I want to like the PS3 so much. It has great power, great graphics. I love the exclusives I have on it (Ratchet and Clank, Resistance, Uncharted, etc). But sometimes it’s like Sony is just trying to see how much I love it. Like the psycho girlfriend who flirts with other guys in the bar to see if you will get jealous.
My wife went out tonight for her monthly girls night out. Great, I thought, I can get some quality game time in while she gets some quality time in with her girls. But what to play… well I’d been doing a lot of XBox 360 in my man cave lately, and when my wife isn’t home, it’s a great opportunity to jump on the PS3, which is hooked up to the main TV. I recently finished playing Infamous 2, so the only game I have left to play on PS3 that I hadn’t played yet is Uncharted 3 so I popped it in.
I sat on the couch while the PS3 started up, controller in hand with anticipation, took a sip of water to get ready and… Update required. Hmm. Ok, time to do an update. How long could that take?
So I clicked OK to start and waited. And waited. And… oh look my wife is home! No Uncharted 3 tonight!
Working from a 15MB/S download high-speed internet connect, the entire update process took about 15-20 minutes to complete. Sadly, this is typical of all PS3 updates. For some reason they all take forever to download and implement updates. What’s even more frustrating is the comparison to XBox 360. Earlier today I had a few minutes at lunch so wanted to get in a round or two of Modern Warfare 3 on the 360. Started it up, and saw there was an update. Clicked OK and I was updated and on matchmaking within 1 minute!
I acknowledge that a lot depends on the nature and size of the update, but this experience seems to be the same scale regardless of the size of update. Large updates on XBox 360 are simply much faster and more seamless. Updates on PS3 are slow and cumbersome.
Please Sony – I want to love my PS3. Why do you make it so difficult? There’s no need to make me jealous, just let me enjoy our time together and I’ll like you for who you are!
over30americangamer 
don’t even get me started on the PSN store. Last week my roommate and I were trying to download Limbo from the PSN. We want to GIVE Sony money, sounds easy right?
First-off, I don’t remember my password buts saved so I auto-log into the store, when I try to purchase it I see that the card on-file is expired, so I look around for an update payments button. There is none. I find out after about 10 minutes of struggling that you have to quit the store and go to a different part of the PS3 UI to find some menu vaguely transaction related. That one requires I enter the actual password (which I don’t have), and there is no instruction on how to find your password. I know from previous interaction that you have to trigger a password reset from the PS3 (this can’t be done on the internet), but there is no instruction on how to do this.
After another 15 minutes we find how to do this (hitting triangle on some random menu that opens additional options, again there is no indication of this) and trigger a password reset.
This sends me an email with a link to reset the password, I do this, and get an error PSN network website is down. I try again, same result. Great. Googling the problem reveals legions of people complaining about the same thing, and on one forum somebody mentions you can go to the Sony Erricson website and initiate your password reset there. I do this, and it works.
Its another 15 minutes dealing with the god-awful typing interface to get all the information in, which finally works, and then another hour at some god-awful slow download speed to get the actual game.
Sony, why do you hate being in business so much? Upgrade your network, hire some god damned UI people, and, to your point, stop shoving hour long upgrades down our throats when we want to play a game for a few minutes.
/rant
That is crazy! I definitely agree that the PS3 has always had that feel of an interface that was never really tested against the general user base. It has a general “makes sense to the developer” feel. Want to reset your password? Sure just go to a submenu of the 5th menu over, hit triangle, then hit square, circle, x, then square 4 times, then circle once, then rotate the thumb sticks counter clockwise twice and we’ll send you an e-mail in 5 days with more instructions.
Insane!