I know I've posted this in various other threads, but I figured making a thread just for it would get more attention.
If the members and lurkers of VGChartz would be so kind, could you please vote on my idea for XMB access at any time.
We stay logged in to PSN while watching movies/videos, accessing the store, and playing PS1 games (both downloadable and via disc), so why can’t we access the XMB at these times? We can still receive messages and whatnot, and it’s annoying having to stop whatever you’re doing to respond, or having to stop to see if a friend who just logged on wants to play something, etc.
Making XMB access more universal would go a long way towards making the PSN experience more cohesive overall.
Honestly, I'd say one of the ps3’s biggest issues at launch was that it wasn’t so much a platform capable of doing many things (like Windows), but rather it was a bunch of different hardware that could do different things thrown together to make a platform. The software behind it all felt rather disjointed, doing barely enough to tie all the system's features together.
The XMB is the centerpiece of the ps3, and it’s odd that you can’t access the XMB at all times, like you can access your desktop at any time while on a PC or MAC. All new programs that have been added post in-game XMB have allowed you to access the XMB while in-use (Life with PlayStation, Home, etc.), and it’s only some of the features that were there at launch (DVD/Blu-ray playback, ps1 games) that still feel separated from the rest of PS3 experience.
They should make XMB as universal as it can be, except maybe while playing ps2 games, given that the ps3 currently switches to ps2 hardware to play ps2 games. If they can ever get ps2 games running via emulation on ps3 hardware, I'd hope they'd be able to implement XMB access at that time as well, though I know it'd be unlikely given how many resources ps2 emulation would probably consume.
So yeah, vote for universal XMB access!
