Euro PSP to Ship With Anti-MAME Upgrade Pre-installed

Congratulations Sony, you've succeeded in losing a PSP sale. You clearly don't have any idea what we want so you might as well get the hell out of the handheld market. Most definitely not gonna buy one now.

I really hope Nintendo kick your arse sideway with the DS. Oh look! they already are doing so, long may it continue.

I have a PC to go online so I don't care much for that if it means not being able to sample greats of the past. This is about Sony wanting you to buy their crap games instead of the simple gems of the past that no one wants to really re-release again.

The games industry is forgetting it's past something that can be preserved and enjoyed on PSP, sure it might not be legal but neither are a lot of simple things we do in life. Every industry has it's rogue elements that prefer to eat other fruit than the norm bunch.

Many of these old games aren't even worth releasing on again because everyone wants the new whiz bang polygon pushing games so why nip in the bud somethin that can help your system sell? If PSP doesn't recover from the DS lead such a MAME bonus would surely help its cause. Sony grabs shotgun aims at foot pulls trigger and enjoys the pain. LOL.

The other thing this will do is make import PSPs more desirable and they'll become more expensive, but many will pay the price for what they want the way they want it.

I'm seriously thinking about a 360 over PS3 now. Sony don't deserve my money or respect. They have cheated me out of games on PS2 and they are doing the same on PSP. LOL

Now where is my DS, I fancy a game?

Jeez Joji, flip out much? Fries with your rant?

Sony move to prevent illegal software being run on their handheld and you run off on how they only want people to buy "their" games.

If they wanted people to only buy Sony games for the PSP, they wouldn't have released dev kits to anybody else. Then they wouldn't have sold their first PSP.

The firmware upgrades prevent pirated PSP games from being run by clamping down on loopholes that allowed unsigned code to run on previous versions. Due to that they also prevent homebrew games and applications, such as MAME, from running.

If the loopholes didn't exist in the first place, you wouldn't be up in arms about PSP not being able to run MAME, you wouldn't know that that was an option.

Let's face it, 90% (percentage may be made up) of people who use MAME or MESS don't have the legal right to play the ROMs they use with those systems. This means that Sony are preventing more illegal software from running on their handheld.

If there is such an interest in emulation on the PSP using legally obtained ROMs, then why hasn't any developer ported MAME, MESS or whatever to the PSP? Why don't these homebrew folks gang up and buy a dev kit between them so they can sign their code?

Because there isn't that much interest. There isn't that much money in it. And most tellingly, because most of the uses it would be put to would be illegal.

YESSSS...feel the anger welling up from deep within you, feel the Power of the Dark Side...Joji, you must go to the Sony Academy and kill all of the fanboys

its funny, I have, literally a mountain of ROMs (collection of old arcade mainboards lying in a pile in warehouse) so I'm legally entitled to use MAME to play those, but those are the games that I could always play as a child anyway, unless I'm showing off my Gorf skillz (which have atrophied, I never even made it to Space Captain last time), I usually want to play the games we never had. (usually only a few times becasue they suck so bad now and minus the nostalgia theres not much there)

Dunno, video games older than 20 years should be Public Domain or somesuch, so us doddering oldsters can show you young whippersnaps how it was in the bad, old days...

The PSP is a pretty nifty little piece of kit, Sony has every right to make it less nifty as they choose, to suit their own purposes...someone will probably figure out a way to make it nifty again, but it just may be the last one...something tells me that the next generation of consoles will be tuougher nuts to crack, though the rewards could be much greater, I highly doubt if MS will release a console as childishly simple to rape as the Xbox is...

90%????

try 99.9%

What a ... stupid article to post, as the intelligent readers here know, you buy the old Roms (or the re-released software, I believe there was some law on that to make them available past games in the last decade) and you LEGALLY use them in Mame.

Are you a Sony fan boy, do you suckle on their dangling teat.

This is the second (or is that third) pro Sony, pro industry monopolisation (also illegal in some countries) article in nearly so many months.

Speaking of behaviour of factions of various industries in general here, not any company in particular: If you bought a car, for just one example, and somebody came along stood over you and told you that because you bought the car from them they could dictate what range of music you could play in it, what range of seat covers you could buy, or anything else, or otherwise, that normally would be considered something like extortion under law, but here, parts of the software industry, and car industry and others, also is similarly, is pushing for behaviour, seemingly similar to this anti-competitive behaviour, to be reinforced by law, and can use the law to enforce it. There is reasons why the previous sort of behaviour was deemed illegal in the past, but in certain circumstances industries have been trying to "un-form" (though they would probably call it "reform") parts of it back.

Sony has lost it, I decided not to buy a PSP already, lets wait for the Gamecube portable they are developing, at least we may get a descent screen (not the reduced res 480*something something screen) maybe even OEL, or Sharps 3D LCD.

DiSh the DS or should I say DisS!

Picking between getting an xbox360 and a Playstation 3, is getting down to picking between the lesser of two evils now. Just when you think you have a clear winner, the winner whichever company will do something else to insult your moral integrity, slap you in the face, knock you down, turn you over and ... well you know the rest. MS now want to security code our xbox360 USB ports allowing them to dictate and profit from devices we attach. Nintendo is starting to look like the good guys ;). Come on Nindy, give us Linux/Tiger/Java, normal USB, firewire, SATA, Gigabit Ethernet, UWB etc ports. Make software distribution through your disk manufacturing plant, or online pay for download of commercial software store. You can still make a profit on this stuff, but give us the freedom that the others are too tight and greedy too. Do something to put you ahead of the Sony/MS scheming.

I've heard this said before Universal games machine format. The computer industry could put it together based on Parallel super Arm processors (the 1-2Ghz variety in the research labs years ago, maybe they are upto 4Ghz+ now) or Cells (Sony says they will be freely available to other manufacturers ;) regular PC hardware standards, and universal driver and OS specs and open API's, All free, all open source, such a thing could be done within a year, and every consumer electronics/PC company could sell hardware, and the games published for free. With the right software/hardware abstraction they could upgrade hardware performance at any time they wish to keep up with PC's. The numerous electronics/computer manufacturers can make billions, the numerous game companies can pocket the billions they pay manufacturers. We can have a truly non anti-competitive fair and free market, with little monopolisation.

That's what I get for being generous!

While it is true that you can do that, it's more likely that people just download ROMs they have no right to play. Anyway, the MAME thing is just a dead herring, the real purpose of this upgrade is to prevent pirated PSP games from running.


But this is something different, isn't it? This isn't a cosmetic thing like seat covers or music are to a car, this is updating the engine so that illegal modifications can't be made to it. This is changing the EMS so you can't re-tune it on the fly to get more power for street racing.

I admit it's upsetting that most of these updates that Sony are making to the PSP (and that Microsoft have made to the XBox Live service) also prevent homebrew applications from being run. I've always been an advocate of the back bedroom coder style of games development. The lack of a free programming language coming bundled with home computers is having a detrimental effect on the software development industry in my mind.

However, that said, I don't want to see pirates prosper. Anything the hardware manufacturers can do to prevent pirates being able to operate is good. The problem here is that the homebrew developers are resorting to the same tricks as the pirates to get their applications to run.

Absolutely no reason for homebrew apps of any kind to run on LIVE! so its really not so upsetting... theres alternative networks availible in any case the cons of running unsigned or modified code under LIVE! outweigh any possible benefits, if any. Hell, I'm not really all that happy about the prospect of someone out there using a SmartJoyFrag on LIVE! (Something I wish MS COULD do something about, but they can't). Above all else MS must maintain the integrity of LIVE! as a level playing field.

Hopefully someone cracks the PSP, I could deal with being able to read eBooks and watch fansubbed anime and take 52 color photgraphs with circles and arrows on the back of each one, explaining what each one was to used as evidence against us.

*Sits down on the Group W bench*

I think what tyrion meant was: Xbox LIVE! checks to see whether your XB has been modded when you sign-on. If it does, then you're account is suspended and they send a hitman round to kill your family... Thus preventing modders from using their service.

But you're right, tunneling tools (like Xlink Kai) can get you playing online, but only for games with a LAN option.

Of course, I'm prone to getting the wrong end of the stick.

Glad to see you with me on this one Way. I like to have a soap box rant now and then so long as I have a valid point to make. I know some might not like it but I don't really care, somethings I feel have to be said and served without the sugar coating.

I've always found it very interesting that Sony are the same company that once teased and encouraged us to get into making games back with the PS1 Yaroze. So why do they no longer want to do this and support homebrew development? It's like them baking a big cake then not letting us taste it and telling us to eat bread instead while they pig out on cake in front of you. Does this seem like a nice thing to do?

Some might think I'm over reacting and that's fine. Sometimes some venom is needed.

Well, of course they should be able to demand that. If the rest of the games industry doesn't like those terms, they will not develop for Sony platforms.

There are no laws that prevent Sony from asking for a license on each game, just in the same way that the DVD forum demands a license on each DVD player and DVD disk sold. You don't hear anybody complaining about that.

Independent film makers can buy Nero and burn their films to DVD, they also need cameras and digitising software. The cost of buying that hardware and software is analogous to the cost of buying a dev kit for a console.

If you want to produce good games for minimal investment, the Linux and BSD communities are crying out for good games. Most if not all of the dev tools will be free if you go that route.


If you charge less for an item than it costs to produce, ship and market that item, you will lose money. That's simple economics.

If you take a hit on the hardware to establish a market for other companies to make money, those other companies are usually very happy to pay a license fee to develop for that hardware. This model was introduced by Nintendo and Sega and it's worked ever since. If Commodore had used that model for the C64 and Amiga, they might still be around today.


If you have the skills to design and manufacture a PS3 beating console, I'd have thought you could easily get a venture capitalist to give you the money to develop a prototype.

Then you will be able to make the decision whether to charge a license fee to allow companies to develop on your console. You'll also need to convince them that the Way-Box will be a viable platform for their sales of course, but then companies developed for the N-Gage and the Gizmondo.

And don't come all "the big companies won't let me compete" - that's the cry of a loser. Give it a go, you might surprise yourself.


No that should not ever be made into law. If you are entering a new market you should be able to under price the competition to get yourself established. You should be able to take the financial risk that you won't make that money back - Microsoft haven't yet made Dollar one on the XBox.

If you have a good enough product, you'll establish yourself and make money back, if not you'll go bust, but that's the deal. Everybody knows it, everybody in business agrees to it. Not everybody takes advantage of the ability to sell at less than cost, but some do. Why on earth should that be illegal?


Again, bollox. If the devs and publishers don't like the terms, they don't develop for the console and the terms will change. Look at EA bending MS's rules about Live.


You don't have a right to develop for free. Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo have no obligation to let anybody develop for their systems. They set the rules that everybody has to follow. If nobody chooses to follow those rules, then the console won't have any games and it won't sell.

You can't expect these companies to put billions of Dollars, Pounds or Yen into developing these systems and then not try to get their money back.

Remember, Sony et al have to make back the R&D costs of producing the consoles. They may make money on each one sold, but that's just against parts and manufacturing. They still have R&D, shipping, marketing and developer relations to recoup.

There are platforms for homebrew development, they are called PCs.


Then don't develop for consoles. Full stop. Develop your own console, write your own games for it and then try to market them both.

No company is going to do anything, produce any product or offer any service unless it can pay the bills and make a bit of profit. The amount of profit they are allowed to make depends entirely on how much their consumers are willing to pay.

You know, I was going to reply to the rest of your post, but I don't think it will do any good. If you want to develop for a console, play by the manufacturer's rules. If you can't live with those rules, don't develop for the console. Simple.


You are just full of good ideas, aren't you? You can design a PS3 beater with your mates and you have a fool proof method of preventing piracy.

I guarantee you will be able to sell that idea to Macrovision. If it works.

I suggest you get some funding together and build your console, develop your anti-piracy measures and write your games. You'll make a mint and you can then dictate terms to EA, Ubisoft and the like. Or you can open your platform up to the world and allow anybody to develop for it.

Once you have your new platform, be sure to keep us up-to-date with the games for it, we at SPOnG want to record every game ever published.

Good luck now.

Let me see. It makes them no money? It did nothing for their marketing? Not many people took it up? It was a waste of time?

They did put Linux on the PS2. There are murmurings of Linux being available for the PS3. Sony are doing more than Microsoft or Nintendo to encourage people to get into development.


No it isn't. It's like them setting up a bakery and selling cakes, but people are complaining that they can't use Sony's ovens to make their own cakes for free.


And sometimes a bit of common sense is required too.

Well Tyrion it's up to you to disagree but I know what I think regardless of your opinion, though it's noted and listened to.

Tyrion:Let me see. It makes them no money? It did nothing for their marketing? Not many people took it up? It was a waste of time?

You say that encouraging development makes Sony no money. It's suppose to help feed the future of the industry so everyone not just Sony can benefit. Sony started the ball rolling outside of japan and have let it slide. You think this is okay because I don't. Not many people took it up because Sony didn't market it like they did the PSone, to the death. If their supreme marketing had done them justice like usual more people would have them and be coding. When things go full circle Sony and the industry eventually would reap what they sow. And their I was thinking Sony had the best marketing back in the PSone days, are you saying that's lies now? They should have pushed Yaroze and homebrew more and they failed, end of. Stop making excuses for them (up to you ofcourse). It much like Nintendo and the GC broadband adapter, if you aren't gonna support it properly don't bother at all.

Schools in japan teaching game development are one thing but those outside japan are quite another (and not everyone can get into uni to do that stuff which is why a ground level is needed).

In respect to the cake analogy, no one said that they are gonna stop buying Sony cakes from the shop but it would be nice to have somethin for free (kind of like how with GC you can run imports via Freeloader and Nintendo don't bat an eyelid) that doesn't compromise Sony in anyway. We all know they hate 2D gaming anyway so maybe that might have a stake in their decision.

Tyrion: They did put Linux on the PS2. There are murmurings of Linux being available for the PS3. Sony are doing more than Microsoft or Nintendo to encourage people to get into development.

And you think Linux is enough for the last five years or so the PS2 has been out Where they have done fook all? Don't make me laugh, sir.

Tyrion: And sometimes a bit of common sense is required too.

Sure I can understand that Sony is a business but it's not like pirates can duplicate UMD games for sale physically (could be said that they are suffering for their own greed through the pspS very design to play films too). Roms are small and many go on the card. If the same is done with UMD games then the PSP is suffering from it's own design faults.

Because there's no real money to bemade from ROMs unless they are put online for download like Nintendo will, Pirates see no profit to be made, which leaves the homebrew scene born out of passion and not greed to deal with games they want to play and that aren't effecting Sony's sales. Paranoia is not needed here since al you have to do is eliminate real profit pirates from ripping UMDs and doing so should not have to effect homebrew development. (Like someone said they might find a way around version 2.0 anyways)

I speak my mind in my posts, and a lot a common sense most of the time too, you should know this Tyrion since you are no newbie to these forums. Agree to disagree or not, it's up to you sir.

That's what makes these forums so interesting, people do disagree. Some of the sites out there are populated by like-minded sheep who bleat the groupthink endlessly.


That's quite a long-term proposition, plus you have quite a large infrastructure to put in place. It all costs.

You can get much better return on investment by sponsoring university courses and taking on graduates and interns. Find a game development university course and gift them a couple of dev kits. Three years later, take on the best two or three graduates. Offer year out places for people on the course.

Yaroze was a brave experiment, but one that ultimately cost too much for the little immediate return it generated.


I don't think it is OK, I think it sucks. I am where I am today because my C64 came with BASIC installed. Many people in the software development industry are where they are for exactly the same reason. I worry that in the future there isn't going to be that talent pool to draw from.

However, I realise that Sony can't just magically make it all better. The best candidate for that role is Microsoft. If there was a BASIC programming language included with Windows, there would be many more people who discovered programming at an early age.


I'm sorry? Sony marketing is geared to selling product, not encouraging kids to program instead of playing games.


I agree, but you try it first. Sony tried it and didn't get the reaction or support they wanted.

I don't believe I'm making excuses for Sony, you only make excuses for someone if they aren't doing what they really should do. There is no law, rule, regulation or moral code that requires Sony to throw money away in the hope of stimulating the software industry at some time in the future.

I would hope that Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft would all try to encourage the industry. However, I understand that there are limits to what a company can do.


Believe me when I say, if you have the programming bug you don't have time for much else, especially playing games. I played many fewer games than my friends growing up since I was programming things myself.

And Nintendo have tried to crack down on imports in the past, they may not have specifically gone after Freeloader, but there have been several incidents of them warning, threatening and going after importers.

Here's one incident I found with a quick Google.


Let me turn that around. What have Microsoft or Nintendo done to encourage homebrew in the last five years? Like I said Sony have done more than the other two. It may not be much, but it's better than nothing.


Pirates can rip a UMD game to a memory stick and play it from there. If you can run homebrew from a MS then you can run pirated games from there. It's only the cost of memory sticks that are preventing this from happening more often. Let's face it, buy one MS and you can run any number of games by downloading them to your PC and putting them on the stick.


The problem is that the same loopholes that allow homebrew to run on PSP allows pirated games to run too. If the homebrew developers had access to a way to sign their programs, they would be able to run them without those loopholes. However they don't, so they can't.


I know you do Joji, but you are on a bit of an anti-Sony tip today. I don't see what's got you so riled up, you usually have such a balanced view of things, you've won prizes for it. However, the posting that started this thread is not like you at all.

Sony have closed a few loopholes in their firmware to try and prevent piracy. Closing those loopholes also makes homebrew developers unable to run their code. This prevents us reaching the nirvana of playing 20 year old games on the move. To be honest, I don't see this as a huge loss myself.

If there was much interest in portable MAME and MESS, then there would have been many more GamePark 32 handhelds sold.