, and Crystal making up the initial line-up, while themes based around blockbuster games like Uncharted: Golden Abyss, and Tearaway will be available in the near future. Interestingly enough, Sony's addition of themes to their gaming handheld comes just ahead of Nintendo's planned theme options for the Nintendo 3DS - a feature which is also "coming soon".
Crafty!
Perhaps the second most interesting feature is the ability to view the rarity of the trophies you've unlocked, letting see how common (or otherwise) they are amongst owners of the game. Awarded for completing certain objectives in games, trophies are one of our favourite Playstation features - and it's an even nicer ego massage to discover the trophy you've just unlocked has only been earnt by 1% of the game's other players. A similar feature has been available on the PS4 for a while, but if nothing else, it's a handy tool seeing which Trophies you've earnt are the real achievements.
The Calender feature has also been updated to allow easier sharing of events, letting you send event files via messages or email to friends, so they can add a "gaming night", or something similar to their own calendar. There's also the ability to add people to events who are not on your friends list, which would come in handy if we ever used it.
You can download the firmware by heading into the Settings menu > System Update > Update using Wi-Fi. Just make sure you've saved your game before doing it, as you'll be prompted to close all running applications!
Here's the full, and very lengthy list of fixes, improvements and additions in the latest firmware:
SettingsTrophies
- Added [Theme & Background]. You can download themes from PlayStation Store to change the icons and backgrounds displayed on the home screen.
Calendar
- You can now see how rare a trophy is. Select [PSN] and then select the title.
Miscellaneous
- You can now add other players besides your Friends when you create events.
- You can now save events received through [Messages] and [E-mail]. Select the calendar file inside the message to view the event, then select [Options] > [Add to Calendar] to save the event to your calendar.
- References to the product name on VTE-1000 series system screens have been changed to [PlayStation TV] or [PS TV].
- You can now adjust the volume level of your PS TV system. Press and hold the PS button, and then select [Master Volume] on the screen that is displayed.
