This week’s gaming podcast includes a gaming flashback on Rock N Roll Racing, a game that was very close to the game Derrick thought about last week. We’ve got community comments, as the usual, and a few good news articles that emphasis hacking:
- PS3 Hacking Begins in Earnest, and Sony “Looking Into” It
- Mac App Store Cracked
- Microsoft Thinks PC Kinect Hacks are “Cool”
- Nintendo 3DS to Have 3-8 Hours Battery Life
- Interplay Calls Bethesda’s Legal Claims Absurd
- Lord of the Rings Online Triples Profit
The focus on security and hacking brings out the emotions in this episode, we’re sure you’ll have a few things to say about it as well. Say on young warriors! (and warriorette’s). This weeks question of the week: What non-game features do you enjoy on your videogame console, and what features do you find useless?
We’ve mentioned this in the past, but the tough economy gives many smaller developers great opportunities for success. While big publishers struggle to look good in the eyes of the investor, tiny developers can produce quality titles for minimal cash investment and time to market. Ten years ago, smaller developers tried to compete with the big boys making larger titles, cloning successful titles or simply asking investors to put it on the line for their game. Today, developers can create a small iphone app, a cute WiiWare title or exploit the XNA efforts of Microsoft for Xbox Live Arcade and actually have a chance.
@PS3 Hacking Begins in Earnest, and Sony “Looking Into” It:
Well, Sony is in a lose – lose situation: they change the key, and existing apps become worthless, or leave it, and existing apps can be pirated at will.
As for the complexity of the hack, well, it’s enough to build ONE image for a given game, and that will be multiplied like hell.
Jonah is right however. With the right key, there will be no way to distinguish between pirated and legit games, not by using the key that is.
One way that could be done, would be to do some sort of a CRC/hash on the Blue-Ray disk, then send it over PSN to Sony HQ, and compare it with the CRC of the original one; I expect differences: because of the way the key will be ‘injected’ in the hacked executables, they will have a different CRC than the original, despite being injected with the same root key.
Still, what was left from the image of “console = DRM box” is slowly vanishing. Good news for PC users, since producers will ditch the console exclusive deal and start making stuff for the PC as well.
@Mac App Store Cracked:
Ha ha ha :)) this is incredible … 2011 starts to look like the year of the hackers.
One reason why Steam it is hard to crack is because it keeps full records of what you bought/received as a gift on their servers. So they always know if you really own the software or not.
@Kinect hacks:
Derrick has a point there, hacks or no hacks, MSFT wins. And yes, MSFT is good at building frameworks/APIs. And again, yes, official support of Kinect on PC will end up in huge sales of the device, and maybe, a shitload of games for it.
@Interplay Calls Bethesda’s Legal Claims Absurd:
What can I say … these are the pains of selling IPs …
@Lord of the Rings Online Triples Profit:
Well, profit = intake – costs. Since they’re tripling the profits, it means that (1) they have a profit and that (2) they’re now making more money.
That sounds like a good decision for me.
@Question of the week:
Hmm … the only console I had was a NES clone. Compared to the other clones, it had the Sega style D-pad, with the C button doubling the A one. The layout of the D-pad I find it to be very nice, and that’s the feature of choice. Another feature was on another NES clone: it’s D-pads had earphone jacks …
@PS3 Hacking Begins in Earnest, and Sony “Looking Into” It:
Well, Sony is in a lose – lose situation: they change the key, and existing apps become worthless, or leave it, and existing apps can be pirated at will.
As for the complexity of the hack, well, it’s enough to build ONE image for a given game, and that will be multiplied like hell.
Jonah is right however. With the right key, there will be no way to distinguish between pirated and legit games, not by using the key that is.
One way that could be done, would be to do some sort of a CRC/hash on the Blue-Ray disk, then send it over PSN to Sony HQ, and compare it with the CRC of the original one; I expect differences: because of the way the key will be ‘injected’ in the hacked executables, they will have a different CRC than the original, despite being injected with the same root key.
Still, what was left from the image of “console = DRM box” is slowly vanishing. Good news for PC users, since producers will ditch the console exclusive deal and start making stuff for the PC as well.
@Mac App Store Cracked:
Ha ha ha :)) this is incredible … 2011 starts to look like the year of the hackers.
One reason why Steam it is hard to crack is because it keeps full records of what you bought/received as a gift on their servers. So they always know if you really own the software or not.
@Kinect hacks:
Derrick has a point there, hacks or no hacks, MSFT wins. And yes, MSFT is good at building frameworks/APIs. And again, yes, official support of Kinect on PC will end up in huge sales of the device, and maybe, a shitload of games for it.
@Interplay Calls Bethesda’s Legal Claims Absurd:
What can I say … these are the pains of selling IPs …
@Lord of the Rings Online Triples Profit:
Well, profit = intake – costs. Since they’re tripling the profits, it means that (1) they have a profit and that (2) they’re now making more money.
That sounds like a good decision for me.
@Question of the week:
Hmm … the only console I had was a NES clone. Compared to the other clones, it had the Sega style D-pad, with the C button doubling the A one. The layout of the D-pad I find it to be very nice, and that’s the feature of choice. Another feature was on another NES clone: it’s D-pads had earphone jacks …
First of all, I thought you would be interested in this link from Destructoid :
http://tinyurl.com/4n7wmmz
And http://aol.it/hLvgJx from Joystiq.
As a 1st gen PS3 owner, I am personally wishing that the court order throws that gimp in prison for releasing the codes. Yes Sony made an error, but putting it out there to allow others to crack the hardware is superlame. Don’t get me wrong, I believe that if you bought the hardware, it is yours to ruin the warranty by taking it apart (for the old style mods chips), but hacking into the main program is on a different level. This is one thing that won’t go away, and no doubt will get worse. GRRRRRRR.
As for the features, I have found some of the PS3’s extra features quite useful. I like being able to use the Blu-Ray player, but would quite happily have coped with a DVD player if they left in old hardware. Another feature I like from PS3 is the TV functionality. In UK you get 3 on-demand catch up services from main terrestrial channels (One of which you can also get on the Wii), and X360 having one for the satellite channels. We don’t have Netflix over here, but we now have Lovefilm, which is the closest we will get.
As for features that are pointless, I felt that the CD-player in the Sega Saturn / PS1 were useless. Why would you use your tv, and another bit of hardware, just to listen to something you could hear in better quality on your stereo?
@ 3DS – I found that I couldn’t play on my DS Lite for more than a couple of hours without feeling nauseous and cross-eyed, but I would expect to not need to plug it back in again straight afterwards.
First of all, I thought you would be interested in this link from Destructoid :
http://tinyurl.com/4n7wmmz
And http://aol.it/hLvgJx from Joystiq.
As a 1st gen PS3 owner, I am personally wishing that the court order throws that gimp in prison for releasing the codes. Yes Sony made an error, but putting it out there to allow others to crack the hardware is superlame. Don’t get me wrong, I believe that if you bought the hardware, it is yours to ruin the warranty by taking it apart (for the old style mods chips), but hacking into the main program is on a different level. This is one thing that won’t go away, and no doubt will get worse. GRRRRRRR.
As for the features, I have found some of the PS3’s extra features quite useful. I like being able to use the Blu-Ray player, but would quite happily have coped with a DVD player if they left in old hardware. Another feature I like from PS3 is the TV functionality. In UK you get 3 on-demand catch up services from main terrestrial channels (One of which you can also get on the Wii), and X360 having one for the satellite channels. We don’t have Netflix over here, but we now have Lovefilm, which is the closest we will get.
As for features that are pointless, I felt that the CD-player in the Sega Saturn / PS1 were useless. Why would you use your tv, and another bit of hardware, just to listen to something you could hear in better quality on your stereo?
@ 3DS – I found that I couldn’t play on my DS Lite for more than a couple of hours without feeling nauseous and cross-eyed, but I would expect to not need to plug it back in again straight afterwards.