PS3 security is "epic fail"

[AJCopland]

What is "epic" about the whole affair is how much effort Sony spent on this product, how long it took to become marginally profitable, how long Sony plans to keep this product alive, and yet how little leverage is required to undo these efforts. Feet of clay, etc.

What really surprised me about this was that it's taken so long. If you've ever dealt with the Sony PS3 API's you'd see what an absolute house of cards it is. Not to mention and flaky piece of crap

[AJCopland]

Gonna chime in on the piracy part. People tend to think that it's a non-issue and that in some cases piracy even "helps" sales. There's _sometimes_ a grain of truth but it's not all of the time or all of the cases.

We've had projects canned and titles cancelled during development for the PC simply because the piracy rate has become so problematic that you might have most people _playing_ your game on the PC, but you've got the most people that have _bought_ your game on the consoles. As a result the publishers simply pull the plug on the PC version entirely.

It doesn't lose the publisher much revenue but for the developer they can have just lost an entire platforms profits and royalties. Of course the PC version can often have a much longer shelf life vs consoles so now you've also got to rely entirely on making your profits and royalties on the launch week of your game... so hopefully there's nothing like Gran Tourismo or something launching at the same time or you'll get literally NOTHING.

So, I think Sony were a bit crap when they removed the OtherOS option, especially as it still listed it on the boxes when the machines were on sale! Removing functionality that people have bought your hardware to use is dishonest I think.

However this does enable piracy, it will mean that it happens more now, and I have been personally affected by piracy in the past. In fact I'm redundant at the moment due to the games industry going through a lot of strife right now so I'm not keen on that side of things.

Dunno where I'm going with all this just bored and hungover on Jan 1st I guess!

Happy New Year everyone!

Andy

[AJCopland]

Anyone defending Sony, probably can't remember their previous anti piracy scandle involving rootkit installed on to windows PC from audio CD's, opening the OS to other malware. Sony deserves everything it gets.

Gaz

However their employees, customers and the developers who might find it harder to get work probably don't.

That's all my post was talking about. I'm part of the local hackerspace community and I totally support hacking hardware, I just wish people would actually stop deploying the "screw Sony" argument without realising that it will also screw totally innocent people working for companies that aren't Sony.

You can't say it doesn't happen since it has happened, directly, to me and the company I worked for.

Andy

[AJCopland]

My main point is that piracy is not the only outcome of this security failure. No question that it's not a good one, but it was a predictable one, and Sony failed to plan for it. They had no proverbial insurance behind their single layer of locks. But if you look at piracy as the ultimate form of competition, they might have better luck approaching it as a sales or access problem. Abusing the purchasers of their hardware isn't the kind of strategy that lends itself to a sustainable business.

Piracy won't affect Sony at first, it'll affect publishers and then they'll pass that onto developers who will lose revenue and make people redundant like me.

I don't actually think that this will affect the PS3 too much at all actually. I mean it's largely screwed PC development over a barrel but the PS3 will be a harder hill to climb and there's so many non-techy types playing the PS3 that it shouldn't become an endemic problem.

I.e. this won't affect Sony, but if it affects anyone then it will be innocent and hard working people employed in the games industry.

I don't mind the hack itself, I think Sony lined itself up good and proper for a kicking for removing the OtherOS feature from the fat PS3's that had it. For those that want it I think it's good but peoples justifications about how piracy will affect Sony are way off. Sony will wriggle and squirm and it won't be them that gets hardest hit.

Andy

[AJCopland]

So? Why should I feel more sorry for you than other people who lose revenue and become redundant, people who do far more important work and lose their jobs because of far more silly reasons than yours? You almost make Sony sound like some sort of charity organization, which I'm sure it's not.

Maybe I'm suggesting that it'd be nice if you thought well of anyone who gets screwed over by the unfortunate side effects of the actions of others.

I'm not saying Sony are a charitable organisation, in fact I stated that the release of the keys and the enabling of the otherOS feature is a positive action that they deserved after their stupid and short sighted, borderline illegal I felt, removal of the OtherOS feature.

What I also said was that it is sad that people think that the piracy it will enable will not happen and will not affect people when I know that for some platforms I used to develop for, it already has.

I'm trying to be quite reasonable here, I just stated something about which I have direct and personal experience of.

Andy

[AJCopland]

I feel a bit ashamed talking about PS3 on an Amiga forum, to be honest.. but I do have 2 questions, which I hope someone can answer.
 
I never knew about the 2 different GPU's inside the PS3.. If that is true, then which of those 2 is regarded the best second-hand PS3 to buy? I do have a PS2 that Im keeping.

Also, its only a matter of time before this allows us to play pirated games.. do I need to worry about being blocked from the Playstation Network at all when doing this? Im not going to do any online gaming or downloading.. if possible I dont even plan to connect it to anything.

You'll need one of the older fat PS3s, early revisions with the most usb ports and 20GB or 60GB HDDs sold in the US or Japan... I think! Best to do some reading about it online although keeping a PS2 lying around wouldn't be a bad idea instead

I don't think people know what the effect will be on the online stuff yet. It might be nothing but it'll probably be worth keeping the PS3 offline when playing homebrew stuff at first. People get away with this on the Xbox360 already.

Other than that just don't pirate anything I wrote pwetty pwease

Andy

[AJCopland]

I know people think piracy but here at the university we had a lab of PS3s running Mathematica under Linux because it was cheaper than PC/Macs.  No kidding.

Now that's what I'm glad it's been posted for, I think Sony really were behaving like dicks when they removed the feature from existing machines. It was just a really mean spirited and stupid thing to do. I wish someone could have gotten together a lawsuit and forced the otherOS issue at the time.

Andy