We remember the halcyon days of firmware 1.00 for the PSP. It was wide open to run any code you wanted. Once the handheld game console was released outside Japan, Sony locked it down and began an arms race to prevent any sort of homebrew usage of the device. Nearly four years later and we’re at firmware 5.00. The hackers are on top of their game though. It’s only been a couple days since the official release and a custom firmware has already been published. Sony has traditionally supported development on their home consoles and we hope they’ll take that approach on their next portable instead of this stupid back and forth.
[via Gizmodo]
They (the manufacturer) will always loose this race eventually.
Why do they do it ? – well you can only conclude that after you have paid for the hardware they still consider themselves the owner.
Theres a number of completely open hand held consoles even with 3d hardware which makes foe great mame experiences and are great for homebrew
You have to wonder what future there is for closed platforms…
Chris: I totally agree.
It is up to us if we still want to feed those closed platform manufacturers.
cough, openpandora, cough.
All fake adverts aside, why do they even bother? Just to give the appearance of a locked system to the board running Sony?
Put a damn SD card and let it run any software already Sony. And don’t do the PS3 thing and lock out the video acceleration (in fact, offer money to homebrew game devs already.)
That’s great and all… It has tons of amazing uses. I want to know why so many choose to use the homebrew scene for on-line cheating. If it wasnt for that aspect, we might see much more co-operation from SCEA.
“well you can only conclude that after you have paid for the hardware they still consider themselves the owner.”
I think the problem is more to do with people hacking their software to run on the hardware. Sure, you own the hardware, but you don’t own the right to use the new firmware software.
I believe it has more to do with appeasing the 3rd party devs. If they never patched the firmware and made it easy, more people would hack and torrent the games. By changing the firmware and forcing new games to be run on the latest it insures that only the more dedicated pirates are going to continue to not pay for games. Not to say that its stopping people from doing it. Even Sony has admitted that the hacked firmware has probably boosted hardware sales.
@larawen: …which is a problem when you follow the traditional game console market strategy of losing money on hardware to make it up with software. PSP definitely takes a bit software-sales hit from piracy, so they’re selling units at a loss that don’t even have many software sales attached to them. That’s gotta hurt.
I for one have already reserved openPandora.
http://openpandora.org
Along with a cheap 3G phone with bluetooth, it will supply all my portable needs (surfing, gaming, PMP, PDA and even programming).
nice webman
Sony will never win, they can only loose more slowly. I understand why they are against this, but they would probably make more money from it if they just left it open source.
Think, if they advertised this like the Chumby and allowed people to do whatever they want, people would buy it. Their current unimpressive style is to describe it as an MP3 player with external speakers, a fair sized screen, and the ability to play some games, most of which weren’t that good.
Maybe Sony will realize this by the time a psp-4000 is announced and maybe they might make a little money.
Sony will never win, they can only loose more slowly,tottaly agree with your point
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electronic expert in los angeles area
Mark: “I think the problem is more to do with people hacking their software to run on the hardware. Sure, you own the hardware, -but you don’t own the right to use the new firmware software.-”
Don’t own the right? Who “OWNS” the right to deny me anything I live in america I can shit in public if its in my religion and steal rice pattys from little kidsI can take your idea and add 1 thing to it and sell it and you can yell me a theif while I take all the money.
Sony its go down a long road of fail really and they do it shamelessly too!
Sony had their share of crap from psp. There will be a revolution with microsoft’s very own handheld console. Lets hope they do create a lineup for portable gaming. That’ll be a day. Its not far from now !
ACTUALLY psp 4000 is coming out featuring a built in camera, copy and paste tool, fully compatable flash player(for youtube) and SO MUCH MORE!