It’s been a bit of a saga, if we’re honest – and a needless one at that. However, after much hoo-hah and a minor bit of jiggery-pokery Sony has officially announced that the problematic firmware 2.40 has been fixed thanks to the cunningly-titled firmware 2.41. Ah, you see what they’ve done there...?

These glad tidings come from Playstation Network boss, Eric Lempel, who breezily states on the Playstation Blog (blog.us.playstation.com):

“Hi everyone. As many of you know, we released PS3 firmware update 2.40 last week, but had to take it offline temporarily because, for a limited number of users, the XMB (a.k.a. the XrossMediaBar) wouldn’t display after the update was installed. We’ve been able to fix the problem, and I’m happy to report that firmware update 2.41 will be released shortly.

We want to extend our apologies to the Playstation community for any inconvenience. Now we’ll be looking forward to seeing everyone online and racking up those trophies!”

So there it, is, and, odd, use of, commas, aside, this is good news. It’s a speedy turnaround from Sony too – indeed, firmware 2.41 is apparently already online. Maybe now their overworked technicians can concentrate their efforts on making more than a scant handful of PS3 games compatible with the trophy system and value-engineering the new Dualshock 3 controllers so that they’re not so damned expensive!