Treat this as rumour for now – Sony hasn’t made an official announcement yet – but the source does seem to have some credentials so it may not be far off the mark. According to it there is a big firmware update coming for the PS3 soon and is set to include a number of essential improvements.

Among the fairly long list (check here for the full rundown) are a few highlights: the XMB will now be available during gameplay (it doesn’t say if you’ll be able to play your own music in-game though); a wallpaper feature has been added so you’ll be able to do away with the nice-but-bland affair we’re currently stuck with; you can select your own photo to act as avatar on friends list – that’s one up on Xbox Live; and an RSS Channel has been added to the Network menu.

If this proves correct, the PS3 is (at last) shaping up really nicely to be a strong rival for the Xbox 360’s excellent menu design and when Home launches we might even be able to put the PlayStation Network in the same quality ballpark as Live.

There’s no mention of a release date as this is still unofficial. The only indication we have is ‘very shortly’ but doesn’t explain what happened to firmware 1.80 and 1.90. Guess we’ll have to wait and see.

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