Word of Sony shutting down PlayStation storefront servers for PS3 this summer spread like wildfire on the internet Monday. The discourse in comment sections were filled with anti-DRM rhetoric and renewed pledges of physical-only game collections, because without content servers to connect to, your digital PS3 purchases will eventually become unplayable. Even if legitimate purchases are installed to the console’s hard drive before Sony “flips the switch”, they may only live on as long as the internal clock stays in sync. Which is why this guide to replace a PS3 PRAM battery written by [Andrew] has renewed importance. After a battery replacement the internal clock needs to be reset and this requires validation from the PlayStation network (you know, the one that’s soon to be shut down).
Game preservationist group [Does it play?] drove home the impact of such a business decision by Sony on Twitter. The thread is quick to point out that even if users are quick to re-download all of their purchases to a PS3 system before the purported July 2nd deadline, those games will eventually become unplayable if the system clock becomes desynchronized. Replacing the PRAM battery and reconnecting to the PlayStation Network prior to Sony shuttering their servers should buy the user some more playtime. However, without any further changes to Sony’s licensing policy little else can be done physically to ensure those digital PS3 games will work in perpetuity.
Sony isn’t the only one to have drawn the ire of digital rights advocates in regards to terminating their online services. Nintendo shuttered the DSI-Shop in 2017 and Microsoft turned off access to the original Xbox LIVE servers in 2010. The big three console makers have all let their consumers down by removing the ability to reacquire purchases in some way, but the fact that so many PS3 exclusives were only ever available digitally just further exacerbates issues with digital rights. Dropping in a fresh coin-cell may not be the permanent solution everyone is looking for at the moment, but it couldn’t hurt to re-familiarize yourself with the Cell processor.
Tinfoil hot take:
The GPU crypto mining frenzy was orchestrated by console manufacturers to hobble the PC gaming market by making worthwhile GPUs unattainable for less than twice the cost of a console.
Nah. Gaming is always expensive. Whatever GPU power is currently affordable, double or triple it and that’s what the PC game industry will target when writing new games. If GPUs were cheaper you would just see games written to require faster ones.
Before this crypto junk exploded and started sucking up all the graphics cards, you could easily build a budget gaming PC that was acceptable at 1080p with a video card in the $100-$150 range.
Right now, you would be lucky to find one of those cards for sale, and if you do, it’s probably $300
Yeah this is the key point.
Affordable gaming always existed. Games don’t really target a GPU they target a graphics API. Most of the time your GPU will let you change performance settings the game doesn’t natively meaning a modest GPU would get playable performance for most games.
This is why ancient GPUs still seem to let you play triple AAA games at 1080p with a reasonable frame rate.
Similarly because they target an API the graphics settings can always be cranked up (at least outside the game) to the point that you can’t run it until the API is basically irrelevant.
Game studios target a certain generation of consoles, which always take years to go through an upgrade cycle, and they carry simpler (cheaper) versions of the chips sold on the PC market with less RAM etc.
This is why you can run most games with cards that are 5+ years old, because they’re really designed for machines of that vintage.
No, you don’t understand… street prices of GPUs are 2-3 times the retail price right now. It’s very hard or impossible to buy the graphics cards from retailers and even if you do they’ve marked them above retail price too. The Verge posted an article today about it. https://www.theverge.com/2021/3/23/22345891/nvidia-amd-rtx-gpus-price-scalpers-ebay-graphics-cards
You can expect to pay >$800 for Nvidia’s budget $329 3060 card on the secondary market right now. Or if you want you might be able to enter into a raffle at Newegg and win the ability to buy it for $549.
All because of imaginary currencies like Bitcoin hitting astronomical prices like $55,000.
And what’s worst, is that the ridiculous prices have carried on down the line. Even if you’re willing to buy, and can find an old stock or used 1050ti, or 1060, even those are going for a few hundred bucks.
The GTX 1050 was released in 2016. In GPU time that’s ancient, yet they’re still selling for stupid high prices.
Not only are they too expensive for gamers, but important scientific research uses them as well.
Plus, it uses a whole country worth of electricity.
If we could all just decide to not touch blockchain at all that would be pretty awesome.
Then there are cryptocurrencies like Curecoin and Foldingcoin that use scientific research as the work in mining.
Not all crypto takes gpus or electric. Those are proof of work cryptos, vs proof of stake cryptos. Crypto is worthwhile and offers utility. Ethereum smart contracts are a new paradigm for computing sorta a hybrid of client/server and peer to peer. Its like peer to peer with accountability. Ethereum has the power problem though, however there are many smart contract platforms and one( wont name so im not a shill) will soon offer smart contracts and is NOT a power waster.
How much does the US financial system take? Because at least bitcoin isn’t actively working against the population with that electricity.
Just FYI, practically all currencies are imaginary these days, crypto isn’t anything new in that regard :)
All other currencies have the backing of a government at least. Crypto currencies might as well be Farmville cash. They are extremely volatile and if anything ever happens to break the illusion of value people will stop trading in it. Anyone caught out will go from being a bitcoin billionaire to a bitcoin bum over night.
Tulip mania
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania
Tulip mania was a period during the Dutch Golden Age when contract prices for some bulbs of the recently introduced and fashionable tulip reached extraordinarily high levels, and then dramatically collapsed in February 1637. It is generally considered to have been the first recorded speculative bubble or asset bubble in history.
One example:
A tulip, known as “the Viceroy”displayed in the 1637 Dutch catalog Verzameling van een Meenigte Tulipaanen. Its bulb was offered for sale for between 3,000 and 4,200 guilders depending on weight. A skilled craftsworker at the time earned about 300 guilders a year.
Programmer Karl Denninger says digital currencies are all a scam
19 Jun 2017
https://cryptorum.com/threads/karl-denninger-says-digital-currencies-are-all-a-scam.217/
After a long technical analysis, his concluding sentence:
“So go ahead and play if you wish folks, but just recognize that you’re riding a ponzi scheme — and that all of them, without exception, eventually collapse.”
I can currently run No Man’s Sky on my 8 year old high end desktop with 8 year old high end GPU at max settings at 4K HDR 60FPS. My son can run the same at FHD but middle of the road settings on a low end machine with low end dedicated GPU. This game may be 5 years old, but it gets regular engine updates that have required more graphical resources over time. My machine still handles it at max, while we have had to turn his visuals down a bit mostly due to limited VRAM. However we have both ridden out two console generations without needing to update to play this modern graphically intensive game, and of course the value proposition of using the same machine for things other than games and media consumption helps justify initial costs.
Meanwhile, the same game is under fire by PS4 users as the latest round of engine updates make it nearly unplayable on all but the latest Pro console refresh.
Sample size of one game, but at least it breaks the fallacy that consoles are always a safe bet for consistent performance over a game’s lifespan.
I’m kinda doubting your intial claim, considering that even with an i7 8700k and a GTX 1080ti, I wasn’t able to consistently get 4k 60fps in No Man’s Sky. Those aren’t exactly top of the line these days, but they were 3 years ago. There was no video card out 8 years ago that can do 4k/60fps at max settings on anything remotely graphically intensive.
I recall a time a few years back when every new game seemed to need the latest and greatest GPU.
Thankfully the indie games scene has exploded in popularity since then, and game designers seem to have realised they can capture more of the market with lower specs.
Can’t play that AAA game? That’s ok, there are probably a dozen indie games you would enjoy instead.
I suspect this might be more of an influence from the plethora of game platforms which each expect a release of many games, and the new influence from mobile play.
” The discourse in comment sections were filled with anti-DRM rhetoric and renewed pledges of physical-only game collections, because without content servers to connect to, your digital PS3 purchases will eventually become unplayable.”
One would think that companies pushing a digital future would see that such behavior hurts the adoption of said future. It’s like if the credit card industry made their products so hard to use and fraught with peril that no one would leave hard currency.
I’m reminded of a problem with a Wii game I bought years ago. After the Wii store went silent, the game will no longer work although I own the physical disk.
Same problem with a favorite PC game. It came out on WinXP and used a DRM method that was blocked in Windows 7. I own the disk, but can’t play on newer computers because of their nonsense DRM. I pirated more recent games from them, but none of them are as good as the original. Also haven’t been able to find a crack for that stupid physical DRM.
what game?, and it isn’t available on someplace like steam/gog with the drm removed or at least updated?
You give people too much credit. Most who say they are going physical-only won’t. Those that do.. it won’t last. Never underestimate people’s tendency to choose short term convenience over long term security nor their ability to quickly forget the past.
Even if you do go “physical only” it’s not like most of that stuff doesn’t still have various DRM checks and reliance on company servers regardless.
While it’s true that a lot of people will choose whatever’s convenient over what’s best, not all the blame is on them. Even if you’re willing to take the hard way and buy all of your games on physical hardware, it’s likely that many of them won’t work, and it’s common for them not to work properly out of the box, without day 1 patches (which won’t be available later)
I’ve had even hardware become useless because of unnecessary reliance on manufacturer servers. I used to have a wifi SD card for my camera which would transfer my photos to my PC automatically. It was great, and unlike most modern cameras, etc, it didn’t even use the “cloud” to do it, so in theory, it should still work. Unfortunately the only way to update the settings was via some online web-app, so when they shut off their servers, it’s no longer possible to use anything other than the SSID, password, and IP that you had it configured for before lights-out.
That wifi as card is most likely an embedded linux system. Many were based on the same hardware, so depending on which one you have you can likely not only update the firmware and settings but could make it much more useful too.
https://elinux.org/Wifi_SD
Any way to use those in old Palm PDAs?
They know it doesnt matter. The content producers decide and we have no choice. They know we have no choice and so they dont care. As long as all the producers are in agreement that they like selling licenses instead of full ownership, then it will be, they dont need their customers opinions for anything.
Welcome to late stage capitalism. Saw a $30/month subscription for a smart watch the other day.
“Why would we allow dumbmoney to buy when we can force them to rent perpetually.” -big money.
And really, why did you ever think they would?
I have a moded PS3 and plays all my game using backup copy because it’s more convenient.
Have you tested what happens if that needs to have its PRAM battery replaced and you can’t verify the time with the Sony server?
I’ve had one modded that has never connected online period and it plays games i’ve pirated just fine.
I replaced mine right now and yes, even with a modded system the message “This content has a time limit. Please use the option to sync the time from the internet to open”.
What people dont know is the difference between internal and external clock. External clock is affected by the internal and it shows hours, minutes, days, months and years. INTERNAL clock is kinda like a child playing hide and seek and counting from one to forever without stopping. When you replace the battery, the external clock is set up by the user, but the internal doesnt match the PSN time and it doesnt open. This internal clock only resets if you physically remove the battery, even if you format the system or change the hard drive completely, the internal clock is still counting from where it was left off.
Every device sees time with the internal clock, not external. The internal clock is mostly used to generate RNG in games.
Well, that will help Sony to sell their Ports/Remakes for PS5 in the next years.
“You want to play this old game you already own? Here, you can have a slightly upscaled version of it for only 30 bucks! Digital only, of course. We want to be able to repeat this with the PS6.”
People get around this by keeping their old console(s) along with an old TV to use them on.
Come to think of it I still have my original GameCube complete with its circa 1990s power supply.
And, as the article explains, any games you have downloaded on a PS3 won’t be playable after a battery failure.
You’ll plug it in a year or two later, hoping to go back and play your old games, and it’ll try and connect with sony to validate, and will fail to reach the servers, and you won’t be allowed to play them.
It’s almost like you didn’t read the article.
Capacitor + 3.0V LDO + JST plug + external cheapie LiPo battery?
might not be a bad plan if you want to keep it on life support that way, but really you shouldn’t have to. Sony should really just open up the DRM so it no longer needs to reach their servers to funcion.
That would never happen and is probably unnecessary – all they need to do is leave up a server that would allow you to sync the clock.
I said “should” not “would”.
Yes, probably many things will continue working with just a clock sync, or alternatively a patch to the OS that allows just setting the clock without syncing with them.
Either way, I wouldn’t expect them to do either, because they don’t care.
They would probably rather it just breaks so you rebuy all of your games again as an upscaled port on PS5.
I hat to say this but “There ought to be a law…” that makes it illegal for companies to disable any software that’s been paid for. If it depends upon downloaded content, then they should have to provide a way for purchasers to back up that content to be able to reinstall and use it later after the back end network support goes away.
For online only, multiplayer only games, there’s no point to that because the game wouldn’t be usable without the online service to connect players. Remember the death of HEAT net? At least some of the games supporting HEAT also supported other means of online multiplay, and most of them also had decent single player capabilities.
But with the rise of the web, many companies went to making games with minimal or no offline single play modes and no offline LAN or direct connected online multiplayer. You *have* to play through the game company service. Even games with an extensive single player mode still require an account and sign-in with the game company to play “offline”. Blizzard has been especially nasty about that since Starcraft 2. AFAIK they even did that to the remastered version of the original Starcraft so it can’t be played on an airgapped LAN like the original can. So I downloaded the free and updated release of the low-res original and played through the original campaigns again. Now I’m wondering if anyone has bothered to take the high-res graphics and all new audio from the remastered version to patch into the original?
@Gregg Eschelman – “There ought to be a law…”
Agreed. But we will never get there by convincing politicians that our right to re-use our old software or equipment is important when the opposition is funding their campaigns.
Instead I think we should focus on the environment. All this throwaway tech kills the planet. Get even the environmental activists that don’t normally even think about tech interesting in DRM.
I was thinking about replacing the battery clip with a double battery in parallel and then every three years replacing one of the two batteries. That seems like it’d be a useful mod for a lot of things.
That doesn’t really work, because the new full battery will try and recharge the old one. (and in doing so, its voltage will be pulled down too)
You could keep that abuse brief by quickly replacing them both every couple years before either of them is low enough to have a significant voltage falloff.
It’s still technically “bad” because you are briefly trying to charge a non-rechargable cell, but if it’s only for a second before you replace the other cell with new as well, it’s not likely to blow up or anything.
You definitely don’t want old and new cells paralleled on a continuous basis though, as it’ll be both putting more drain on the new cell, and trying to recharge the old cell, neither of which are good for the battery life or safety.
Just one battery in the holder at a time… The old one comes out ten seconds after the new one goes in. (10 second overlap)
yeah, that would work fine too.
Use a capacitor to supply the power for a short time while the battery is swapped, like the old HandSpring Visor Palm OS PDAs.
I think this won’t ever stop happening because it’s a conflict of interest for them isn’t it? (Sony but also Nintendo and Microsoft before that). How is this not illegal? Can people ask for a refund for every game that they won’t be able to play anymore?
I basically have *all* my games on steam and would just go postal if I was unable to access them again. Things are looking good so far since I can still play games from 1990 that are in my library. But Steam has “something to profit from” as long as I login and use their client/service, since I’m seeing their ads for new games and stuff even when I login to play a game from 1990…
To me the best positive example related to DRM was Starcraft from Blizzard. Where after 10 years of the game’s launch they launched an official patch that among other bugfixes eliminated the need for the CD in the physical drive. It was probably in part a publicly stunt for the release of Starcraft 2. But they are still on my good side for this move since then.
But that long overdue update and giving the original version away free was to stir up interest in the Remastered version, where they took out offline LAN support to make it work more like Starcraft 2.
This is not illegal in the us because we have a mythical belief that all regulation is bad and kills people and removing any regulation is always a total net good.
Friend of mine, working at the Fed in 2008: “Everyone hates regulation, until they don’t.”
This is the future.
Like all the helium filled spinning rust hard disk drives, they are designed to be the best that they can be for 5 years, then the helium leaks out and a few years after that you will no longer be able to access your data. SSD’s have a limited number of writes (and reads) and given enough time (or heat) the data will fade away.
Maybe Ridley Scott back in 1982, with his Blade Runner film accurately predicted the future where ‘Replicants’ only got a four-year lifespan. I appears that hardware and software are heading that way to maximize profit.
But regardless of that, you should be able to back up your hard drive and replace it when needed, restoring the data after it fails.
As it stands there’s no easy way to do that.
Use dd on Linux. I have my PS3’s hard drive already backed up this way
“This is the future.” Exactly, the past is (was) you buy something and it’s yours, the future is you rent something and it’s yours until the owner, the company you rented it from, takes it away. The Buddha said “possessions bring suffering” so the future should be wonderful because you’ll never be allowed to own anything.
I’ll never forget the original “Wheel of Fortune” from the 1970’s, hosted by Chuck Woolery. (The show currently denies the existence of those years by claiming it’s only 30+ instead of 40+ years old.) In that era the contestants had to spend all their winnings each round on prizes, with any remainder put on a gift certificate or “on account”. If they hit a Bankrupt at any time later they’d lose that account money, and only the winner of the most across all the rounds got to keep any account money he or she had. It wasn’t very often that contestants walked away with cash from the show.
Woolery’s famous line was “You bought that. It’s yours to keep.” because purchased prizes and gift certificates weren’t affected by hitting Bankrupt on the wheel.
With DRM the wheel is rigged and the companies can make all their customers land on Bankrupt any time they want. “You didn’t buy that. We can take it any time we want.” April 15th, 2010 was the first big video game “bankruptcy”. How appropriate for Microsoft to pull the plug on the original X-Box on Tax Day.
But if the helium leaks, whats going to replace it? As long as the seal’s good enough to keep out anything larger than He then the He won’t be much interested in escaping to leave a vacuum behind.
What happens if you have a vacuum between two pieces of metal and then try and move them ?
The helium is required for keep the head from welding onto the platter.
And if air ever got in, it has less thermal conductivity than helium so nothing good would happen. Air is also more viscous than helium, so moving the heads would be like you trying to sprint in a swimming pool.
Once the helium is gone, only bad things will happen.
“What happens if you have a vacuum between two pieces of metal and then try and move them ?”
If you apply a force less than 1 atmosphere to move them the nothing happens. Give it a force > 1 atmosphere and you can pull then apart.
What you’re missing is that He is less inclined to go to a higher pressure zone when it has a lower pressure zone. So as long as you keep everything but He from entering then any He that does feel like escaping leaves a lower pressure zone thus hampering further escape of the He left behind.
Gasses behave weirder than you would think.
Look at codyslab’s video on youtube about “self inflating balloons”, where a balloon filled with sulphur hexafluoride will inflate itself as air diffuses _into_ the balloon.
I’m not saying air will necessarily get in, but that the helium can leak out, even if it’s leaving a vacuum behind.
I suspect that if it can maintain a the minimum level helium inside for 5 years there is near zero odds of air leaking in without someone cracking open the seals.
The concentration of helium inside will fall until it reaches equilibrium with level that is found in earths atmosphere (0.0005%). And some hydrogen will also leak into the drives (~0.00005% of the earths atmosphere). But helium is a more dominant gas. So from the day the drive is filled at the factory they are leaking, and will eventually reach near 0.0005% of 1 standard atmosphere of pressure (760 torr) and that is be 0.0038 torr which is considered a “High vacuum” (1×10^−3 to 1×10^−9 torr). But long before they reach that level the missing helium cushion that is needed for the read/write head to ride above the platter will cause the device to fail (The helium leaking will have the same effect as removing the bearing from any moving device).
This video on “self inflating ballooons” might help with understanding https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4VY62gmMFrY
The same reason why filling tires with Nitrogen is stupid for street vehicles. Over time the Nitrogen will find its way out, waving to the Oxygen finding its way in as the molecules pass each other. Filling tires with Nitrogen can make them deteriorate faster from oxidization.
With the same mix of gasses on both sides, with the inside at higher pressure, gas infiltration into the rubber is mostly one way, inside to outside, minimized by there being the same mix on both sides of the barrier.
Change up the ratios and whatever is in higher concentration on one side has a higher partial pressure and will be able to work its way through to make the ratios the same.
Filling street vehicle tires with Nitrogen also makes a slight detriment to efficiency because N2 is a heavier gas than O2. Replace the 20% of air that is Oxygen with Nitrogen and you’ve added unsprung weight to the vehicle.
The only good reason for Nitrogen filled tires is in motor racing. Pure Nitrogen expands a bit less than air when heated up. That creates less increase in tire diameter during a race. With the tire diameter varying less, that makes calculations for fuel consumption easier, and likewise for figuring how fast the vehicle is going during speed-limited parts such as the max allowed speed on pit road. Since NASCAR and most other racing doesn’t have speedometers, the driver has to know that in X gear at Y RPM the car should be going Z speed. If the tires have increased in diameter a bit too much due to being filled with air instead of Nitrogen, and the team has calculated the RPM to put the car *right on* the speed limit, it will be going just a hair too fast and will incur a penalty sending the car to the back of the pack. Also included in the calculations with tire expansion is tire wear. Figure that after a certain number of laps the tires should be worn down to where the driver can hit the pit entrance at a specific RPM – but there’s a caution or some problem where the driver enters sooner than planned. Oops! The tires are too large and it goes 0.05 MPH too fast.
Aircraft have a better reason for filling their tyres with nitrogen.
Yet another online service shutting down and people are taken as “hostages”. Go away, nothing new to see here. I’ll just keep away from cloud-anything and no problem. (Yes, you probably need internet connectivity and DRM stuff and cloud stuff for *every* major game console, i don’t know, i am not into this stuff.) Well, there is one thing i only have in the “cloud”: My mails on the server of some big company (not Google) – maybe i should change this…
Saying you stay away from cloud computing when you don’t actually actually compute at all is pretty unhelpful.
As always in this digital age, not just with gaming, all digital services tied to a product will end someday, rendering devices or “bought” content useless.
I guess we’ll not have vintage products or retro-gaming this way in 25 years.
I still remember Star Wars Galaxies though, that was continued by enthusiasts with some handy hacks and patches, but nevertheless needed an online service, paid for by the people who wanted it to continue.
I mean, I don’t get it, if people are willing to pay for it, you can also just scale down the online services to the userbase?
It certainly sucks when there’s an online game you like playing whose servers disappear, but in a lot of cases, that’s somewhat expected. Ideally they would release the server programs so you could run your own, or even just open up the code so enthusiasts could hack their own stuff together.
What’s worse IMO, is when you can’t play a game that you bought, which is standalone and doesn’t rely on servers, just because they don’t care enough to find a way to shut off the drm checks, etc.
I so totally agree with you!
Using Google Stadia at the moment which is a cloud gaming console.
You’ll most certainly loose your games on that platform in a couple of years.
Better it’s cloud than throwaway hardware.
Then they should charge throw away prices. I’m not going to spend real money on that stuff anymore.
All the more reason to install cfw and run all your games without these drm restrictions (I know it’s sort of grey area to create backups depending on where in the world you are but not like we will have a choice in a few short years given something like this situation).
Sony and others pulling this stuff have become the cover of the Cannibal Corpse album “Eaten Back To Life”.
They’re cannibalizing what made them who they are to feed themselves.
This is why I stopped gaming- the second I saw everything go to digital download and cloud model, I knew this is exactly what they would pull. DRM and killing off your customer base is not a long term survival strategy Sony.
But this is the same company who abused their customers with the CD rootkit fiasco.
It’s like they really do exist to eat themselves, feet first.
This should be illegal. You shouldn’t be able to sell anything that can be remotely bricked through action or inaction, without a warning label saying exactly what the worst they could do is.
Removing features that the buyer believed were there to stay should result in a full refund and several hundred more for the inconvenience.
It actually results in $65, which is what Sony had to pay when they lost the lawsuit over their removal of OtherOS.
Well, $65 for the users. They lawyers made a whole lot more than that.
“It Only Does Everything”, except allow another OS install, play PS2 games, or have four USB ports… And soon the PS3 won’t even be able to play PS3 games.
Speaking of OtherOS , I have a PS3 and was thinking of installing that on it( I’m not a gamer, I inherited it from my youngest son when he passed away 6 years ago at the age of 32 from a septic infection )
anyone have a source for how to do that ? I have extra HDD’s I can use to try it out on.
It’s not really possible to install other os’s to the ps3 console anymore.
Just wait for someone to make a third party app store that pretends to be sony. Or just makes some software that will sync and verify the clocks.
The flat battery scenario reminds me of the old PC clock chips that had a built in battery backup. People would drill into them and solder in wires to addd an external battery. No doubt a rechargeable battery can be added that can charge when the device is switched on.
Well, that’s what I was thinking about.
If it’s just time sync, even a small wifi micro controler can create and SSID and tell the playstation “why, yes, I’am Sony”
Well, that is if there is no signature nor obfuscation.
And also, if someone sniffed the activation packet beforehand.
So, if you want to play your PS3 games again, run wireshark, and start by sniffing the packet now before it’s too late!
Oh, wait that the same happens for your car. No more updates to the drive assistant / autodrive ? Your car would be locked because “unsafe” and would not even start.
If this is how the digital purchases are going to be handled in the future, then I think services like Game Pass are the only way. Play your game, fully complete it with all the achievements and done. Considering how incomplete games are nowadays on release date, buying the physical disk isn’t an option either.
Everquest called and would like to remind everyone that Sony still hates us all and always will.
I’m not feeling sorry for these customers.
They get what they deserve! Honestly.
It were the PS3 customers that accepted this distribution model and backed it with their money.
By not boycotting these model from the very start, they chose their own destiny.
Also, why all the fuss about that PRAM?
Have users forget how to properly replaceva battery?
Seriously, that’s a bad joke.
In the retro gaming community, almist depleted batteries were a common thing for the last 25 years!
Way back in the early 90s, the SNES and Gameboy cassettes, for example, had battery-backed RAM (coin cell) that held the saves and powered a game’s clock.
Just add an adequate electrolyte capacitor in parallel to the old battery and then remove it. Can’t be that hard.
Or install a coin battery in parallel. A little bit patience with the soldering iron is all it needs.
No need to resync, at all.
*replace it, for course. Though a good cap, say a gold cap, may hold the RAM data for a while too.
The fuss about the PRAM is because the first thing most people will know about any of this will be when they can’t play the game they’ve already downloaded. Most people aren’t following technical blogs. Even if you do replace the coin cell every few years (using a backup of some kind) there’s no guarantee of uninterrupted charge.
That’s the big thing though – they didn’t knowingly back the we turn it off and you can’t play anymore model on single player games… Nobody realistically should expect ‘free’ servers for multiplayer server based games to live indefinitely, though when even EA can get that right (on some games at least) and give good warning and not bully the new community powered replacements… having something that works isn’t an unreasonable expectation..
I can understand why particularly in the 360 era you would be a console gamer – the consoles were cheap, small and powerful… Last few generations have been harder sells, being relatively large, and expensive for the performance they pack (even at launch), so any gain in play experience will not last as the PC versions catch up to the usually better optimisations on console…
You say no need to resync at all – but what happens if you end up with a dud battery, or miss the battery change one year (yes they should last longer, but with no method yet to resync you can’t take the chance if you want to keep the device running).. Its an inherently unsafe state, as any failure at all bricks the device with no restore..
I literally just bought GTA IV on my PS3 digitally cause I’ve been wanting to play it again, it’s not available for PS4. Guess it’s time to go back to PC gaming. Way to treat your lifelong PS gamers Sony.
“The big three console makers have all let their consumers down by removing the ability to reacquire purchases in some way,”
We’re there digital purchases on xbox live v1?
Yes, a large number of games had DLC, and most games had title updates.
Almost all non-US DLC has been lost forever
Almost all title updates (all regions) are lost forver.
OG Xbox Scene really dropped the ball with preservation.
Why don’t they just maintain a small server which only validates?
Guys, in europe is legal for a consumer to find other ways to activate his bought software or patch it if the producer won’t allow him to do so anymore. Basically you can legally crack your software if you aren’t given any other option from the developer.
So how long the battery lasts usually? Im running mine about 10 years
Out of curiosity what’s the governing license on these software titles? I don’t see that anywhere. Have the users purchased a license that’s revocable at any time,or after some set period, or is Sony obligated to ensure that it continues working?
For anyone questioning how “they” can do this to “us” and there “should be laws against ” that’s not really the case. The purchaser and seller form a covenant governed by a license on purchase. Either this is literally what the purchaser agreed to or they have a grievance that can be filed in court.
This is so you, as a programmer, or your employer are not somehow bound to ensure that something you’ve licensed per-month or at-will “until we can no longer provide the service” continues to work after the licensing party has stopped paying for it or it’s not viable.
I’m not saying I *like* the licensing they’re using, necessarily, but I understand why it’s the case. I can’t see how you could force other people, companies, etc. to release software under whatever license you’d like. Short of convincing them via purchases or withholding same that is.
Pretty sure – just assuming here- in the lengthy license most software comes with, the option to capriciously revoke licenses without recourse is a very standard feature that most companies insert to cover themselves in any situation that they want to take their bat and ball and go home. Many ppl won’t learn and new consumers will naively believe that this is how it has always been. Churn and burn folks
Yup. Many big problems start hidden in fine print these days.
Time to sue Sony :)
Hmmm. Doubt it.
Pretty sure this was somewhere in the fine print you agreed to through your actions.
Could it not be possible to build a passthrough circuit to wire to the battery connectors which could keep the thing powered on (and revent clock resets) throughout the batetry swap procedure? Same principle as how phones can stay powered from a USB wire whilst they charge their batteries.
While you are all busy hot-swapping batteries, I don’t suppose anyone is looking for the run time counter in this stuff?
i.e. the equivalent of a hard coded, encrypted, hour meter or calendar that will trigger a demand that the device be allowed to “phone home” before it will be released from a non playable or feature limited status again.
Mods, you should update this article because none of it is actually true:
https://www.playstation.com/en-gb/support/important-notice/
The activation servers are *not* being shut down. The Download List will still be available on both platforms.
Actually everything I see there seems to support this article.
The article says
> Sony shutting down PlayStation storefront servers for PS3 this summer…
> Even if legitimate purchases are installed to the console’s hard drive before Sony “flips the switch”, they may only live on as long as the internal clock stays in sync.
> …purported July 2nd deadline…
It’s not totally explicit but it strongly implies that on the July 2nd deadline, they “flip the switch” on the *activation* servers, which starts the clock ticking on the internal-clock-sync problem described. My link shows that the July 2nd deadline is only for the storefront, and that the activation servers will definitely *not* be shut down — that there are no plans to shut them down, period.
Of course *eventually* PS3 owners will need to worry about this, probably someday, but July 2nd is not that day. That makes the article pretty misleading.