background-downloading
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Wii U Spring System Update coming next week
Nintendo's Wii U will receive its Spring System Update sometime next week, president Satoru Iwata announced during this morning's Nintendo Direct event. The firmware update adds several quality of life improvements to the system, including improved load times when changing between software, or returning to the main Wii U menu. Also included is the Wii U Virtual Console.Additionally, users will now be able to transfer data between USB drives and install background-downloaded software while playing other games. Installed software also has the ability to automatically download and install updates, without requiring the user to run the software first. Furthermore, the Wii U will now continue to download and install software while the system is powered down. You'll also be able to hold "B" at start-up to boot directly into Wii mode, if you're into that sort of thing.
PS3 background downloading already broken?
One of our biggest gripes with the PS3 has been how poorly the system downloads files: you can't resume broken downloads, nor can you do anything whilst your system is downloading a file. No games. No movies. No music. Nada.This was all supposed to be fixed in Sony's upcoming 1.6 firmware update. But, is it already broken before its release? Apparently so. The Inner Bits has "obtained" info about the upcoming firmware revision, and it's not looking good. The background downloads are limited to while you are in the XMB. If you launch a game, the system will pause your download because "the PS3 needs extra system resources (primarily memory) to do background downloading."If this is indeed true, it certainly can't be due to the system's inability to play a game and download a file. Although Sony's system has the hardware to deliver the goods, it seems Sony is just not creating user-friendly software to take advantage of the system's "potential." Will we have to wait for yet another firmware revision for Sony to get this right?[Via digg]
XBL background downloads coming yesterday?
We already suspected it was supposed to drop this month, but Microsoft's Knowledge Base (KB article #919421) has revealed the feature set and the release date for the Xbox 360's long anticipated background downloading functionality. The date: yesterday. Alright, so they're running a little late (at least it's not Vista-late), but the feature set is promising. Instead of the compromised functionality many of us expected (Arcade games or videos only while downloading), the newly re-dubbed "Active Download feature" is fairly robust. It appears the only thing one can't do while background downloading is play online games, for obvious reasons. Actually, you can play online games -- the system just pauses your download to be resumed later. We've included the contents of the KB article after the break, lest someone at Redmond gets wind and decides to remove it. Microsoft: roll it out and we'll gladly cross this one off our list of Xbox 360 annoyances (both of em ... this was really annoying). [Thanks, Gary]
