Sony Pushes (Another) Mandatory PS3 Update

Proprietary standards don't win mass market acceptance? How about CD, or PS2 games? Introducing new standards is risky business but the rewards for winners are too high to ignore.

OMG! lol i totally forgot that sony released the PSPgo xD.

Now to wait and see a hacker hack the new update :D

We need to push Sony for a free Mandatory PS3:P

Wow, this is one hell of an opinion piece. I don't think I'm fanboy, as I own all 3 consoles plus a beefy PC, but I think Sony has every right to protect their system after what happened with the PSP and piracy. Sure, some people will complain about the lack of homebrew, and some users honestly want such features, but you can bet your ass 99% of people that would use the exploit will be doing so to pirate games.

I was among these pirates until I got a decent job and no longer had an excuse for it, but I still follow scene news. If you did too, you'd know that every step Sony has taken was in response to hackers closing in on a major exploit, not some evil misguided plan to take features away from customers. Some of their decisions are mind-boggling, like stopping backwards compatibility support, but I think their response to attempts at circumventing protection is justified. I think it's appropriate to ignore a "prominent community" of supercomputer experts that may number in the hundreds when faced with a potential of hundreds of thousands that would be loading up their hard-drives with pirated games.

As far as the rumble "flip-flop", enough people complained so Sony brought it back. Would you have preferred Sony said "no we like our idea better"? Not enough people complained about dropping OtherOS support, so it's not coming back. It's simple.

Whether we as consumers agree or disagree with Sony (or Apple, or Dell, or anyone else), ultimately WE have the final say. Vote with your wallets, people!

Taylor,

Proprietary standards as used in video games for video game discs don't count. You'll note, for example, I referred to UMD as a failure for *movie* distribution. Obviously games released on UMD have done just find, particularly in comparison to the PSP Go's download-only strategy.

True, CD's were huge--but CD technology was a near-perfect example of being in the right place at the right time with the right features. For every proprietary technology you can name that's succeeded, there are many that don't (and all of Sony's that I listed failed). If you want non-Sony examples, consider FireWire vs. USB or PCI vs. IBM's MicroChannel. Those are two easy examples off the top of my head--in both cases, the expensive, proprietary format died while the cheaper, ubiquitous format didn't.

Sackyhack:

"I think Sony has every right to protect their system..."

So do I. This isn't a question of what Sony has the right to do or not to do. So long as Sony doesn't misadvertise the capabilities of a product, it's free to make whatever changes it wants.

My point here is that Sony has something of a systemic, multi-decade problem. Most of the formats I listed here that failed had good points. Some of them, like Minidisc, were downright great. In almost every case, however, Sony's demands for excessive control over what it viewed as a revenue stream led to the destruction of that revenue long term.

No, people aren't going to stop buying PS3s, but shoving these sorts of updates down people's throats and making them mandatory (or no logging in) is a perfect example of how Sony seems unable to balance product protection and consumer privilege. I'd argue this is one of the reasons why Sony's brand reputation has taken such a clobbering in the past 10-15 years.

Consider rumble again. It's pretty well known that Sony didn't include PS3 rumble because it was engaged in a lawsuit with Immersion at the time. Microsoft settled with Immersion in 2003 for $26 million and, IIRC, shipped rumble support with the XBox 360.

Certainly Sony *could* have settled with Immersion--$26 million is peanuts to Sony. It also had plenty of time; Immersion filed its lawsuit against both MS and Sony in 2002; the PS3 didn't ship until four years later. Where Microsoft read what gamers would want accurately, however, Sony decided it could develop Sixaxis, and then convince gamers they really wanted it instead of rumble.

Eventually Sony backtracked (good for them). I think, given the company's history, it's extremely relevant to ask how the company could've misread gamer desires so badly in the first place. To me, the Sixaxis issue is another example of how the executives behind console development are deeply out of touch with what their own gaming public actually want.

Hope this clears some things up.

No matter how many times they fix the security holes theres always a way to hack a device.

I wouldn't suprise if the hackers makes a different jailbraker for the PS3, it just of matter of time.

>> We can't help wondering if Sony's ironclad determination to prevent all 'unauthorized' use of the PS3 will open a window Microsoft takes advantage of when it designs the next XBox.

Sure they will... they'll welcome people installing Linux on their console.

I won't be around for that though, because I'll be too busy making snow angels in hell.

I've got an idea:

I never updated my system to the crippled firmware, so my (original model, hardware backwards compatibility) system still has OtherOS.  So.... I wonder if I could sell my PS3 on eBay for enough money to basically get all my money back plus a bonus.

Eh, probably won't do it... simply because I dislike the idea of selling it to some pirate kiddie that will use it to play "backups" when I could hack around with programming it instead.

Wow dude. What kinda job did you get. I want all three systems and a beefy computer.