With the arrival of every new console comes a race for hackers to crack their way through the new toy's security, and the PS3, after just over six months, has finally been defeated.
An exploit has been found in versions 1.10 and 1.11 of the PS3 firmware which has allowed one cunning hacker to boot up copied versions of PS3 games.
The fight isn't over though - the game boots, but it doesn't actually play, so there's some way to go. And the exploit doesn't allow for the running of unofficial (homebrew) programs, which is where the real meat of modding lies.
Homebrew fans hope the PS3 scene will go the same way as PSP, which has become one of the most thriving homebrew scenes in videogame history thanks in part to easy connection with PC (USB), and its huge storage potential via Sony's universal Memory Stick Duo.
Be warned though, if you mod your PS3 you'll kill your warrantee, face being banned from the PlayStation Network, and causing problems with running new games. Even worse, you could brick your PS3 altogether.
Plus, copying games is bad, so don't do that either, ya' hear?
I can't see many people risk breaking a £400+ console. Plus to play copied games you would need a Blu-Ray burner and blank Blu-Ray discs, all of which cost a bomb.
Good. Piracy needs to be a platform-wide problem so that developers cannot shy away from developing for platforms which have piracy, thus crippling their portfolio (mostly talking about the PC).
ive played cracked stuff before and ended up buying a lot of games because of it simply because not every game has a demo. I dont agree with the whole piracy thing but i dont disagree with it either, it will always be there and most consumers would buy the full title anyway. Also for online gaming for PC you need the full version anyway so youre still only getting a demo type game
Either way, Sony will do something annoying to prevent this, id easily buy a PS3 if i could use it en tirely without any preventation/security as a full Linux based PC
Good to see Sony have done their usual half-hearted job on security. They know that having a console that plays pirated games is the secret to shifting a lot of units.
Look at their previous efforts, PS, PS2 and PSP all pirate heaven.
I'm sure the four or five people who've actually bought the console are really pleased with this news as well.
Good to see Sony have done their usual half-hearted job on security. They know that having a console that plays pirated games is the secret to shifting a lot of units.
Look at their previous efforts, PS, PS2 and PSP all pirate heaven.
I'm sure the four or five people who've actually bought the console are really pleased with this news as well.
Its not just Sony. Look at the Wii. Modchip galore. Then you have 360 with the firmware stuff. MS banned them from LIVE though and now the hackers have created a new firmware that MS can't detect meaning those modders that have been banned will end up buying another 360 just for LIVE play. Nice little trick by MS...
Good to see Sony have done their usual half-hearted job on security. They know that having a console that plays pirated games is the secret to shifting a lot of units.
Look at their previous efforts, PS, PS2 and PSP all pirate heaven.
I'm sure the four or five people who've actually bought the console are really pleased with this news as well.
I might have known some MS Fanboy would comment about this.
Good to see Sony have done their usual half-hearted job on security. They know that having a console that plays pirated games is the secret to shifting a lot of units.
Look at their previous efforts, PS, PS2 and PSP all pirate heaven.
I'm sure the four or five people who've actually bought the console are really pleased with this news as well.
Its not just Sony. Look at the Wii. Modchip galore. Then you have 360 with the firmware stuff. MS banned them from LIVE though and now the hackers have created a new firmware that MS can't detect meaning those modders that have been banned will end up buying another 360 just for LIVE play. Nice little trick by MS...
Whether MS can or can't detect that Firmware is very much up for debate. The same team that created the detectable firmware were confident that effort was stealth and couldn't be detected. You can guarantee Microsoft will find a way around it.
If you have any sense, you wont bother modding your console, getting banned from Xbox live would be a bit crap for me as that is the main reason I like my Xbox 360 so much...
its not worth doing unless you are REALLY REALLY GOOD at it. i wont risk it and probz never will, but a friend of mine can play games like super mario on his psp
also, so what if they can make copies but they don't work. its like saying a have a million pounds but i can't spend it, so whats the point. maybe sony did do a gd job of security.
and to the person that sed the 5 owners of ps3, i've played thousands of people online so there is a flaw in your argument (ill dumben it down for that person : YOUR BLANKED)
Good to see Sony have done their usual half-hearted job on security. They know that having a console that plays pirated games is the secret to shifting a lot of units.
Look at their previous efforts, PS, PS2 and PSP all pirate heaven.
I'm sure the four or five people who've actually bought the console are really pleased with this news as well.
I might have known some MS Fanboy would comment about this.
C.
Hey, that was totally inappropraite, calling him a MS fanboy.
there's just as much chance he could be a ninty man!
if the ps3 get a severe problem with hackers. then maybe they will kill the damn thing like MS did with the xbox and make something equivalent of the xbox compared to the xbox360. and i men it! damn u even doubt that valve boss who say the thing is a complete miss! i mean who else have the expertise and have a such a great reputation as he?? very few! and he tells, and u yells!
i hope MS don't end up with a massive power in the console world because then we will just end up with xbox windows! because they get almost monopole!
well if your market is the average idiot then u meet that problem but the 360 got... well a audience with more brains than ex: wii who targets the average and severely normal person. and average people is idiots when it comes to electronics. so i am not that worried! but the wii gives me the chills! wii with its wiiDIOTS is turning gaming into something like movies where there are almost none AAA moves but s**t!!! loads!!! of horrid B movies! i don't want the wiiDIOTS to roam the world! and turn gaming into something like fotball. cos that would suck!
Good to see Sony have done their usual half-hearted job on security. They know that having a console that plays pirated games is the secret to shifting a lot of units.
Look at their previous efforts, PS, PS2 and PSP all pirate heaven.
I'm sure the four or five people who've actually bought the console are really pleased with this news as well.
The PS3 has been out for nearly a year in the US and still hasn't been hacked - you call that "half-hearted" security? There was hacks for the 360 a month after it came out, and for the Wii only 3 weeks! So I guess the security on my 360, in your view, is "non-existent" if the PS3's is considered "half-hearted"?
Fanboys should really go live in a cave, away from society.
im starting to get sick of all this hacking custom crap, hackers are starting to be one of my most hated people in the world along those terroists prats, hackers is wats wrong with the world today, nothings safe, and to be honest, people that hack lik this Dark_Alex SHOULD GET A LIFE, i've never known soo much effort to b put in just to play copied and illegal games, and lik some of yous said, doing sometime lik this on a £400 console is soo stupid, wat are they going to do wen its broken, buy another one and waste another £400? if they do, they must be the most stupidist people i will ever known, i play people on syphon filter dark mirror and i recently found out the most of my buddies hav custom for thier psp, i keep saying that its illegal and it will break your psp, but one of my friend is TRYING to ENCOURAGE me to do the same, cus he says u get free games and get games that u can actually get on psp, also the internet browser is much better than the standard one, i told him that i will NEVER hack as its stupid and it will give you a bad reputation, i buy these consoles to play games, but to hack into them just to get games i want for free or get games that not actually an offical game for that system (lik mario for psp) is something that i will never do in my life
people modding hardware and software alike is always a good thing for the gaming scene look at games like unreal who encoraged the modding of the game, it helps to move things forward and add new stuff to make us want to keep playing games.
people who think 'hacking' is just about playing pirate games are very naive theres so much more to it than that, my favourite thing for my psp is the ability to use it as a game pad for my pc.
as long as your sensible put some time in to finding out what your actually doing and checking its worked for people before you should have no problems with modding.
when i spend my hard earned money on a console i want to be the best it can be and sometimes modding it is the only way to go.
i'd just like to add that as said before its not just sony consoles the orginal xbox had a far more active mod scene than the ps2.
I can't understand why people would want to modify/chip their PS3 just to play a copied game It seems like a lot of hassle just to save a few quid.
I can understand why some people had the PS2 chipped in order to play foreign games that weren't available in the UK but the PS3 allows the user to play games from anywhere as the games are not region blocked (well at least at present).
The PS3 is a great console which has probably cost you £425 (unless you've bought it after the price cut) why risk losing a small fortune just for a copied game.
What on earth is Flenser going on about? He has invented one of the most flawed conspiracy theories of all time. The Playstation consoles have been exploited by hackers and pirates in the past, this is the only true comment they have ventured to share.
How does selling consoles alone benefit Sony in the PS3 era. They actually lose money on each console sold. To be fair the PSP hacking has actually proved to be a positive feature of the console... With homebrew and emulation opening up a scene on the portable system. But Sony has constantly tried to control the spread with firmware. As with the PS2 they took legal action against the modding scene rendering it impossible to obtain an altered console through regular channels. Microsoft managed no such measures. I can see wisdom in opening up a machine to homebrew..that way it would be easier to crack down in modders and pirates to show they only have one motive for attacking the machines protection. As well as setting out a scene for home made software and apps...although such things also could result in damage to a console. I realise this is a complex feature to impliment without making a machine vulnerable.
I can understand you have a corporate leaning and support companies like football teams or political parties regardless of their flaws.
Surely their are a wealth of subjects you can already use to belittle the various consoles. You don't need to lie.
I dont think anybody would do this to a ps3. First of all, the blu-rays discs cost loads, and i dont anybody would want to kill a £300 console just to a save a few quid on games. Plus unlike some other consoles, i respect the ps3, and would not do something like this to it. Plus when you dont run pirate games, you get that feeling u have the 'real deal'.
guys, this console is not only selling in the US and europe, it's worldwide in some places, where 40$ for a game is not something you can easily pay each time, paying 400$ for the ps3 is not a little to, but you pay it once. all am saying is that may be game producers should consider a significant discounting on their prises after the game is released for quite a long time.
I dont think the blue ray disk poses much of a problem once the PS3 firware is fully cracked. legally backed up games could be stored on the upgradeable PS3 hardrive, analogous to the way it is done for the PSP. Storage of the actual legally backed up blueray disk would also be simple, no need for backing up on a blueray disk, just save it in a segmented, archived/compressed (.rar) format across multiple dvds, it is bit long winded but in all honesty you probably wouldnt need to many dvds to back up PS3 games as most games are around 7 - 8 gig after compression. Piracy is wrong if its done for monetary gain but some pirates download apps, games in order to review a product before they shell out their cash which is fair in my oppinion.
For whomever stated that games for the PS3 or whatever console for that matter are too expensive in some regions thus justifying MODs either is a teenager that doesn't understand business or they are just naive. At the end of the day Sony, MS and Nintendo are trying to make money. They have to pay people to create these games and consoles. Think how much you would want to be paid if you had the ability to create these great systems. Now multiply that by a couple thousand. Add to that production and shipping costs. Then add to that the profit margin. These companies have been around for years because they know how to be successful. Games cost a lot of money to make up for the loss of profit due to piracy and copyright infringement. If piracy didn't exist sales volumes would go up and games would be cheaper. And no I don't think people would buy 200 console games to replace pirated copies as people tend to play more diverse games when they are free, but the demo market that is now available with these new systems makes it possible to test games before you buy. At the end of the day piracy is theft and it is illegal. And for you adults who allow your children to use pirated copied games, shame on you.
Hey look at it this way, the more you hack and get copied games the higher the price will rise for the ps3 games that are sold in stores... When you buy your ps3 you buy it to buy games you know will work on your ps3...but when you crack your ps3 and start getting copied games the reliability on your ps3 working after a couple of games isn't really that good. I was thinking of cracking my psp because i wanted some games that i didn't buy in the past but then i thought i'm not capable of cracking a psp by myself so let me just give it someone that i don't know who can crack it and do it for me...at first i was thrilled then after reading some comments i realised that it's "killing" Sony economically. Getting homebrew games is free...you go on the site and download, it rather than paying $40 for a new game at the store...Sony's income is mainly based on the games sold in stores. If we all start downloading for free they're not going to have the money to make the cool games that they're making now a days and instead make a game from time to time because their budget restricted because people aren't buying their games anymore. Imagine this, you go to FNAC of BestBuy and go to the video game section and when you get there the shelves are being emptied because they're not selling anymore. I'm in totally against cracking my ps3 or my psp to have some extra games...i'd rather pay $60-$70 on a game than to download a fake one.
The gaming future lies in our hands...we have the choice to continue hacking and destroying these companies or stop this madness and buy their games and be satisfied with what we have.
Some of you folks on here really aren't very bright. Its easy to sit there and get on your high horse about piracy, but without it you'd still be paying stupid prices for music, games and videos. Like it or not piracy has driven prices down to more realistic levels, and companies are still making huge profits which means they are probably still overcharging us by quite a bit.
Also for the people saying that no one is going to hack a £400 PS3, its simple math really. After you've had 8 or 9 free games your £400 console has effectively paid for itself, if it does break at some point you use the £400 you didn't spend on games to buy a new console. I'm not saying its right, I'm merely pointing out the reality of the situation.
PS3 does have an edge in the war against piracy, and its the prohibitive cost of Blu-Ray disks. But much like blank DVD and Dual Layer DVD before it, piracy will ultimately be responsible for Blu-Ray disks and writers tumbling in price. In the long run this will also drive down the price of movies and games that use Blu-Ray. But again no one will thank pirates, despite the fact companies would have been absolutely dry humping us without the pirates to keep them in check.
All i can say about hacking is simply, yes you can play free games, but only for so long.
Every game a hacker gets makes the games company lose a little money. Now if everyone in the world did this, the games companies wouldn't have any money to make the games and you would all end up playing the same sh!tty games all year.
So next time you think of hacking, think about your love for games before you start scamming the same company that made your favourite little game.
I just read the posts and firstly i would say that while i dont agree with hacking in the sense of making money , i do agree for other reasons mainly development of technology but my posts as the title states is to those who think that becuase of hacking compaines are being hit hard and not making profits ,
All i can say is get a grip of yourself folks , just did 5 mins research on the net Sony have sold 14.4 million units world wide since lauch of the PS3 , now lets work that out , i just used my pc calculator because i am lazy and poor at math
I get the result of 56 trillion ( 14.4ML x £400 ) , please correct me if i am wrong , maybe its only 5.6 trillion but knowone is going to tell me that aint some rather large profits , and that is console only , not mention games / accessories / Bluray discs , i shudder to think what the actuall profit is , perhaps is someone could post with the actuall production costs for a single ps3 unit we could all work it out , either way to say or worse to think that Sony ( possibly the biggest rip off company ever ) are hurting because of piracy now thats just a little silly in my personal opinion,
you people dont get it, i hate it whe companies who are raking in the billions are like "NO! WE WANT MONEY!" its these little things like homebrew that even it all out. i mean, seriosly, who the duck would want to pay money instead of getting it for free, i think most of you are lying, christian, or stupid. im not being offencive to any religon person or copany, but who dousnt want money? Dont use the "If everyone was getting it free" cos who gives a s**t about moral values. FREE STUFF FOR ME. Dont tell me your not the same. Watch the ending of MGS2, your keeping your "Self" intact.
All i can say is get a grip of yourself folks , just did 5 mins research on the net Sony have sold 14.4 million units world wide since lauch of the PS3 , now lets work that out , i just used my pc calculator because i am lazy and poor at math
I get the result of 56 trillion ( 14.4ML x £400 ) , please correct me if i am wrong
Certainly!
14.4 million multiplied by 400 is 5.76 billion, but even this is ignoring the most important point. For the first generation of PS3s (only until recently), the hardware was costing Sony about £450 to produce each unit. If you multiply this £50 loss by your 14.4 million sales you get a £720 million loss, which is a lot closer to fact for Sony. Sony are banking on software sales to recoup their losses, so it's no wonder they are so concerned about piracy.
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It seems like a lot of hassle just to save a few quid.
