Submitted by The PlayStation 3 Slim already had an ability penalty of -35 Geekiness because of its lack of the “Install Other OS” option, and now the regular PlayStation 3 will follow in its footsteps. A PS3 firmware update, scheduled to land April 1, will disable this option on regular PS3s as well. This, dear readers, is what we in the business call a “testicle move”, especially since only a few weeks ago, Sony bold-facedly claimed the feature would not be removed.
Even though the firmware update will be pushed out April 1, it most certainly isn’t a joke. The update, version 3.21, has as its prime change the removal of the “Install other OS” option, and for the rest doesn’t seem to do a whole lot. Sony cites “security concerns” as the prime reason.
“The next system software update for the PlayStation 3 system will be released on April 1, 2010, and will disable the ‘Install Other OS’ feature that was available on the PS3 systems prior to the current slimmer models, launched in September 2009,” writes Patrick Seybold, Sr. Director, Corporate Communications & Social Media, “This feature enabled users to install an operating system, but due to security concerns, Sony Computer Entertainment will remove the functionality through the 3.21 system software update.”
Seybold continues, “In addition, disabling the ‘Other OS’ feature will help ensure that PS3 owners will continue to have access to the broad range of gaming and entertainment content from SCE and its content partners on a more secure system.”
And thus our true colours reveal. This of course has nothing to do with security concerns; this is all about appeasing the content providers, who apparently aren’t comfortable with users possibly having access to their content stored on PS3 hard drives through systems not in check by Sony (Linux). Sony, itself a content provider, happily dances to that tune.
This means that those who bought their PlayStation 3 because of this specific option are pretty much being screwed by Sony (one of the world’s larger providers of free screws). You might think, well, how about we skip this update, but that’s not an option if you want to continue to have access to the PlayStation Network, which includes access to content like games and films, as well as multiplayer abilities.
Once again, Sony pulls a testicle move, especially considering how only a few weeks ago, the company assured its customers the feature would not be removed. “Please be assured that SCE is committed to continue the support for previously sold models that have the ‘Install Other OS’ feature and that this feature will not be disabled in future firmware releases,” said Sony’s Geoff Levand, PS3-Linux maintainer.
Yes, that’s how much Sony’s word is worth.
I mean, they said April 1 right? (hoping)
I mean, they said April 1 right? (hoping)
This news has already generated insane amounts of bad press. It’d be horribly idiotic to make such an April’s Fools joke. Though, Sony IS idiotic, but they are not the kind of company to make jokes.
Define ‘insane amounts’ of bad press. This announcement won’t do anything to PS3 sales whatsoever. Linux devotees have had 4+ years to buy a PS3 if they wanted Linux on it. The vast (and I mean *vast*) majority of people who might be interested in a PS3 are interested in it for entertainment purposes. The inclusion or removal of a dual boot feature means nothing to them.
this is bad press? i thought bad press would be like you know. a video game system that couldn’t play games. or a video game system that crashed and you had to go buy a new one. i mean really. no one cared if it ran linux. and hardly anynone used linux on their ps3.. mostly because it sucked.
Why did it suck? Because Sony restricted its access to memory (only half of the available RAM), the GPU, and many other things.
It could have been a great system if only Sony had not restricted it from the start. And even average joes would have used it if it had been shipped an integrated with the system. People use linux on devices every day and don’t even know it.
Because Sony restricted its access to memory (only half of the available RAM)
This is not true. And actually Linux can use much more memory than GameOS because it is possible to use videomemory as swapfile.
the GPU
GPU is nVidia IP. Do you ever saw they disclose anything?
many other things.
Can you be more detailed?
And even average joes would have used it if it had been shipped an integrated with the system.
PS3 Linux is for CELL developers, not for average joe. And GPU (under low-end by todays standards) is totally irrelevant thing here.
Because Sony restricted its access to memory (only half of the available RAM)
This is not true. And actually Linux can use much more memory than GameOS because it is possible to use videomemory as swapfile.
This was only a result of the work done by hackers trying to use the RSX. Sony prevented the RSX exploits but used the work of the hackers for extra VRAM.
I cannot find the reference about memory and cannot check my PS3 at the moment.
the GPU
GPU is nVidia IP. Do you ever saw they disclose anything?
Not as open source, but if Sony had given unrestricted access, some may have made progess via the Nouveau driver. Alternatively Sony could have actually backed Linux and worked with Nvidia to release a driver, if they had shipped Linux in a usable form with the PS3. In your other post you claimed that reasonable 2d acceleration could be achieved with a single SPE, which I don’t doubt, but what bothers me more than that is a lack of OpenGL. This makes using many Linux 3d applications impossible or very difficult.
And even average joes would have used it if it had been shipped an integrated with the system.
PS3 Linux is for CELL developers, not for average joe. And GPU (under low-end by todays standards) is totally irrelevant thing here.
Yes, in its current state I realize what it was intended for now; I’m saying it could have been usded for much more. The RSX is based on an Nvidia 7800, which is certainly more than enough for many 3d applications and games.
Edited 2010-03-30 13:12 UTC
What is wrong with the human condition that people assume that because something is due to happen on April the 1st it immediately rises suspicions that it’s a joke!? April fools are only valid when done on the day without prior notice. Oh, and the fool was the one made the joke, not the one falling for it.
Dude, there are no rules for april fools. Well, just one, it has to involve april 1st as a date. That’s it.
However, this isn’t funny enough or provocative enough to be a good joke. So its either a lame april fools joke, or real.
So does Sony have a really bad sense of humour or are they just sadistic? Really tough to determine the answer to that one. Asked in the absence of any other context its a toss up.
Also there is the matter that it only applies to Anglo-Saxon countries. Most of the rest of the world does not give a sh*t about April Fools jokes, or knows about the concept for that matter.
If you say so. I think april fools will catch on world wide with in the next 5- 10 years.
Then we just need to install groundhogs day internationally and our silly holiday takeover will be complete.
Not so sure about that as we do have an April Fools here on Brazil as well, although it is mostly celebrated by children and rarely, if ever, it is used to place pranks on customers by companies and the likes. Sometimes you’ll see brain dead “celebrities” doing something idiotic in April, 1st – because these people can’t help themselves to avoid to do stupid things – but usually it is a children thing, mostly.
Same in France. April fool’s is essentially about child playing here, with a few companies occasionally joining the game too.
In Russia April 1 is very popular, similar to US.
Quite popular in the Netherlands, too.
I live in Taiwan and we DO have April Fools Day here, though it’s not a big deal as it is in the West.
Since when has Denmark been anglo-saxon? Methinks it is the other way around
+1 knowitall for tylerdurden. -1 forbeingwrong
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aprilscherz
I already read about this on ./ and what struck me as critically idiotic is that Sony has always been advertising PS3 as a general-purpose computer and that it can run Linux. Yes, they themselves have been selling PS3 as a Linux-capable computer. Now they remove the capability from all those users who have bought PS3 with Linux in mind, including several large cluster-based researches, US army etc.
Basically they are inviting everyone to sue them and hang them from the nuts to the nearest tree.
RTFA! You don’t need to update console! If you don’t you won’t have access to PSN, now how many cluster needs access to PSN?!? I’m sure the 10 guys who use linux and play games are mad now, rest of the world wouldn’t care less.
RTFA! You don’t need to update console! If you don’t you won’t have access to PSN, now how many cluster needs access to PSN?!? I’m sure the 10 guys who use linux and play games are mad now, rest of the world wouldn’t care less.
First of all, it makes it impossible to get replacements if one (or more) of the machines in the cluster goes bust.
Secondly, do you really think there’s only 10 people who use PS3 for both gaming and Linux? Do a quick Google, go read the comments section on Slashdot.. You can very quickly prove yourself wrong.
Hey, big organization using PS3 as cluster probably have some kind of special contract with Sony. I’m sure they don’t use plain old Firmware like we do.
This move by Sony is impacting “ordinary” people, geek, who liked to run Linux on a PS3. And that amount to how many users? Do we have stats on this?
I would risk a guess that for 99% of the PS3 users, they use it to play game, PSN, watch movie, and do other multimedia stuff that the PS3 can do.
That’s not the point. It was advertised as a feature, and as such, removing it like this is a major dick move that should NOT be allowed. I hope Sony gets sued into oblivion over this.
Removing functionality like this is insane. It’s sad that we in the west have forgotten what freedom and ownership of goods is all about. The people who founded the democracies we live in would shake their heads if they knew what’s going on in today’s world.
The people who founded your democracy would shake their heads at the fact that you seem to be confusing commercial transactions with political freedom.
They would understand the concept of ownership. The concept of ownership is the very foundation of our modern capitalist societies. Companies today are taking this away by the bucketload – you PAY for a GOOD that you then do NOT actually own, even though they claim that you DO own it.
That undermines the very foundation of our society. If you can no longer trust that when you buy something it actually becomes your property, the flood gates will open for all sorts of dubious activities.
… thanks for proving my point.
Capitalism is an economic system, democracy is a political one. They are not equivalent and most definitively not interchangeable concepts
Edited 2010-03-29 15:52 UTC
Having not RTFA, and not knowing if this topic is addressed… I’m fairly confident that I do own my PS3; there’s a reason that modding it would get me banned from PSN and void my warranty, but not get me sued. It wouldn’t be illegal for me to run my own firmware/OS on the thing, if I found a way to do so.
Honestly, I’ve never really got the impression that Sony was particularly committed to the OtherOS functionality; given that it already wasn’t available on the new PS3 slims, nobody should be surprised by this move. And this is far from the first time that Sony’s flat-out lied in a press release. Not that I’m excusing them, mind, it’s just that it’s not surprising at all.
Edited 2010-03-30 00:31 UTC
Your examples are VERY poor: it is a completely different thing to modify something that has already been bought than it is to modify something that has not yet been bought. And here Sony is modifying consoles that have already been paid for and have been in use already.
And you’d be wrong. The most appealing reason that PS3s are chosen for clusters is because they are cheaper than purchasing CellBE-based servers such as those made by IBM. This is largely due to Sony’s subsidized console pricing, where for many years they were losing money on every console sale with the assumption that they would make it up in game licensing, etc.
PS3 clusters are built with standard retail machines. In order to purchase these directly from Sony with a special contract negotiation, it would actually cost more. At that point, you’re better off using a CellBE blade server where you can access all the cores without any funny limitations, and get better power/performance ratios.
There you go, maybe Sony is tired of loosing money to people running PS3 as Linux PC or in cluster and probably never buying a single game. Maybe those prople should invest in a CellBE Server, even if it cost more. I would define that as “improper” use of the PS3.
I do make a difference between Joe User who play with Linux once in a while on their PS3 and also play game.
But Cell developer, or enterprise users, who use the machine only for apps and number crunching, should buy a real CellBE Server.
Right, which is probably part of the reason why they removed it from the Slims… but we’re not talking about that. Think about it:
1) PS3 cluster users don’t need to access PSN, so there’s no reason for them to update to the new firmware.
2) There’s no threat to Sony’s bottom line for regular gamers who *might* use the PS3 for Linux, because they’re still buying games.
So, why would Sony remove the feature for older consoles now? What would they gain?
I think they are indeed scared of some security concern. It wasn’t long ago that someone (geohot) found a way to use the OtherOS functionality to gain access to the hypervisor. With that knowledge I’m sure more and more is being learned about the inner workings of the PS3, and ways to circumvent the copy-protection mechanism are being devised.
I think Sony is probably just attacking the problem the best way they know – lock down as many machines as they can now, and hope that it minimizes the damage later.
Good point, but Sony being scared is one thing, removing a feature that client bought is another thing completely. And that’s what pi*ss PS3 user today.
FWIW, I just checked and geohot has posted a couple blog posts about this today, notably this one:
http://geohotps3.blogspot.com/2010/03/wait-you-are-removing-feature…
Some of his posts are at least interesting reading
Rubbish it’s a bloody cluster with basicly Linux machines, just because you can’t replace it with PS3 doesn’t mean you can’t replace it with something else. Also if you are so fricking moron that go buy GAME MACHINE as cluster machine without ANY SERVICE AGREEMENT it’s your bloody loss. Keep mind this isn’t consumer to business instead of B2B which has totally DIFFERENT RULES.
Oh please, most of those commentors have never even used Linux, they just share there opinnion because one there friend said Linux is freaking awesome. Sony probaply knew how big demand was and it was fricking small compared to possible damages.
I expected this action since the security breach done through ps3 linux.
While this does effect consumers the large cluster used as server farms mostly use special firmware provided by sony that removes the ability for the consoles used in to play games in exchange for removing most of the hypervisor limits
And where exactly does one obtain this firmware? I would assume it’s available for the Slim model as well… since there’s technically no reason it shouldn’t be.
If I sound skeptical, that’s because I am. Of all the clustering projects and how-to’s I’ve read about, none have mentioned any such “special firmware”.
While this does effect consumers the large cluster used as server farms mostly use special firmware provided by sony that removes the ability for the consoles used in to play games in exchange for removing most of the hypervisor limits
Is this a fact or is it just something you assume? I’ve never seen any mention of such except for random people assuming such, no cluster operators/administrators etc have ever mentioned anything even remotely like it.
Guess I won’t be touching Sony products anymore.
Yup .. same here. Never bought a PS3 and this cinches it that I won’t.
+1, and I was really looking forward to getting one too.
+1. Was thinking about getting one as a media center/Myth frontend, and that it was a gaming console would be a bonus. Glad I didn’t.
Oh well…Sony is getting less and less of my money as late — probably only patent royalties or license fees that I don’t know I’m paying. The last bit of their hardware I bought was a car stereo 5 years or so ago (nice stereo, though).
And the evident attitide of companies like Sony that want to treat you in the manner drug dealers treat their addict clients (“hey, you own the spoon and needle”) makes me consider again the importance of open hardware/software/formats/protocols.
This is clearly a reactionary move against the PS3 “jailbreak”.
Sony have realised that a cat-and-mouse game isn’t worth the hassle and that they stand too lose money on consoles from people who will buy them not intending to use them for games.
Financially I sympathise with their decision. But this is not the way to go about it.
The unit was sold as a home computer and thus those that bought it to use in that way shouldn’t have the paid-for extended functionality removed.
The only reason that the PS3 was sold as a home computer was for tax reasons. The PS3 is not a home computer, never was. They tried to pull the same thing with the PS2 and while that could run linux, using it as a computer was a very big stretch. Apparently there is some kind of tax break, or some import incentive of some sort that makes classifying the console as a computer viable. Don’t remember what it is at the moment, but I know that Sony has tried to use it several times before.
Either way those looking to replace the console in the future are screwed. The Slim locks down the hypervisor anyway, so the ability is gone on the newer models. You will have to buy your console second hand or hope you find an old 80GB on sale somewhere.
Sega tried that line with the Dreamcast, too, claiming that since it had a web-browser and a built-int 56K modem, it was more than just a game console, but arguably a home entertainment center, and maybe even a modest personal computer. I’m willing to bet that they where overwhelmingly used for gaming too.
I always assumed it was mostly to comfort parents about buying the thing for their kids. “See, it’s not just a video-game console, it’s also a media player and web browser… why, it’s more like a PC, which will have all kinds of benign, family-centric uses.”
So what you’re saying, is if some disgruntled PS3 owner doesn’t just contemplate a class action lawsuit but also reports Sony to the IRS, Sony might be owing millions of dollars in back taxes and tarriffs?
Hey, it worked for Al Capone, why be original?
A student friend of mine who is studying law here in germany told me that this action might be illegal here in germany.
Hopefully Sony wakes up and stops this nonsense.
Edited 2010-03-29 13:58 UTC
I find it sad that our games consoles don’t come with the ability for us to do with them as we please. Just look at the lifetime, success and market that grew up around the Commodore 64 just because when you switched it on it said “Ready”.
Imagine what would be possible if you could plug in a keyboard and mouse into a PS3 or a Wii and everything was available to you. There is no question in my mind that Sony could increase sales by an order of magnitude if the console was open to hacking; and I’m not just talking about selling it to people who want to tinker, I’m referring to the ecosystem that would build up around the computer. Books, websites, developer tools, distribution channels, rights to innovative games.
Both Sony and Nintendo are being very narrow minded.
You can still do this. It is called a Personal Computer. Look at the Atari/Coleco/Intelivision consoles of a similar era. None supported the above either.
You can. I’ve done this. Even without Homebrew, the Wii will surf the web, has some kind of Flash and will play (in the UK) BBC iPlayer content directly on the console. Pretty sweet. The iPlayer interface is better than the one on other platforms (Virgin Cable/FreeView/Web) and snappy, given the relative sluggishness of the console.
Uh, did you exist before 1990? The iPlayer is not an example to parallel how open access to the C64 changed the world.
Yes, and there is a high probability that I existed before you.
You need to read the comment again. I was addressing two points, though this seems to have escaped you.
1) C64 vs Consoles – back in the day, the C64 would be the PC, the Atari/Coleco etc would be the Wii/PS3 etc
2) You CAN use a Wii as a general purpose device.
Please READ what I have WRITTEN before RESPONDING, yes?
Sony is a company that is tied very closely to the entertainment industry. They are also a company with very deep pockets. I’m sure they’ve made promises to partners in the entertainment industry (or have contractual obligations) to protect the IP of media stored or run on their systems. With the linux sandbox being circumvented in order to reach the main system… I assume they judged that breaching the trust of a relatively small group of consumers (compared to those who use all of their products, and on a lesser scale, compared to those who use their consoles without the need for linux) vs. breaching the trust of their partners and breaking contracts would prove much more costly.
It’s evil. But their hands are tied if they want to stay a big dog in entertainment.
… and yet Sony and Nintendo are still in business, while Commodore went the way of the dodo. Their last efforts to remain in business, involved the creation of a closed console of all things.
The C64 success was due mainly to one thing: it’s price. It was also sold as a computer, why you used it to compare against a console is beyond me.
Edited 2010-03-29 15:50 UTC
Because it had 6’000 games, many of which came from bedroom coders. Where do you think Code Masters came from? People like the Oliver Twins. Many of the companies and the people in them making games today came from the Commodore 64 / Spectrum era.
Sony and Nintendo are ensuring that developing on their platforms is only available to a select few that climb the ranks, get the lucky breaks, are in the biggest companies with enough money; where as back in the C64 days talent came from the freedom users had at home.
The PSX era was written on the back of the bedroom coding era, Code Masters et al. Without the C64 there would not have been as many good PSX games like Colin McRae Rally.
If the PS3 and Wii were open to development by anybody then the next generation of programmers would be cheaper, more creative and producing much, much more innovative stuff than Kill Death 3: The Sequeliser.
Edited 2010-03-29 16:18 UTC
It sounds to me like you don’t even follow console gaming. Modern consoles have channels for indy developers and all platforms have innovative titles. If any platform has stagnated in genre focus it is the pc with the constant focus on MMOs. Highly polished, single player games are often being skipped on the pc due to low sales which are likely from a combination of MMO addiction and piracy. Games like 3D Dot heroes and Alan Wake are going to consoles, not the pc. Software economics matter more than how open a platform is.
I cannot just go out and buy a PS3 development kit. How is that preferable to the computer itself being the development kit too? What’s more, a lot of great ideas get turned down by stuffy executives who are afraid of the new in favour of rehashing the same old. I followed the games market intensely between 1996 and 2001 and read tons of material and interviews about game developer’s experiences in the industry; I have no reason to believe that it has improved in the interim, especially considering how EA has grown from just a game developer to a monolithic slavery that churns out Madden / FIFA each year.
Unfortunately, I have no alternative reality that I can just point you to—we do not know what we are really missing, but I adamant that giving people access to their own consoles drives a stronger, healthier ecosystem.
Britain was _the_ games capital of the world. Most games were released here first before America, if they were even released in America at all. This all came about because the ZX Spectrum, BBC Micro and Commodore 64 were affordable and Britain’s education system focused on teaching computing skills such as BASIC. There existed tons of local publishing companies putting out games.
Nowadays companies refer to their games and characters primarily as “IP”. Everything has to be heavily branded and positioned as such. You wouldn’t get away with “James Pond: Robocod” now.
I submit that we don’t know what we are missing, but that Britain went through being the biggest producer of games in the 80’s to being marginalised by the end of the 90’s is indicative of the difference made by giving people access to their own consoles.
We have seen bedroom coders go pro this gen that started out on the consoles. There are indy developers that started with XNA and an idea and are now forming their own companies.
Having an open system does not guarantee anything. Game developers like the fact that consoles have much lower piracy rates than the pc. An open system just means open for piracy.
Here’s that healthy ecosystem you were talking about:
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/99478-PAX-East-2010-PC-Ga…
Wow dude, do you work for Sony? You’re trumpeting their “pirates, pirates, oh my god the f*cking pirates!” party line repeatedly. Go troll somewhere else.
The last time you replied to my post you said that I always post about Linux. Now I guess I always post about piracy.
Funny how you rarely address any of my points. It’s always some question of my motivation. I can tell that you don’t value dissenting viewpoints but that is probably an aspect of your ideology that you need to address. Cognitive dissonance is very unhealthy.
Though I think Kroc is being naive here he can at least put forward a convincing argument. You’re like the guy who shows up at a political discussion and tries to disrupt it by shouting.
Everybody is supposed to be “consumers” these days,
big corporations dont like “creators”, just passive slaves they can push their DRM infested garbage on.
damn, robocod sure did own
I agree. The XNA Framework is exactly the kind of thing Kroc seems to be endorsing.
Which just so happens to also be the platform for gaming development of choice for Zune, Surface, Xbox 360, PC, and Windows Phone 7 Series.
World class IDE, world class languages and programming frameworks, and indie developer friendly.
Code on.
Edited 2010-03-29 17:11 UTC
Well… Sony are the ones who invented Minidisc after all. For those who haven’t met it, it was a portable audio player&recorder technology which brought
-Incredible storage technology for its time (to sum it up : high capacity, small size, reliability that remains unmatched as of today, removable, easy to use, extremely rewrittable. For the drawbacks : noisy players and low data transfer rates, that’s all.)
-Extremely low power consumption
-Higly efficient audio encoding
-Excellent recording capabilities
-Players are not very expensive for their times and discs are very low-priced
The Minidisc appeared while CD walkmans were the norm and MP3 players were buggy, big, and impractical. It could have dominated the world of multimedia players/recorders fairly easily with its superior technology. As of today, it’s still used by musicians who like it as an inexpensive and relatively efficient way of recording demos.
What did go wrong ?
Sony invented DRM. If you wanted a minidisc player, you got SonicStage, or OpenMG Jukebox, depending on the MD player brand. It was mandatory to use that software in order to transfer audio in and out of the player. Both were extremely heavy and buggy, frequently crashing, especially during data transfers, causing loss of data (because you couldn’t transfer data two times from your player to your PC. You know, DRMs are so sweet…)
When you got a new computer, you couldn’t get your data back from your MD player to your computer. MD was unusable as a USB drive in order to enforce use of that cr*p, and hence those inexpensive disks couldn’t be used in order to save data (which they were perfect for).
With that, Sony killed the Minidisc before having ever launched it. Only people that desperately needed it, like those wanting a portable recording device under 300€, would buy it. Who would want to use a resource hog, unintuitive piece of software that spent more time crashing than doing something useful, when there were those new USB pens around where you could only drag and drop files and it worked ?
The Minidisc is an academic example of why people should not, ever, trust Sony or any other control-maniac company (modern examples include Apple and Google). I still have some MD players around, and in 2010 they remain unmatched under a number of criteria, despite being more than 10 years old. With proper R&D and without OpenMG nonsense, Minidisc could have ruled the multimedia world completely. Sony should be brought on a stake for what they did.
Edited 2010-03-29 17:24 UTC
Ever heard of this:
https://wiki.physik.fu-berlin.de/linux-minidisc
?
Adrian
This must be my lucky day. I have a minidisc player on the shelf getting dust for years and now I read your comment here! This is the 1st news I´ve heard that it was possible to rescue minidisc players and get them work in linux…wow! I definitely will `study` that information as soon as I go back home. Thanks Adrian.
Sadly, I heard about linux-minidisc after my last MD player died. Moreover, this does not change my opinion about sony : they ruined life of all normal people not knowing about Linux with buggy DRM madness, and ruined a great storage technology this way.
It’s also fueled to some degree by completely unbalanced statistics. When gaming consoles are compared, the hardware sales and game sales are combined into that Wii X$, PS3 X$ figures. When they include the data for gaming on PC, they count only the game sales ignoring the game related hardware sales (as if someone buys 200$ of GPU not to game). As a result, the “market share” figures that come out show PC gaming in a woe-full state.
I can’t take the copyright infringement claims seriously as soon as the “piracy” buzzword is involved. Copyright infringement is not justifiable by the way they fight it currently is ineffective to the point of only promoting more use of cracked versions. The term is also rarely used by someone who has either a true sense of it’s meaning or desire to discuss copyright without fear tactics.
The word piracy has common meaning and the context is in this case is very clear. It you don’t like a word’s definition then take it up with webster.
PC game sales overall are up due to MMOs and casual games but big budget single player games have been moving to consoles.
John Carmack: PC Sales Aren’t What They Used To Be
http://blogs.pcworld.com/gameon/archives/007422.html
http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/Strip+illegal+file+sharing+sexy…
I gotta say, I was very happy to see articles like this hit the news last week. I’ve been saying as much for a long while now “piracy” is a word used to scare up negative connotations and sell policy based on fear. It also has the unwanted effect now of romanticizing copyright infringement; it’s so cool to be dark and evil after all. If someone wants to talk seriously about copyright infringement, they can use the correct terms. The moment someone starts talking “pirates” they’re selling something.
“piracy” is akin to “terrorists” and “hackers” in terms of marketing words used to push a fear sell rather than a greed sell for getting any old crap policy approved rather than delivering an honest solution to the real problem. Oh.. won’t anyone think of the children.. when signing this next bill or strategy document.
Crippling the PS3 isn’t going to reduce copyright infringement. It’s only going to piss off existing customers, scare of future customers and justify some executive’s bonus based on his/her shortsighted goals before the next promotion and “look at me” shortsighted objective.
A nice opinion piece on PC gaming for you also. Honestly, the console is probably my lease preferred gaming platform due to the type of games that can make good use of limiting controllers. A mouse and keyboard stomps all over that from a user input perspective and that includes the 2D fight games compared between console and PC versions. But, that’s just my individual opinion. Dragon Age would be agonizing for me on console but with a Windows native build, I’m wishing they had more extra content to suck money out of my pocket. It’s not that PC gaming is dying but rather that it’s being ignored by the providers.
http://www.modshop.net/article/columns/hard_case_state_pc_gaming
I second that with this post, since I can’t do that by clicking on the thumb thing.
Edited 2010-03-29 18:22 UTC
Agree completely, its sad how the homebrew communities are being killed by the likes of Sony .. Homebrew is virtually put in the category of illegal activities now ..
One thing though: the Xbox360 has a free devkit from MS doesnt it ?
For the Wii
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wii_homebrew
http://www.wiibrew.org/wiki/Main_Page
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WiiCade
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wii_Opera_SDK
http://www.wiigamestudio.com/
Hope for the PS3:
http://www.ubergizmo.com/15/archives/2010/03/geohot_looks_to_enable…
Edited 2010-03-30 09:49 UTC
The CD32 was not a closed console I believe ? Couldnt everyone get the devkit ?
However it was severly limited, having virtually no IO except the CDROM out of the box, although it was later made a couple of extensionkits that made it into a regular A1200 compatible computer.. Sadly Commodore went bust before these expansions gained any large userbase..
The C64s success was mainly its openness, that ANYONE could sit down and type programs into that “READY” prompt ! It INVITED us to it !
I grew up in that era and know it firsthand .. !
Even the Amiga was not as good as C64 .. Even then devtools and manuals cost an arm and a leg.
I completely agree with all the things you say right now.
I do not know why they forbid YOU to install anything YOU want in YOUR device; that’s quite ridiculous… I know, you accepted the license when you bought such device but being forbidden to use the things I buy in the way I want to use them does not make sense to me.
I do not know if Apple with its iPhone started this trend but I do not like it and I do not want it to continue.
That would just result in widespread piracy. When it comes to game consoles pirates have always outnumbered tinkerers. Sony sells its console at a loss and makes up for it with game sales. Allowing total access would just make it the preferred platform for pirates. Sony could care less about hardware sales that go to people who have no intention of buying games.
They have to calculate that so called Piracy into the equation .. And appeal to peoples honesty ..
Normally i agree with you, but this time you are totally wrong. When i want to tinker with hardware i buy some wierd and obscure ARM board and try to get linux running on it. Just for the fun of it, because i can.
I buy a ps3 to play games, and do not want to spend ANY brainpower to get it up and running. The interace should be easy and crash proof. And sony does not care about increased console sales since they lose money on the consoles.
But on topic, Sony should be shot for this. When i bought my PS3 i know it had all kind of nasty DRM shit. I didn’t really care and i bought it. I also knew i could run linux if i really wanted to (i didn’t, but not the point). Now Sony takes this option away, what if they started to remove the browser and other suff i actually use?
I’m confused by your comparison of a the openness of a general purpose computer to the single-task mindset of a console. Your analogy might be more apt if you had used the Colecovision as an example, as it was a console first and a general computing device second. The Commodore 64, though was always a general purpose computing device. Comparing its openness to the closed nature of a console illustrates nothing.
A friend of mine told me that the PSN terms of service include a clause about being able to alter services at any time. Of course, I don’t see this as a service of the PSN – it is an inherent and advertised part of the system. I really hope someone sues them for this as well.
Luckily almost every game I care about comes out on the PC, with the exception of some of the Final Fantasy titles … at this point I’d rather buy a Microsoft product to play games.
I read some time ago that some developer finally cracked the PS3 and can now access all internal information inside the PS3 (I’ll try and find that link again). So hopefully a “cracked” firmware update will arrive to re-enable all such features including software emulated PS2 support. Lets hold thumbs.
If not, Sony is killing a huge market. I know of many users that bought the PS3 specifically because it can be used as a console and home computer – I was even considering this option myself, and finally ditch my desktop PC.
PS3 is too low-spec to be everyday computer.
Poor internet experience – no flash, slow linux video, low on memory, no gpu.
Your “huge” market is probably just 100s peoples in the world. I use PS3 linux FYI. But it isn’t very useful.
PS3 is too low-spec to be everyday computer.
Poor internet experience – no flash, slow linux video, low on memory, no gpu.
Your “huge” market is probably just 100s peoples in the world. I use PS3 linux FYI. But it isn’t very useful.
PS3 packs actually quite a lot of power in it, it’s just Sony who restricts the features Linux could use: Linux couldn’t access GPU directly for example, thus the video performance was so poor. If only Sony didn’t restrict it in such way PS3 could make for a great everyday computer and center of home entertainment.
There is a lot of whining about so called “restrictions”. It is just about people who can’t use that power in any useful way.
For ones interested in 3D graphics, RSX is an antique toy.
Fast and responsible GUI can be done on single SPE and GPU is not required at all. But no one did that for 4 years.
Video decoding requires a lot of CELL coding but no one managed to finish it for 4 years (on hobbyst Linux front).
I love it when corporations do this. They make statements as if they are helping you out, but in fact they are making a hurdle for you to jump through. Their statement isn’t false, since without the update, you will, in fact, not be able to continue to enjoy a broad range of gaming and entertainment options from SCE and its content partners, but only because SCE will cut you off. This feels to me like the first step on the road to doublethink.
This machine was sold with the purpose of being able to run an alternative operating—and this was one of the reasons for my purchase. I look forward to joining a class action suit against the company—and filling the pockets of some attorneys. Sony, time and time again, shows how it doesn’t give a sh*t about its customers.
I currently own a PS3 with Linux installed, not sure what I’m going to do here. On the one hand I can skip the upgrade and continue to enjoy a full browser experience on my PS3, this is a great benefit as my main computers are both laptops and not connected to my HDtv. On the other hand PS3 is my primary gaming platform and losing access to online play would be a major pain in the ass. One thought that does occur to me is that there’s no mention in the announcement of if the boot other OS option will also disappear. If I can continue to use my existing installation then no problem, I’m already installed. Another question unanswered by the announcement is what happens to access to hard drive space already alotted to a linux partition? Does that space simply become inaccessible? Or will Sony provide a mechanism to allow me to repartition the drive without making me erase all my saved games by reformatting? With out the install other OS option will the ability to repartition simply disappear? If that happens I permanently lose access to 10 gigs of drive space, which is alot since I have one of the old 40 gig machines. At this point I think the best option is to wait till the update comes out to see what the situation really is.
Edited 2010-03-29 15:50 UTC
You will lose access to your current installation. They advise you to backup.
And what will you do if your HDD fail? You’ll need that option if you want to install Linux on your new HDD.
You can do a backup and do not lose any saves.
I’ve recently upgraded my fatty to a new 300GB drive
Installed linux and Ohhh….
So I little dissapointed after the announcement too.
But I understand Sony and reasons because they did it.
i feel like i’ve been given a finger from sony.
i can understand cutting out linux off slim ps3, but this is a bit too much. soon they will disable ps2 compatibility from older models, so that people will have to re-buy their ps2 games through psn to run them on their ps3s.
i was hoping to eventually get a second hand fat ps3 just for linux, but i guess they’re going to get even more scarce as people will eventually update them before selling them off.
That should be Sony’s ironic slogan.
I see people make this statement and then a year later they have a new Vaio or Handycam. But it was such a good deal! Hey wait a minute what is this weird port??
It’s the modern form of I’m going to lose some weight this year.
That’s nice dear, now let’s go get some pizza.
Agreed. The root-kit thing finally did it for me (after being apathetic about memory stick, minidisc, their shitty computer support, and so on). I think most people actually have to be bitten to shy away.
Heh, you mis-read his post. He’s actually saying that he doesn’t think any of the people brashly claiming they’ll “never buy Sony products again” won’t stick to it at all. He expects that all the outrage over this issue will have dissipated within a year, and it’ll be back to business as usual.
As long as Sony only screws over a very small minority of their customer base, he’s more than likely right.
Is sony testing the waters by saying this?
If its not perceived as that bad, they’ll go through with it; else they can dismiss it as an April Fools joke?
Many of you fail to realize the importance of the PS3 and its Linux OS. The PS3 is one of the few affordable cell processor driven systems on the market. Many people use it to have access to a cell chip for writing code. The cell was also very fast at certain calculations, making it ideal for some clustered computing applications. This is bullshit, period.
AFAIK the PS3 has remained mostly uncracked. I would suspect that this is in no small part because they provided this feature. I.e. many of the hackers capable of it were satisfied with this offering. So, now they’ve removed that safeguard and pissed off said hackers. What kind of moron thought that this would do anything but hasten the inevitable full cracking of the PS3?
You want to keep your customers, right Sony? Then reverse this bull as I know a ton of people that bought their PS3s for this feature. Are you going to give us a full refund? I see a major Class action suit brewing right now. The handwriting is on the wall.
Bad Move, Sony. The negative Press you are getting from this is going to hurt you big time. I have already read one story after another that people are going to sell their PS3s and people that were going to buy one are now thinking twice. Stupid Sony, pure Stupid.
It’s no longer fit for its purpose, so in the UK at least you will be entitled to one.
I’ve heard of companies making things that break just after their warranty period but *deliberately* doing it *inside* the warranty period is just mind boggling stupid.
The warranty is a legally mandated 6 years in the UK:
http://www.consumerdirect.gov.uk/after_you_buy/know-your-rights/SGA…
Edited 2010-03-29 19:58 UTC
Firmware version is no where near number stated.
Its a good way of finding out how peaved people would be before you do it. Ie testing the waters.
Special firmware my ass. There is a crack in the Playstation firmware that allows you to access all the hardware.
Not a PS3 owner myself, but I thought firmware was currently at 3.something…
That’s an interesting experiment… and sadly I’m almost believing you could be correct. It’s close enough to April 1 that they could pull this off.
This concept of Sony losing money when a purchaser doesn’t buy games really does my head in. They might be losing money on the sale of a console, yeah maybe.
– So does Sony prefer I don’t by the console if I don’t buy games?
– So all the consoles that didn’t sell. Will Sony take them to the crusher when the PS4 comes out?
– Perhaps they should lock the firmware down to doing ABSOLUTELY NOTHING other than playing PS3 games and sell the console for $10. Will that make us buy one and buy 1000 games?
I would think that Sony wants to sell as much of anything with the brand Sony on it they can. Whatever the price.
I was waiting patiently to get a good deal on a PS3. Not anymore. Unless we get a russian hacker re-writing the firmware to let us do what we want with the PS3, I’ll stick to saving money.
Yes. If they lost money from the small number of machines that went into clusters, it’s because they actively supported that market with both hardware and software – who do you think produced PS3 Linux? where do you think Yellow dog’s PS3 cluster came from?
Just to clarify – this was the way it worked for initially, and for several years thereafter. I believe this “problem” has mostly been resolved with cheaper parts and manufacturing costs now.
The idea was probably to lose money on each console initially, gain market share, and then make up for it in game licensing and peripherals later.
I still doubt they really consider console sales to be a huge benefit to their bottom line, it’s really all about the games.
Also remember that the PS3 was one of the first devices to offer Blu-ray playback… and was the *cheapest* way to get a bluray player for a while.
This was a combo move by Sony – they offered a major incentive to purchase a PS3, while at the same time making Bluray affordable when it wasn’t otherwise (HD-DVD players were much cheaper).
Since Sony had a major investment in Bluray, it was to their advantage to bring this technology to consumers as cheaply and quickly as possible.
Without making the PS3 more enticing to consumers as a “media center” and “general computer”, along with “backward compatible” (plays PS2 games), they really would have had a hard time getting it off the ground to compete with the cheaper consoles on the market.
Since then, they’ve removed backwards compatibility, and the OtherOS features from newer machines – sounds like they’re doing exactly what you’re suggesting they should do.
Edited 2010-03-30 00:29 UTC
Spot on umccullough. Spot on.
The Ps3 you buy today should have the same features advertised when it came out. Deceptive and false Sony.
Sony hates its customers. Nothing new about that.
http://lik-sang.com/
“Lik-Sang.com Out of Business due to Multiple Sony Lawsuits”
Let me just start this post with this:
“Boo hoo. A bunch of people who were never going to buy PS3s and who said they’d never buy a PS3 after the Slim models came out, are now never going to buy one.”
(Posted on another forum, not my words).
In reality, the content producers and game developers never liked the Other OS ability of the PS3. They were concerned that it would lead to the ability to pirate content. Sony was also concerned, but liked the positive PR of having its consoles used in computing clusters; “The PS3 is a supercomputer!”.
Now that the Other OS feature has been used as the beginnings of an attempt to pirate games, developers have been threatening not to release PS3-exclusive games, and media partners have been talking about leaving Sony’s various media platforms (not just the PS3; their other devices will have streaming content too). Sony had a choice: Piss off their game developers and put their future gadgetry plans in jeopardy, or remove the Other OS feature from their PS3s.
So, understandably, they did the latter.
I’m sure we’ll still see Yellow Dog Linux on the PS3 through a licensed bootloader/installer disc, but unfortunately for other distros you’ll just have to blame the pirates. The Other OS feature would have continued in the older PS3s had it not been for the efforts of the pirates.
Good start for a post : there is only one kind of content producer and game developer, they all know about this ability, and they all don’t like it. Strange, I’m sure I met a PS3 dev who advertised it because it’s a powerful Cell linux machine at a low price AND a good gaming machine… Guess he was a pirate. Sony should be more careful about who gets licence to develop on the PS3, those freaking pirates are really everywhere.
Then they are incredibly stupid. Come on, do they think their game is so crappy that they fear people would run linux games instead ? PS3 emulation on the PS3 ? Or copy paste of data from the HDD (if no encryption is used, people might as well take said hdd out of the console and plug it in their pc) ?
If they were that concerned, why did they advertise that capability or introduced it in the first place ?
Oh, our friends the pirates are coming… Isn’t there an equivalent of Godwin point for use of the “piracy” word in order to justify the worst ? There should, really.
Oh, again, the almighty dev… Don’t you think you put a bit too much power in the hand of people whose sole job is to write high-level code ? Media partner is more correct : it’s because of editors and publishers LIKE SONY that we get starforce-like b*****t in the first place.
Exageration in order to make the choice look binary and the first option look like sh*t. Generalisation of the “game developer” concept so that it fits your argumentative needs… Looks like an ad from sony, not like a serious reflexion. Do you work for them ?
You’d better put a sony copyright notice here. Otherwise, the evil game devs from the deep might sue you because of copyright infrigement.
Okay. This would be some kind of china-approved distro where you could do anything that pleases sony, but nothing else. Basically, this means typing some LOC in a shell, since you are unable to access graphics capabilities and a large part of RAM, and soon unable to access HDD and network once some marketting people from sony realize that you could use them to buy DVDs from Amazon instead of DRM-encumbered content from them.
Ah, pirates ! I missed them. They are responsible from everything you know ? RROD appear when there’s pirates around the Xbox. Sonicstage caused loss of data because pirates tried to bypass it. And the iPhone does not really delete messages because there was a pirate around when its OS was developped. Do you really believe Sony (or any other brand) lost a lot of money because some bearded geeks ran Linux on crippled hardware ?
Whoa… do you want to calm down before you type, next time?
Sony wanted Other OS; it’s a good marketing point to say that the processing power of your console is so high that universities are using it as part of a supercomputing cluster. However, games developers (no, not 100% of them of course!) and “content producers” don’t want it to be easy to run unauthorised code on the PS3 – it makes it easier in theory to find security flaws that will allow for copied games to be played.
And, well, that’s what happened anyway; so in the end the objectors were right. The marketing angle for Other OS had run its course anyway so it wasn’t any skin off Sony’s nose to get rid of it, and the alternative (losing out on exclusive titles to the 360, not having “content producers” on board for other Sony gadgets) was much worse.
I don’t work for Sony, but I know people who do.
I refuse to reply to the other things you’ve said, because they’re mostly incoherent.
Lurk Moar.
It seems like you don’t know, so, just to clarify: Yellow Dog is an old Linux distro, I think based on Red Hat (but I’m not sure). It was notable for being targeted at the PPC platform. Since the Cell is more-or-less-kinda-like the PPC platform, what he’s saying is, “if Sony wants to throw their customers a bone, if people get really bent-out-of-shape over all this, they might work with Yellow Dog to provide a Sony-blessed way to still get a Linux distro onto the console, without a general OtherOS feature.” Which means something, since Yellow Dog is a pre-existing (in fact, fairly old), third party, not-locked-down Distro.
A pirate is either someone who gets some copyrighted chunk of data without paying for it or someone who does something with a device that the brand making it does not want it to do.
The first one do so for various reasons :
-Because that chunk of data is so expensive he wouldn’t have pirated it if it wasn’t available
-Because he doesn’t want to give money to the company who distributes that content
-Because pirating it is more convenient than being a legit customer.
As a company, you can put as much money in DRMs as you want, you won’t get more money from the first two customers. For the first issue, you have to keep that money and use it to lower prices instead, and for the second you have to stop doing crappy business decisions that give you a bad reputation.
But I think the most interesting problem is the third issue.
Let’s talk about DVDs. When I was younger, to buy one, I had to :
-Spend 2 hours and 7.5 euros in order to get to a place where I may buy a DVD and go back.
-Pay 10 euros for said dvd.
When I got back to home and put the DVD in my player, I got several unskippable piracy warning telling me that the editor does not trust me, followed by some unskippable ads and an annoying menu.
If I downloaded said film, I paid nothing, saved 2 hours, and did not get any of those stupid things.
Honestly, which one was better.
Now, I’m old enough to have other options available. But I wonder : do I want to support a company that doesn’t even care about minors and suspect their legit customers of being criminals ?
In truth, no. Hence I don’t buy movies. I watch them in theater or get a copy of them from my friends. It is the best way to minimize their benefits.
And when Sony and Universal start to understand that they’re losing money, do they investigate and try to understand WHY ? No. They introduce outpriced HDCP encrypted devices, more warning on dvds, and lose more customers.
Maybe somebody will introduce an unstoppable encryption, although I’m skeptical about that. But do you really think that it would be fine ?
The “unskippable warning” is there because it’s a legal document. If it wasn’t there, then you’d implicitly have the right to copy the movie.
This fact doesn’t make them any less annoying…
No, you wouldn’t. You don’t get an unskippable audio track on your music CDs telling you what you can or cannot do with it, nor do you get audio tracks with ads, yet copyright laws apply the same.
On the other hand, legal document or not, in this country I have the right to copy that movie, so it just becomes a load of crap I have to endure every time I want to watch a movie from the original media.
The Air Force bought +300 PS3s to do research using Linux and other goverment agencies and private businesses bought because they were able to run linux on it…and now Sony instead of taking afvantage of it opted to shoot itself in its foot.
Bravo, Sony!
-t
I personally don’t care about running Linux on the PS3. I already have a Linux computer plugged to the TV along with the console, and I got a slim PS3 anyway.
That said I think it’s highly unfair (and maybe even illegal in certain countries) to get features removed from a product you already own. Features that were available and advertised the day you bought the console.
The slim PS3 not featuring OtherOS is a whole different issue, as in that case you know (so far at least) what you are (not) getting the very day you buy it.
Removing the OtherOS support from the fat PS3 does not only suck for those that might want to run Linux now, it takes resell value from the console. The day Sony releases their next gen PS (PS4 or whatever) you’d surely have better chances of selling your old PS3 for a decent price if you have the possibility of recycling it as a general purpose computer, more so if the PS4 happened to have backwards compatibility with PS3 games.
It’s possible that you might be able to run other operating systems on your Playstation 3 after all. Now that Sony has challenged its users to make other OS work on all PS3s, we might see third party firmware updates which give other operating systems full access to the hardware, and perhaps runs regular PS3 apps in a “jail” so you would be practially emulating the PS3 on the PS3. This might open up the PS3 for piracy as well, but I think it’s a risk the users are willing to take now that Sony no longer actively supports the PS3 platform.
It remains to be seen, but April 1st 2010 might be the beginning of the open era of the PS3.