Link? I have a very hard believing this.
Business ramifications of piracy *spawn
- Thread starter Elan Tedronai
- Start date
Link? I have a very hard believing this.
corduroygt
Banned
They're not going to recall the PS3's that are already in consumer hands, that's crazy. They can have a phone home (either via online or actual phone) feature for new games and offer to replace your ps3 with a secure one if you don't want to do that for every game. Still not a very good or cheap solution by any means.
Are we 100% positive Sony can't blow Cell efuses (they do exist) via firmware update and it has to be done at the factory? I would love to be a fly (that can understand japanese) at Sony HQ right now...
Are we 100% positive Sony can't blow Cell efuses (they do exist) via firmware update and it has to be done at the factory? I would love to be a fly (that can understand japanese) at Sony HQ right now...
Replacing or even just altering all the PS3s out there would almost certainly cost more money than what they're to lose with the entire piracy issue, would take too much time to have any reasonable effect anyway. It makes no sense at all, if they are to do anything it'd have to be a lot smaller.
But I'm not entirely convinced that they should try to do anything to the hardware, other pirated platforms have managed to survive too. One time codes for locking some of the content of a boxed game could work, there might be other similar options to explore. Asking 3rd parties to follow on this is going to be problematic though.
But I'm not entirely convinced that they should try to do anything to the hardware, other pirated platforms have managed to survive too. One time codes for locking some of the content of a boxed game could work, there might be other similar options to explore. Asking 3rd parties to follow on this is going to be problematic though.
Third parties are kind of on that path anyway, EA particularly.
You make me laugh. Your against DD or the death of the used market but your happy with sony making customers call up and activate games ? What happens once the game is activated , can you call sony to deactivate it ?
What happens with a huge release like COD with everyone calling in at midnight on launch day to try and play it ?
Anyway , sony wont get my ps3 back unless they offer a large upgrade for it to be worth while.
Technically, this is not a leak. This is someone going in and doing the math to figure out what the keys are because of the random number issue. There is probably already a program out there do do this already.
Here is what I am wondering for the PS4, I am thinking that Sony might actually work with the Steam guys to create a PS4 version of Steam and not use disks at all. Everything exists on the cloud to verify and let you play games, because the cloud stops piracy and used game sales. Sony has been talking about this digital download before and having no disks at all and just using a hard drive and then maybe selling an external blu-ray player later on. I think this move is really obvious for the PS4.
I personally don't like this system, but I can see that it is an obvious direction Sony will probably go in. Even if something got cracked on the PS4, you can always update software via the cloud and everything is good as new and fixed.
Silent_Buddha
Legend
Unfortunately, if you look at the history of the PSP, you'll see that's not much of a deterrent. The PSP arguably sold tens of millions in the US alone due solely to the ability to hack it. While one can argue how many may or may not have sold due to piracy, I think the strong hardware sales combined with abysmal software sales in the US points to people buying it to pirate. Without a strong online gaming ecosystem and ability to ban machines from that ecosystem (Xbox Live for example) there was absolutely no drawback to hacking and playing pirated games.
Now, consider that Sony were very quick to respond to hacks on the PSP with frequent firmware revisions and more importantly to our discussion here, frequent hardware revisions.
Thos hardware revisions required entirely new methods of exploiting the hardware such that you could gain access and use custom firmware. And the frequent firmware revisions and mandataory use of X level of firmware in games meant that people wishing to use their PSP for pirating had to very frequently update their firmware or bootstrap a new firmware.
Quite often having to do so every other month. And yet that did nothing to stem the pirating.
PS3 is even easier to exploit with the release of the keys actually used for the signing of everything on the PS3. Unlike the PSP, you don't even have to find a way to glitch the hardware, OS, or firmware in order to gain access so closing off ways to exploit those, similar to PSP, aren't as much of an option.
A new PS3 revision could potentially address this. But there's not much you can do about the existing machines out in the wild. Any change to the keys used would be able to sniffed out in existing machines. And if they want games to run on both old and new PS3's then will they be able to protect the new master key for the new PS3's without it being able to be discovered through the use of an older PS3?
[Edit] - One other problem facing Sony with the recent PS3 revelations is the fact that there is already greater than 40 million units in the wild. Contrast this to the few hundred thousand (perhaps a million if we're generous) PSPs that were in the wild when it was first successfully hacked. On the one hand Sony was at least able operate without piracy for 4+ years with PS3. On the other hand, just like the PSPs that were out before the first PSP hack, the current PS3s will be virtually impossible to prevent pirating on. And in this case there's a lot more easily hacked PS3's than there were easily hacked first gen PSPs.
I'm really interested to see how Sony deals with this. After all these years, I'm actually more interested in seeing how companies respond to hacks and exploits of their systems than I am of the actual hack or exploit.
Watching MS battle with the hackers on Xbox and Sony battle the hackers on PSP were both quite fascinating.Regards,
SB
Unfortunately, if you look at the history of the PSP, you'll see that's not much of a deterrent. The PSP arguably sold tens of millions in the US alone due solely to the ability to hack it. While one can argue how many may or may not have sold due to piracy, I think the strong hardware sales combined with abysmal software sales in the US points to people buying it to pirate. Without a strong online gaming ecosystem and ability to ban machines from that ecosystem (Xbox Live for example) there was absolutely no drawback to hacking and playing pirated games.
I'm really interested to see how Sony deals with this. After all these years, I'm actually more interested in seeing how companies respond to hacks and exploits of their systems than I am of the actual hack or exploit.
Regards,
SB
That is of course the multi-million dollar question really, what Sony does about it and what actually happens to the PS3 eco-system. I would say this is bleeding which as time goes on will only get worse and not better especially in relation to software sales. The thing is, Sony was reliant on software sales to make back a significant amount of money to recoup some of their investment on a long sales tail which may not be as lucrative as it once was. Perhaps we will see them transition to a new platform faster if piracy gives them that impetus. The PS3 is popular with the kind of people who have the internet speed to download 10GB files with relative ease.
The funny thing is now I expect to see people with PS3s as their pirate box and 360s as their online box, quite the role reversal!
corduroygt
Banned
What part of "that is not a good or cheap solution by any means" that I said in my post did you not understand? It was just a technical solution to the problem, I didn't say it was feasible.
Sony doesn't care about your ps3 since you're unable to play disc games.
How about the chance to play new games?
Not to mention upgrades to old games that is required if you want to play online, and use PSN, Home, Vidzone, Mubi and BR playback?How about the chance to play new games?
My console's BR drive doesn't work and I got a nice bluray player for $70 bucks black friday. So its not a big deal to me at all. PSN , HOME , Vidzone , MUBI don't matter either , i have a 360 to stream videos to and can use zune market place.
New games might matter , but then again mabye not.
The other way to look at is that there are hundreds of games that my ps3 can now play free of charge. A new ps3 starts at what $300 ? and will most likely continue to go down. While I play a slew of past games i can easily pirate. When I'm out of those games I could simply buy a new ps3 at whatever the new low price will be by then.
Of course that is if they are able to keep new games secure.
I'm not condoning piracy , but if someone wants to pirate why would they ever send thier ps3 in for the switch ?
If they like you bought with no intention of using it for other than free games, nothing. If they want to use the mentioned services they have no choice. And switch, Sony just needs to upgrade the firmware to secure the future, they don´t have to switch the Console.
how do you know the firmware just needs to be upgraded. if they havethe keys and the ability to get new keys then mabye no firmware will be safe.
Guys, there are two threads that have discussed all of this in detail. Rather than reinventing the wheel, just go back a few pages (December 30th would be good) and read.
The compromise is hardware-based. No future firmware can change that; they can only force hackers to re-crack. What's more, the master key is hardware-based and already published.
The compromise is hardware-based. No future firmware can change that; they can only force hackers to re-crack. What's more, the master key is hardware-based and already published.
Sony should sue the people behind releasing this code, assume each program writing a app you can find on google had to buy a dev-kit, and sue the Fail overdose-peeps for lost income. Get them in jail or to pay damages, or atleast put them through court-hell.
Put up GeoHotz Visa numbers and codes, so people could shop with his account. Maybe put up a announcement like 'Use it wisely, we don't condone using other people's money, or something crap like that'.
See what kind of security he have in place. :-/
A more likely scenario is probably that PSN will end up becoming more closed, and becoming a pay-service, only available for paying customers.. The content providers get's payd based of the percentage of content beeing delivered to the service, aswell as the traffic they generate. :-/
I expect this will hurt the consumers aswell, piracy allways do, weather it's real piracy or software-piracy.
Put up GeoHotz Visa numbers and codes, so people could shop with his account. Maybe put up a announcement like 'Use it wisely, we don't condone using other people's money, or something crap like that'.
See what kind of security he have in place. :-/
A more likely scenario is probably that PSN will end up becoming more closed, and becoming a pay-service, only available for paying customers.. The content providers get's payd based of the percentage of content beeing delivered to the service, aswell as the traffic they generate. :-/
I expect this will hurt the consumers aswell, piracy allways do, weather it's real piracy or software-piracy.
Important reminder!
- Technological discussion of how the hack works and how it can be fixed is here.
- Ethical discussion of how wrong/right this is and what should be done about the hackers is here.
- Business discussion about how this impacts Sony as a business and what they can do as a business to mitigate damage is here. (this thread)
corduroygt
Banned
First of all, let me say that Sony is not going to ask 40M people to send their PS3's in, even if it's just to update them, it's still going to cost an enormous amount of money, far greater than the effect of piracy.
However, if they were crazy and wanted to go this route, they could get people to send their PS3's in by signing future firmwares with the new key that the current PS3's won't be able to decrypt, and new games requiring the firmware. It's a very harsh tactic that won't go over well with customers (send your PS3 to play new games!) , but maybe they'll load up the HDD with $100 bucks worth of PSN games to apologize to customers...
Far cheaper to just make an unhackable hardware revision, and let the percentage of the current user base willing to pirate go...
At best there'll be no change, but it's more likely to require more downloads and patches to updated the whitelist and stuff. Plus the time without PS3. If Sony say I need to send my PS3 in to enable LBP2, I'd be pissed. Especially when 2 million other people do the same and there's a massive turnaround. The PR fall-out would be very expensive, versus the financial cost.
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