New PlayStation 3 Hack May Be One That Sony Can’t Stop

I think Sony overestimates the amount of piracy that this will enable. I softmodded my Wii long ago (in order to unlock the region to play Japanese and European games on a U.S. Wii). Ever since it's been an incredible pain in the butt to keep it updated to the latest modded firmware revisions in order to play legitimate games. Almost every time I buy a new game I have to dig through an incredibly dense array of sketchy forum posts and file sharing sites to find the newly patched custom firmware.<p>If a person were looking to play a game on its release day (legitimate or pirated), they would find the process so time consuming and annoying that I doubt more than 1% of Wii owners would bother with it. I would guess the same pattern would repeat for hacked PS3s. Of course, even a 1% loss in sales would be a pretty big blow for Sony and the other developers, but it's debatable whether or not that population would have paid for a pirated game in the first place.<p>Does anyone know if Nintendo ever announced how much they've lost in sales to piracy on the Wii? Has Sony ever released estimates on how much they might lose to piracy?

The kotaku story is following in the steps of the older stories and is somewhat inaccurate.<p>This was a much more interesting read by one of fail0verflows devs Marcan.<p><a href="http://wololo.net/2012/10/25/clarifying-the-confusion-on-the-ps3-development/" rel="nofollow">http://wololo.net/2012/10/25/clarifying-the-confusion-on-the...</a>

As someone who bought his PS3 only for the bluray player and the ability to have linux on his tv in one little box, and after doing hours of research to verify it was a legit feature (only to have it stripped less then a year later) I find it impossible to empathize with sony.

I have a PS3 because it's dead simple to buy a game, pop it in, and just play it without worrying about anything else. I would never use this, it defeats the purpose of the ps3 for me. I'd rather just spend $20 on a game.

He says that all future firmware updates can be decrypted, since every PS3 must be able to upgrade to any future version, but can't Sony just put an intermediate update that changes the keys and is the only one that older consoles can update too, and then after having that one update you are allowed to the newer updates encrypted/signed with newer keys?

From the article:<p>&#62; a 2006 launch PS3 can still update directly to the latest software<p>A few other tech companies could take a leaf out of that book. Look at the state of the iPad 1 for example...

Serves them right. SCEA earned their place on my "do not ever buy" list after the Geohot fiasco - everyone knew their system was insecure and it was just a matter of time before someone else picked up where he left off.<p>You lose. Good day sir.

There has been a lot of comments on the piracy aspect, but I think the cheats are just as important, if not more so.<p>With the assumption that the vast majority of players don't want to jump through the hoops to deal with keeping updated on "liberated" firmware versions, the piracy threat is contained to a small population, not likely to damage the bottom line.<p>However, the risk to online play is greater with cheat enabled clients. A single cheat client can cause great havoc within a game instance. Even if the individual device can be banned, another actor can take it's place. Legitimate clients will get frustrated quickly on a prolonged attack. And <i>that</i> is where the real damage is.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but after reading the article apparently it's all fine and dandy if you have a cracked PS3, but if you have a useless PS3 with the latest official firmware and want to put it to a better use (XMBC, linux, whatever) there's nothing for you.<p>So :<p>- this is good for those who cracked their ps3<p>- this is a non event for those who did stick to the rules and would like to do with their ps3 what sony said they were no longer allowed to do (running linux)

This is bad news for PlayStation fans :( The easier it is for people to pirate games, the more people who will pirate. The more people who pirate games, the less moneys the developers make. This is how studios get shutdown. Sony's closed at least 3 first-party studios just this year.

Is this really a big deal? Average consumer X, the majority of customers, does not know or care about any of this. They will buy games they want (or parent X will buy them) and that will be that.

Am I missing something? The next firmware may be vulnerable, but what about the one after?

Too bad the PS3 doesn't have any games.