Business ramifications of piracy *spawn

[Elan Tedronai]

This thread spawned from technical discussion of PS3's crack. It's not an ethical discussion which already exists, but a business one - what will the result for Sony be and what business actions should they take?

sony should think of selling those first party studios while they are still hot. Start with naughty dog first.

 

[Trejser]

sony should think of selling those first party studios while they are still hot. Start with naughty dog first.

Not sure if serious

 

[Elan Tedronai]

Not sure if serious

When uncharted 3 hits next year, millions of 13-19 year old gamers who spent 60 bucks playing UC2 will be playing blu ray rips from HDD.

Game over. Sony is fucked big time. The social rejects have managed to damage sony where it hurts. Ps3 will be dreamcast MK2.

time to downsize those first party studios. No one is going be paying for your games anymore

 

[Trejser]

When uncharted 3 hits next year, millions of 13-19 year old gamers who spent 60 bucks playing UC2 will be playing blu ray rips from HDD.

Game over. Sony is fucked big time. The social rejects have managed to damage sony where it hurts. Ps3 will be dreamcast MK2.

time to downsize those first party studios. No one is going be paying for your games anymore

overreacting much? There are 40+ m of PS3 users buying original games right now, most of them will be still doing that after this "hack".

Sorry for bad english

 

[Deleted member 7537]

When uncharted 3 hits next year, millions of 13-19 year old gamers who spent 60 bucks playing UC2 will be playing blu ray rips from HDD.

Game over. Sony is fucked big time. The social rejects have managed to damage sony where it hurts. Ps3 will be dreamcast MK2.

time to downsize those first party studios. No one is going be paying for your games anymore

PS2 and Wii were hacked almost instantly after their release and they sold millions of units and make lot of money on soft. Dreamcast failed for other reasons apart from piracy.

 

[Elan Tedronai]

PS2 and Wii were hacked almost instantly after their release and they sold millions of units and make lot of money on soft. Dreamcast failed for other reasons apart from piracy.

the ps2 and the wii are market leaders. damage from piracy was overcome by large marketshare. ps3 does not have that luxury.


being third, being a primarily hardcore console, no need for mods or anything= damaging piracy.

Sony should have followed Microsoft route's and closed their system from the beginning.

 

[Elan Tedronai]

overreacting much? There are 40+ m of PS3 users buying original games right now, most of them will be still doing that after this "hack".

Sorry for bad english

that's what they said about the dreamcast too. I bet in SEGA headquarters someone must be having an overdose of schadenfreude.

Can't say i blame them. If i was a SEGA employee i would be saying 'suck on it sony' as well

 

[betan]

Sony should open the ps3 immediately, with Linux and RSX support. If they are indeed making money off each ps3 there is no need to limit homebrew.

 

[eastmen]

overreacting much? There are 40+ m of PS3 users buying original games right now, most of them will be still doing that after this "hack".

Sorry for bad english

Depends on how easy the hack is. I was working gamestop when the dreamcast was out. It was huge everyone was buying games. Then the boot discs hit the web and chinatown and then everyone i knew had all the dreamcast games and didn't pay a cent.

If this is on that level of easy where all you need is a usb key and you load a custom firmware and you can play all the games you want , this could really harm sony.

 

[Gitaroo]

Depends on how easy the hack is. I was working gamestop when the dreamcast was out. It was huge everyone was buying games. Then the boot discs hit the web and chinatown and then everyone i knew had all the dreamcast games and didn't pay a cent.

If this is on that level of easy where all you need is a usb key and you load a custom firmware and you can play all the games you want , this could really harm sony.

ya, but at the time, online or social networking wasnt very big.

 

[slider]

time to downsize those first party studios. No one is going be paying for your games anymore

I will!

 

[Gitaroo]

guess they can get rid of their entire SCEJ studios and only leave PD and tell them they must pump out new gran tourismo every 2 years until it stop selling. And leave team ico alone

 

[eastmen]

ya, but at the time, online or social networking wasnt very big.

Yea but if your running signed code how will sony know that your playing on a hacked ps3 ?

 

[Gitaroo]

Yea but if your running signed code how will sony know that your playing on a hacked ps3 ?

serial number like PC online like someone has mention? What I mean is block off online access rom the pirates, also fight used games market. Of course offline only games are still screwed and still doesn't stop ppl from staying offline. Sony start doing it with Socom 3 psp, not sure it has been hacked yet. Last time I check ppl only got it to work with real legit key but playing the downloaded iso.

 

[Karooo]

sony should think of selling those first party studios while they are still hot. Start with naughty dog first.

Why? they can make games for the PS4 and PSP2. I don't think this is such a big deal tbh.

PS3 is already lagging behind the 360 in sales, popularity and the PS3 is already 4 years old. Since they make profit on the PS3 now, it won't hurt them that much.

They can sell many PS3's in 2 or 3 years before the PS4 hits and somehow I think this is all planned by Sony.

 

[patsu]

When uncharted 3 hits next year, millions of 13-19 year old gamers who spent 60 bucks playing UC2 will be playing blu ray rips from HDD.

Game over. Sony is fucked big time. The social rejects have managed to damage sony where it hurts. Ps3 will be dreamcast MK2.

time to downsize those first party studios. No one is going be paying for your games anymore

That would be an exaggeration. People who were not interested to buy PS3 may jump in. Some are still willing to pay but Sony will lose software revenue, especially the newcomers; and especially in countries where piracy is not enforced. Then again, I don't think the sales channel tracking companies track sales in those countries anyway.

*If* they continue to serve their customers well, they should be ok (but tiring). They may need to do aggressive promotion though (bundling and software price cut).

PSN cheating is the one I'm more concerned with. ^_^

PSP suffers mostly because Sony neglected the platform in its formative years. They did not attempt to stop PSP piracy at all. They also rolled out half-done solutions and fragmented services. The homebrew folks serviced the users much better (David Reeves acknowledged that PSP actually benefited from piracy somewhat). If they serve PS3 users well, I don't think it will sink to PSP level.

 

[obonicus]

PSN cheating is the one I'm more concerned with. ^_^

This is the main issue; piracy by itself is bad, but in some areas (like the one I'm in) it's rampant on the 360 and their software sales are fine. The bannings may have had a part, but MS hasn't done one of those in about a year now? If may be worse on the PS3 if Sony can do nothing about people using modified consoles (though we might start to see punkbuster/VAC equivalents spring up). Though I imagine that right now Sony is running around trying to assuage third parties that this isn't the end of the world (which it probably isn't).

As a note, I imagine that if PS3 releases aren't stripped carefully, they might be too much for the quotas of people in a lot of these other markets.

 

[BRiT]

This is the main issue; piracy by itself is bad, but in some areas (like the one I'm in) it's rampant on the 360 and their software sales are fine. The bannings may have had a part, but MS hasn't done one of those in about a year now?

It depends on which you're talking about, the DVD Firmware cracks or the JTAG System hacks. The DVD Firmware cracks allow for playing of pirated games. The JTAG System hack allows for running of arbitrary code.

MS always does a massive large rolling ban wave with the new Dashboard updates every November. They did this for the past 3 years. They just recently activated their new AP2.5 security checks. It makes things a bit more difficult for the pirates, but they have it mostly cracked in the DVD Firmware; the hackers haven't hit the new Xbox Slim models, but they seem to close to having it done. With the new security checks, MS seems to be doing XBL bans to within a month of detecting them.

If you're talking about the JTAG Xbox 360 hacks, then it's a different situation. MS will detect and XBox Live ban the JTAG'd system within 4 hours of detection. Part of this banning process is attempting to blow the e-Fuses to keep the system banned.

Anyways ... The PS3 System Hack is more like the Xbox JTAG hacks in that it will allow running of arbitrary code. Unfortunately for Sony, they don't seem to have any means of detecting it because of how the PS3 security layers are setup.

 

[-tkf-]

The reason this is such a big issue is just how easy it will be to pirate PS3 games.
Sooner rather than later, you will be able to download a DVD Image and play a PS3 game.

 

[patsu]

Yap, if you patch your PS3 OS, or if the store does it for you as a value added service.

I may buy a new one for playing with Cell and Linux, but will keep the current ones in their original condition.