Grandparents. At Christmastime, they always give you some money to spend and tell you, in their little elderly voices, to spend it on something useful. Then, when you spend it on games merchandise, they shake their heads and look disappointed, and you feel bad. But not any more - welcome, everyone, to a PS3 application that might actually help you: Life With PlayStation.

LWP is a valiant attempt by the good people at Sony to make your PS3 more than just a games console. Not that it isn't already, but you get my drift. The app brings you the latest news, weather and other important information direct to your beloved console, and (surprisingly) has some promise.

It's easy to get, too. All you have to do is load up Folding@home from the [Network] tab on the XMB, start the update and wait for it to download. At only 126MB, the update won't break the bank, either.

The main graphical interface of LWP is the Earth. Simple, you think? You'd be absolutely right; you control where you want to look at on the planet using the analog sticks and the left and right D-Pad buttons. It's intuitive and easy-to-use, so full marks in that department.

Content-wise, LWP is a little bit bleak. At the moment, all that's available is news and weather data, but Sony promises more to come soon. On the plus side, however, the content which is there is well implemented and quite clever.

There are some criticisms, I have to admit. Modifying the options of LWP can be difficult, and I still haven't found a way to access Folding@home, even after extensive searches. But apart from these couple of niggling glitches, and the lack of content, LWP isn't a bad bit of kit. One tip for Sony, though...

I'd rather have fantastic games than XMB add-ons.

Linford

Labels: Life With PlayStation, PS3, XMB

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