Sony announced today that it released the firmware 2.41 upgrade that was supposed to fix the bugs of the firmware 2.40 that was released last week. The announcement came via the official Sony PlayStation blog. Yesterday, the PS3 customer service announced that the upgrade will be released sometime until Wednesday and most people were waiting for a Sony official announcement regarding this thing, so the actual release of the new version is a pleasant surprise.

Firmware 2.41 is supposed to upgrade the PlayStation 3 consoles with two new features. While firmware 2.40 was initially set to do the same thing, Sony had to withdraw it, since it seemed to damage some users’ consoles. Sony considers that the version it released today will take care of that problems and allow gamers to enjoy the much awaited features.

So starting today, people who want to upgrade their consoles are able to download the software on their PS3s and enjoy the new XMB in-game menu, and the trophy system Sony has prepared for them. The XMB (XrossMediaBar) in-game menu will allow gamers to access menu options during gameplay, options that they wouldn’t have had access to previously. As far as the trophy system is concerned, Sony makes available four types of trophies: bronze, silver, gold and platinum. Gamers are awarded the trophies according to the merits they had during their games. The trophies can then be shown online to friends, as a measure of a player’s skills in a game.

It’s high time for things to go a little bit better for PS3, who has proved to be one of Sony’s most unsuccessful products until now, causing the company to lose a lot of money because of the risky marketing strategy it adopted.