Fightin talk from sony

hughesy

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Sony is engaged in a tug-of-war with hackers who keep cracking its PlayStation Portable software to unlock the device and run their own applications on it.

The company is preparing another update to the PSP firmware to fix a recently disclosed bug that lets hackers downgrade the PSP system software and run their own, so-called homebrew code on the device, a Sony representative said Thursday.

"It is not...what the device was designed for," said Patrick Seybold, a spokesman for Sony Computer Entertainment America. "We plan to deal with this issue with the next system update." He declined to say when that update would be ready.

Soon after Sony released the PSP earlier this year, hackers started hunting for bugs in the software that runs the device. Flaws were found and used to run homegrown applications, such as a PDF reader and an FTP client, on the device. The bugs were not used to attack PSP users.

Sony last month updated the PSP firmware to version 2.0. The update encompassed new features, including a Web browser, but also fixed the flaws that had been exploited by the hackers. The 2.0 update was made available on Sony's Web site and will be included in new PSP games, which will require the update, Seybold said.

Previous Next The 2.0 release sparked a new round of hacking. A buffer overflow flaw in the software was disclosed last week on PSP Updates, a PSP enthusiast site. The new bug can be exploited to run code on the device and to downgrade to version 1.5 of the firmware, according to PSP Updates. Version 1.5 was more hacker-friendly.

Sony is not "actively going after the people doing it," Seybold said, but the company does not advise running homebrew code on the PSP. "Running unauthorized software will void the warranty," he said.

The PSP was released in the U.S. in March. Since then, more than 2 million units have been sold in the U.S., according to Sony. The device is sold primarily as a portable game machine, but users can also play movies and music, display digital photos and browse the Internet through its built-in wireless networking.
 
Hackers will never cease to crack Sony's software - just ask Microsoft, its a shame there isn't a way to embrace homebrew and use the extra coding rather than spend time and money trying to stamp out something that will never go away.
 
its right instead of chucking away money to beat hackers why not just make games and movies cheaper :thumbsup:
 
Yes but when they release the update, who is going to be stupid enough to download it now
 
Does that mean you will not be able to upgrade to 2.00 anymore once Sony release a new one? Or will this be available elsewhere?
 
spose its fairly interesting, if nothing else.

Its gonna be at least 2-3 months before sony can get out another update. And sinced they'll be no promise of extra goodies provided (they seem to have already played their cards with the 2.0 update) it'll be hard to convince people to trade in homebrew 4 being able to play the new games that get released.

And although I haven't tried any homebrew cos I'm waitin for 2Gb cards to be in stock, [mod comment - this forum does not condone piracy in any way]
 
anticlaus105 said:
Does that mean you will not be able to upgrade to 2.00 anymore once Sony release a new one? Or will this be available elsewhere?

If you have a demo UMD that came with Euro PSPs you could keep that as they have v2.00 on it, incase you want to upgrade without getting the 2.01 update. No Doubt newer games requiring v2.00 will probably have the update to v2.00 also :D
 
robo989 said:
[mod comment : this forum does not condone piracy in any way]


That'll teach em all right selfish gits , fancy spending £100s of millions of pounds on product development despite the company making record LOSSES and Then having the NERVE to actually release a product which they lose loads of money on every unit they sell.

And then the cheeky so and so's actually EXPECT people to pay for the games they play on it WHAT A LIBERTY!! the
no good selfish gits.

Blimey I reckon they may be laying off record amounts of staff if they arent careful OH DEAR THEY ARE!! what is it
8000 jobs world wide?

You know some companies expect so much its terrible :rolleyes: :rolleyes:
 
There is a rumour that GTA Liberty Cities will require you to update to v2.01 which will be on the UMD. Dont know how true that is (the 2.01 update probably has not been finalised yet and Rockstar have a month to print and distribute GTA) but I wonder whether there will be an update to WAB Version Changer, or something similar - if Sony have not closed that loophole too.
 
Tricky one for sony really. I understand they need to protect their interests in terms of software sales but theres alot else the homebrew lot are up to thats not piracey. it seems there taking a sledghammer to crack a nut and in the meantime alienating their customers. Its the same with the xbox modders. See the problem is when is your property not your property? If you buy a psp you should be able to do whatever you like to it, you bought it, its yours (fine let the warranty go). Sony should however go after the pirates becuase that is illegal. Copying and distrubuting intelectual products is theft irrespective if its for free.
A simple way for for publishers to retain their profits fairly is to do what the music indutry did with mp3, that is to embrace it and sell it for a fair price. Most gamers would love to play classic games on the psp via emulation, so allow the emulators and sell the roms/iso's for a fair price and most of us will pay for it. Its amazing the hackers have done all the hard work by making the emulators, all sony need to do is make deals with publishers to allow downloadable games. This is like printing money for sony as they can make a modest income on old games that were making no money at all. Nintendo are potentially doing this with the revolution.
At the same time I have no problem if sony go after the real pirates, not the true gaming fans who will probably end up being the developers of the future.
 
that sounds like a good sentiment but to be honest the only way they can stop piracy is if they can prevent the PSP from playing Isos. [mod comment - this forum does not condone piracy in any way]

No way they can counter that on an individual basis only way is a hardware lock out. I doubt either are possible
 
The latest 2.1 firmware only fixes the security hole within the PSP, Sony have played thier hand a little early methinks with the 2.0 upgrade (Web browser,Wallpaper etc). With the WAB firware switcher Ive downloaded tonight, I can still play 2.0 firmware games such as Virtua Tennis and still enjoy emulators and homebrew.
 
so what can sony do to stop the iso's being downloaded and run?

make all games over 1 gig and stop selling 2 gig memory sticks?
 
It may be possible that new games will check for an updated file on the PSP as well as the firmware revision of the PSP. I guess we will have to wait for the first game to ship with v2.01 and see what happens.
 
I think Sony should just find a way to force UMD games to be run from the UMD. That should stop, or at least hinder, the piracy. These stupid upgrades are meaningless. I will not be updated unless they give me good reason to, and Kid Icarus on my PSP is a mighty good reason not to upgrade ever again.
 
What Chris said is right sony should concentrate on making umd's uncrackable and leave the homebrew enthusiasts alone. Making games over a gig is possible of course but hackers will just strip the music or compress it another way. This idea that piracy will kill the games industry is a lie. Free p2p mp3 did not kill the music industry but it did bring down cd prices, and as i said earlier it forced the music industry to change. Sony would love to keep selling games at £30-40, but if piracy forces sony to rethink then it'll work out for us too. Many games drop down to half price or less after a few months and shops are still making a profit, this gives an indication of the real cost of games.
 
Personally I don't see why Sony can't come up with a solution that allows homebrew, but combats the piracy threat. They could just include something on this disc that must be loaded by the game code either during loading or at a certian point in the game. There must be a way of not running a game if it's not being physically loaded from the disc.

The homebrew side of things alone is a great asset to the PSP IMO and is another feather in its cap really. Playing emulators, free homebrew games and using other utilities simply expands it's use as a multifunction device. The Piracy must clearly be stopped though as the people with the knowhow to run Homebrew will know how to run pirated games. The machines are clearly sold at a loss and Sony counts on software sales for it's profit.

Personally i'd love to see the homebrew side of things continue but we can do without the piracy.
 
CAS FAN said:
Personally I don't see why Sony can't come up with a solution that allows homebrew, but combats the piracy threat. They could just include something on this disc that must be loaded by the game code either during loading or at a certian point in the game. There must be a way of not running a game if it's not being physically loaded from the disc.

The fact that both are different types of media (ie disc based and flash card based) only adds weight to that. There must be a way to see if data is being streamed off a card or a disc.

The fact that you can now play some games WITHOUT a UMD inserted shows that Sony got lazy on this aspect and couldn't or decided not to make sure that a UMD was being used for the game.
 
well the xbox is similar in the respect that you can load games onto the hard drive and it will happily play from the hd (with quicker loading times).... something about turning the 'media checks' off, which i presume is a part of the game where it has been designed to check for the disk but is overided by the software that dumps the game to your hd.

another option is registering games to each individual psp or something..?

with anything tho i think the hackers will find ways around it,

the only way sony could have beaten piracy would have been to not include a memstick slot, this way only umds could be used.

but then again the hackers would create pirate umds or something to load it thru the usb port.... i don't know
 
Homebrew runs much better on a GP2X so you might as well all buy ine of there :)

http://www.gbax.com/
 

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