PS3 System Update Today
 

New logo and new features are available. The battery meter has finally been moved.:-P

looks pretty snazzy, but i had to find 1 lone unread message to delete :@ i have 3800 D:

The new friendlist interface looks like s****, still no party chat which works ingame. (Sony is not listening to its consumers).

they are working on party chat. probably comes to ps3 start of 2010

i personaly HATE THE NEW UPDATE it was better as it was

according to a rumour which was mooted by, what is supposed to be a, fairly reputable source the reason cross game chat can't be implemented on the PS3 is because of a certain LARGE games publisher, some of whose games are poorly coded and thus dont support party chat and because of this they are suggesting it will make their games look bad and have suggested to sony that if they impliment party chat at this time then said publisher will drop support for the PS3.

Although I love being able to talk in party chat it does make certain games a complete cheatfest.
Gears of War 2 for example. In game chat you can talk to your teammates until you die where you can only talk to other dead players (either team). Once dead you can follow any friendly player or move to several predetermined camera points on a map. and friendly or enemy players have their names above their heads making them handily easy to spot.
Now with Party chat when players die they just become spotters for their team calling out enemy locations
In Chrome Hounds team chat was also a huge mechanic in the game which is now totally ignored.

Also no-one is ever in game chat anymore so making friends in a game is virtually impossible.

Sony and EA have already rubbished that rumour.

fair enough but they would want to rubbish it wouldn't they? if it's got nothing to do with that why isn't it already in?

Its one of the least plausible reasons I've seen. Sony brought out their trophy system that did not support games made before they launched it despite that making older games less desireable for a lot of players. They launched HOME that supports game launching for a small number of games. More will come but there are many more that don't and never will support it making them less desireable but they still went ahead with HOME. One reason which is often touted (and I'm not promoting this as the reason, just saying its another rumour thats gone around) is that Microsoft patented the technology of cross game chat on a console. Who knows what the real reason is but I find it hard to believe its one publisher stopping it when their games already support voice chat on the 360.