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

I'm with you on that one too Joji.

To all the others, the amount of power to dictate what we get on our consoles, is what is in moral question. After all we bought our consoles, not licensed them. The other moral question is, who else can you buy from but the big guys, as they have prevented effective competition by pricing below costs. And under law those are interesting territories, particularly if they get backed up by legislation. Remember the the region coding on DVDs is not that flash with some legislators either (and yes if I produced a DVD player, PS2, or somebodies else game, I would be expecting to be doing it under license anyway, they own that IP). Don't get Pirates confused with home brewers, just because Pirates get restricted doesn't mean home brewers should be. But the thrust in the industry is to expand laws to take more control, to take more money, but we have to say what is enough, and set the limits.

Actaully it doesn't meant they should be, it just means that they are. There's no way for a game console to distinguish between a pirated game and a homebrewed app.

In truth I think it's important we all know the difference between the profiteering pirates and the passionate homebrew fans, ( in know the difference and I'm not painting them with the same brush but the industry is) this kind of line needs to be drawn in the sand so everyone knows who the real enemy is.

I'm sure many developers out there would rather their product be enjoyed by passionate gamers (homebrew or otherwise) after some titles are long forgotten than have them gather dust or yet be in the grubby hands of some pirate looking to make a fast buck. I believe this is why a lot of blind eyes are turned from the rom scene, because it's games that the masses no long play and little money to be made. Perhaps they then need to be in an online museum or something.

If piracy starts to cut into the new born teeth of new games then that is where we have a big problem as that will hurt the industry most. You only have to look at at the Halo 2 and Half Life 2 launches to see who the real trouble makers are.

Nintendo have had problems with roms for ages (back when all games were carts I suppose you'd have called it piracy then because there was money to be made out of them, but now they are but a twinkle in the industries eye and reduced to the passionate fodder of the rom fans/ homebrewers), and the result of help eliminate roms is the DS a system design for gaming with some vital things you need to play (stylus & screen, mic etc) whereas the GBA is a pirates paradise since carts have always been easy pickings. When the GBA is no more things will be a lot tighter because the DS is made so you can't really emulate what it does.

PSP on the other hand is much easier as it's a simpler console and a 1-2GB card is what opens up the possibilities further. Sony being the geniuses they are should have planned ahead. The UMD was made so they'd have control (similar to GC discs for Nintendo if you will) but because of PSP having no set amount of memory and relying on cards, Sony have brought it on themselves and they have problems they should not have (UMD was meant to solve them, remember?).

Sorry if I've strayed off topic. In short cherish and aid the homebrew scene for some of them are the future of this industry and do the opposite to the pirates.

I think you are using skewed definitions and presenting a situation far out of variance with reality...

I really can't be sure, but it appears that you're giving ROM/MAME users the benefit of "homebrew" status and then referring to another "dead herring" that of "profiteering pirates". I really don't know about the situation in the UK, or even the PS2 mod scene, but the only people making money in the US Xbox scene sell hardware and cosmetic mods, at very reasonable prices considering the cost of games, there are very few "profiteers" and those mostly cater to the ignorant rich.

Aside from truly home brewed games (very few of the these) one of the only "homebrew" apps worthy of the name I can think of, by which I mean a homebrew app not directly concerened with piracy, is XBMC, and alla teh linux stuffs...

There is a distinct homebrew community, they who wish to learn to program consoles on their own terms. They have a lot of very talented people in their community. It was they that back-engineered the PSP executable format, they that managed to run their own apps on the PSP and they that have constantly kept up-to-date with Sony's upgraded firmware. The homebrew people are true hackers in the classic sense of the word, trying to understand the system and work within it.

However, due to their efforts, the way has also been opened up for pirates. Currently, I don't think the market is large enough or the process simple enough for pirates to profit from the PSP, but it can only get easier for them to make money.

Sony appear to be trying to close the holes before the price of entry for pirates gets to the profitable point. Unfortunately, this also inhibits the homebrew people and prevents them from developing and running their own applications.

What you have to realise though, is that most of these homebrew applications are emulators, like the recent x86 emulator that has been ported to the PSP, it is capable of running a minimal Windows or Linux install.

When you use the PSP, or any other device, to enable emulation, you enter the grey area of ROMs. Many, many people will want to play the games they already own. However, many, many more will play anything they can download. Not many people have arcade machines they own, or even the JAMMA boards for them. Most people who play emulated arcade machines through MAME are doing so illegally.

It is a bit of a mess, but if Sony allow illegal access to, for example, Sega machines, do you think Sega will be happy? There may be fewer Sega games for PSP or PS2 or PS3 in the future. In order to keep their partners happy, and themselves out of lawsuits, Sony are happy to crack down on the loopholes that allow pirated games and homebrew apps to be run.

That this move dents our fun slightly and also impedes the hobby of the homebrew enthusiast is, I believe, a side effect of the more responsible actions that Sony are taking.

I'm leaving aside the whole issue of whether the older games should be released to PD. Companies will mostly try to retain control of their IP. I'd like to see an automatic release to PD of all games that haven't been actively marketed for, say, 10 years. Similar to the life+70 years copyright limit the UK has on books.

Wow, that got long!


In the UK, you can go to just about any open-air market and see a pirate software stall. We have a more accommodating stance to pirates in the general populace. This, I think, is due to computers like the C64, Spectrum, Amiga and ST being more widespread in the UK than consoles were, at least until the PS1. Games were much easier to copy with a tape-to-tape recorder or an extra floppy drive and XCopy.

Since it was easy, and kids swapped games disks in the playground like Pokemon cards are traded today, we have grown up with a pretty easy-going attitude to games piracy. This has continued into the CD/DVD era of games media, since they are an easy copy with an appropriately decked out PC.

However, those of us that have even sniffed the air of the games industry have a more responsible attitude to piracy. Once you have seen guys in at 10PM getting the code just right only to have their game discontinued, you really don't want to rip them off from the small cut they get of the games that make it to the shelves.

Here at eleventeenth (SPOnG's sister company) we do work for ELSPA and hence see the industry figures for the amount of piracy that goes on. We also see the results of the raids that ELSPA and the Police make. Some of these pirates are just running factories for games, DVDs and music of all types. It's not just swapping a disk of Sim City for Shadow of the Beast any more, it's an industry.

With the mounting numbers of developers, both small and large, that have gone out of business lately it's becoming apparent that something has to be done. Not all of those developers went out of business due to piracy, but they all went away due to a lack of money. Anything that reduces their profits increases the chances of them going out of business and affects the whole industry.

If the trend continues then eventually there will only be four companies in the games industry, and that's assuming Nintendo can continue to make money. A future with only Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo and EA is a bleak one. Try not to let it happen.

Anything that can be done to crack down on games piracy should be done, if that means I can't play C64 Turrican on my PSP, so be it.

Wow! That ended up being longer than I intended too.

Hope I have given you food for thought.

Huh, you really have to look under some rocks to find openly marketed pirate booty in my neck of the woods, and this is almost exclusively DVDs and clothing.

Are they fully operable copies? or do they require a modded console?

Yes, Commodore 64 is the founation from which all springs, reverse engineer. pirate, or homebrew...Piracy for the C64 was like Marijuana for the Deadheads...Lifestyle, man, Lifestyle...it was one of the first truly effective P2P networks, predating the internet.

Here in the US, the vast majority of "pirates" are of the C64 mold, that of individuals.

(post terminated early due to female offing intoxicating beverages)

Cheers!

They'll require mod chips, but sometimes the buggers will fit them for you right there.


Over here it's individuals or a couple of people, but they do it wholesale. Have a look at ELSPA's Anti-Piracy Press Releases. You'll see grabs worth 1/2, 1 and 2 million pounds this year. Those are the ones they do a press release about. The UK industry magazine, MCV, used to have a raid report from ELSPA each and every week.

Piracy is big business over here. As recently as about five years ago, you could walk down a high street and see shops advertising walk-in console modding services. ELSPA have really cracked down on things since then, but that's just driven it underground.


Either you're web surfing in a bar or you've got a female in your life who does waitress service to your PC. Either way, you're living the dream!

As to do with Linux, and etc, it costs hundreds of millions to billions of dollars to compete, even if you were given the completed design, manufacturing and business resource for free, just on the losses to sell each game console. MS could have easily sent Sony broke, if they had adopted the strategy of upgrading backwards compatible consoles every year, based on PC's. Sony Playstation would have just slipped behind and behind and behind for 4 years. But it looks like they were scared by the losses they made in the first console, even though the second or third console would have been able to be sold at a profit, because the main cost of upgrading were the more recent graphic chip and processor. Imagine a 6200+ based Pent M (or dual to quad VIA) machine competing against the $50 PS2 (What else do you think they would sell it for against that sort of competition). Sure it may not look anything near as crash hot as a PS3, but Sony would have been all but broke by now and unable to afford to finish the PS3. Meanwhile Microsoft still brings out an PC Xbox 360 like machine to complete victory over Sony and the others. Sony may win in the end of the day because maybe MS lacks the will to make the losses to do it And before anybody goes on about why would anybody buy something if the next console is due out in a year etc. Well the PC market were doing it on a 6 month cycle, all you need do is the lower middle of the market hardware updated once a year, and renew it before it becomes the middle of the low end every year. You could make profit on the hardware upto 100% of the time. Elaborate I know, but even the Consumer Electronics industry knows to upgrade models once a year, and have for a long time. As for developers, they make games to work on three+ levels of faster hardware through a sound abstraction layer, consumers then buy the console knowing that it will play the latest games for 3 to 5 years, and when they feel like it they buy the most recent version in 2 to 3 years time. In the current situation, they are stuck with something so far behind PC's within 2 years it's metaphorically like a black trash can. The plan, in the past, was to make buyers suffer with it for another 3-5 years on top of that 2 years. The PS3 was to come out in 07, but the xbox 360 seems to have pushed that up, so MS is a hero here. Imagine if the xbox2 came out last year, what would Sony have done (maybe a console with an enhanced version of the PSP enhancements)?

So your argument is a bit naive, a winner knows when he is beaten before he gets there, and knows how to change the rules so he can win fairly.


(I remember an article on how they have been for sometime, but here we are mainly talking manufacturing costs)



Again a bit Naive, and there are already competition (anti-trust I think you call them) laws in other industries (depending on the country) that do prevent this practice. There was a Prussian warlord that invented this saying that sums up the moral situation, "Might makes right" that the mighty like to wield, and their stooges (contrast between your views and Hitler's concentration of power left out). The real expression should have been "might doesn't make right, but right makes right" to replace that immoral/amoral stance. Life is for people, not for power of people. I can see you are not nearly as objective as I had hoped. Your line of reasoning leads to one type of potato chip, one type of burger, one of most things and less things, bland, little variety, because it is cheaper to reduce variety and increase volume. One company that effectively controls and owns us all, no economic advancement individually outside of that, limited technical advancement. So you want people to know you as, "Welcome to the tyranny of Tyrionville, the most magical place in his head". That's why there are competition laws in free competition, to stop companies from effectively stopping others from competing and reducing competition, variety and service, looking after the consumer. All the things you want. These laws actually increase competition and make it so small people can also enter and compete. This is basic economic theory (though I suspect only setup to distract people from the real aim, and the parts of the law, of companies doing what they want to get rich and powerful). Free competition is advocated to look after the people, not the companies.

You should have seen Sega's plans back in the the Genesis day. Their next console was to be $1000 (read equivalent to probably $2-3K today) and eventually they had to release it against the playstation upgraded and fractioned in price (I think it was originally more like a x32 enhanced Genesis but I'm not certain anymore). Look at Nintendo NES in the early 80's before it got to the US, they had something like upto 15-30 games and expensive hardware (I suspect it might have been the industry practice of the past, as I wasn't in Japan at the time, of company produced and drip fed on the market games). If you let companies get more powerful and control everything this is the sort of bland milking you get of the market. And during the second computer game crash, well companies got greedy, top companies thought they could just sell the same console for another few years, but people stopped buying (the PS1 is the first console I know of too effectively sell over an extended life). Because they could subsidise their competition against other players, they were able to control the market enough to think it. If other players have to sink 2 to 10 billion just to compete, they can do it, as few companies want to jump into a market with this sort of costs. Once Sony makes the PS3 a computer then the reason to buy PC's becomes diminished, and how many competitors in the PC market can foot the bill to compete. In the end, for them to compete, and make lovely, very lovely, profits, the money comes out of us. Give enough power and the powerful might be tempted to think they should own most of it, would you be happy with a 1/4 of the wage, to keep you going and working for businesses, so they can make more money. With enough control they can also give you your wage but raise prices 4 times, now your wage is worth 1/4 as much. It is a fools paradise that eventually consumes itself, that is why there are laws to balance it out, so that it doesn't. There is a much politer alternative out there called, regulated control.


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.

Sorry.

This is an interesting comment, it is rather like they sold you a bakery and then told you that you couldn't make cakes with it, but had to buy theirs. The amount of similar commonsense examples against this practice could be enormous.

Having read most of he rest of the thread we can agree.

The main problem is that Sony didn't provide Home-brewers anyway to do their stuff on their machines, or to publish it at a profit, and didn't provide adequate measures to stop them.

That it is unfortunate consequence that home-brewers, mess, and mamers, are restricted in order to counteract pirates (though the article was painting with a rather thick pirate brush).

That a pirate proof HB mechanism that allowed the production and the commercial publication of HB software is needed to resolve this. That such a mechanism of publication could be provided through Sony to avoid pirating. That the HB software could be restricted to those in the HB community (or have a HB system) not a very good compromise. With this compromise, normal publishers should be able to opt to choose to publish good HB software as full commercial software.

That the PS2 Linux system be made available for the PStwo at a fair price of $70, with a version of Open Office, oops, how did that get in there ;)

Replying to yourself? Sorta unsurprising that you're agreeing with yourself...certainly most of the opinions you've expressed, rooted as they are in an entirely unrealistic worldview, are so ludicrous, any who are familiar with my typical style will appreciate how hard it was to refrain from commenting on your incredible lack of insight.

There is a gaming platform with complete support for Homebrewed games and applications. Its called a PC. You're sitting in front of one now.

Words fail me. The same tenets of Freedom and Liberty that causes me to support almost without reservation the right to Reverse Engineer also means Sony gets to make their console however they choose. period.

Wish for a homebrew-friendly console in one hand.
S**t in the other.
Then wait for someone who actually knows what hes on about to do all the hard work for you.
Then whine about how hard they had to work.
Grow Up. Get Real.

girl called from bar summoning me forth...

Once, when I was 19 or so (I live in a smallish farming community consisting mainly of Germans so I started drinking around 14) I quit drinking for 6 months or so...

After class at the local delinquent asylum (read: community college) one of my female classmates asked me if I wanted to go to a bar with her...my period of abstinence was needless to say ended shortly thereafter, the thought of telling her "No thank you, I don't drink..." not occuring to me, as I am a heterosexual.

LOL!
German farming community? Holy crapping boredom Batman!

Actaully its a rather pleasant, rural community, located within 25 miles of a major urban center. I'm closer to downtown (both as the crow flies and temporally) than all of the affluent "suburbs" and yet have miles of fields and woods between my home and the rather more boring suburbs and The City. Unfortunately the area is so pleasant, more cityfolk are moving here than I'm comforatable with.