According to an analysis of the most recent PlayStation 3 Software Development Kit (SDK) by Inner Bits, version 1.80 now provides developers with a method of streaming music off the user's hard drive. While the utility costs 12MB to implement, it's assumed that the cost will decrease in upcoming SDK releases. And while that uses a decent bit of precious memory, custom soundtrack support is the number one most requested feature for the PS3 and developers are sure to take advantage of it.
Additionally, this update also drastically reduces the overall memory cost of the PS3's operating system. System memory usage was only dropped to 48MB from 52MB but the video memory usage dropped from 32MB to 24MB. The cost of other features like the Friends List also has been reduced across almost the entire board, making them enticing developers.
Also added was a screenshot utility at a measly 3MB and the ability to use the PSP as an additional monitor for a reasonable 8MB. Amazing additions in all and it will be exciting to see what developers do with all these new possibilities. But mainly -- yay custom soundtracks!














Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
8-21-2007 @ 10:17PM
johnxmzzhang said...
Aww I was hoping that they would implement it into the system so that you can use it in any game kind of like the xboxes. Because that way we can use the custome soundtrack in any game reglardless of whether it was new or old. I was hoping that they would send out a update with ingame xmb access that would allow you to play music or something similar. Oh well at least this is sign of improvement.
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8-21-2007 @ 10:22PM
carl said...
Does this mean I can finally place custom entrance music on SmackDown vs Raw 08? I definately hope so!
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8-21-2007 @ 10:40PM
snsr said...
wait ->
The ability to use your PSP as an additional monitor?!
They just sold me a PSP if any good games were to ever use it..
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8-21-2007 @ 10:41PM
snsr said...
Custom music FTW, of course. I think it's my favorite feature of the x360.
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8-21-2007 @ 10:42PM
Andir3.0 said...
Not if Smackdown vs Raw wasn't written using the 1.8 SDK and utilized the local music APIs.
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8-21-2007 @ 10:43PM
vh5150 said...
Yeah, this is not really what I was hoping for. Letting devs have access to this does not guarantee that they will do it, in most cases if it takes extra work they won't. This is what went down on Xbox Live for the original Xbox, not many games supported custom soundtracks. Do we know if they are going to let us stream music off a PC if the game does support Custom Soundtracks?
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8-21-2007 @ 11:02PM
Kxpuc said...
that's 26mb's free'd up which is alot for them to use and to add up all the new features at once (and not have max video users) it free'd up around 3mb's
getting the friend list down a bit more and the streaming thing and we'd be set. possibly SDK 2.0 for all that.
And any of the games could get updated if the developer wanted to add these features and clean up some glitchs
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8-21-2007 @ 11:02PM
MacBandit said...
Hmm 4MB of system memory saved. 8MB of video memory saved. Total = 12MB same as needed for custom sound tracks. Coincidence?
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8-21-2007 @ 11:13PM
stirlo said...
fully - i think i had the motorstorm soundtrack on for about... 3 days... then couldn't stand it any more...
Custom soundtracks are a much-needed feature, sony made a big mistake not including / encouraging developers to use it from day 1
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8-21-2007 @ 11:15PM
OTAM said...
They need to get this part of the menu when you hit the PS button,not a feature of the games.
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8-21-2007 @ 11:25PM
apease said...
Wow, I still have no idea what Sony's doing with all that system and video memory. For perspective, the ps2 had 36 MB total system and video memory. Sony's reserved 72 MB total, that's even more than the original Xbox! The XMB shouldn't take more then a few megabytes at the absolute most (and that's assuming in-game XMB), especially considering seldom used features could be loaded from the bios or harddrive when needed.
With that much memory reserved and the fast cpu and video chip, I could imagine them running Home in-game. Otherwise, they only reason I can come up with for them using that much memory is if they've hired the MS Vista team to write the ps3 OS.
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8-22-2007 @ 12:07AM
money_mike_preme said...
I hope dev's use the extra monitor psp feature as in the psp is the player 2 in a split screen game so player one can still have a full screen to himself. that would rock
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8-22-2007 @ 12:25AM
Bob said...
There was a video of a guy who showed off custom features. It's just up to developers to put it into the game, not sony.
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8-22-2007 @ 12:47AM
Joey_Numbers said...
IMO custom soundtracks are overrated. Just turn on your stereo... geesh.
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8-22-2007 @ 1:26AM
Thomas said...
All racing games, sports games, fighting games need custom soundtracks.
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8-22-2007 @ 1:32AM
afr said...
i hope custom soundtracks can be added through an update, that would be wicked for Motorstorm (not that i have it)
about the PSP thing, in games like Gran Turismo 5 you could use it as a mirror, now we realise why the mirror quality was so crap in the screenshots ;)
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8-22-2007 @ 1:34AM
mccomber said...
I'm glad that by making it something the developers have to implement it gives them a choice not to, and presumably allows them that much more memory to use for the actual game. This is a cool feature for some games, but not all.
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8-22-2007 @ 2:13AM
niz said...
I've never used the custom soundtrack feature on my Xbox.
In driving games I always turn off music altogether and in other games the music provided by the game itself is (for me) part of the game. You don't tamper with it. If you don't like it, then just turn it off.
If I wanted to listen to my own music while gaming, I would just turn off the music in the game (but leave sound effects on), and listen to music from CDs or MP3 collection.
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8-22-2007 @ 2:37AM
Pickoo said...
Does this mean that they aren't going to have the 'in-game XMB access' thing? They are just gonna let the developers decide which games they want you to have custom soundtracks???
Things like this are making me want to get an Xbox360 so much more...
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8-22-2007 @ 2:46AM
Extinction said...
I agree with apease. I don't know WTF they are doing with all that RAM. To put it in perspective, PSPs OS uses 5 MB. And custom soundtracks take up less than 1 MB in homebrew
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