PS3 Fanboy

Where is the PS3 homebrew scene? Considering how active the PSP scene, one would think that Sony's other console would get the same kind of attention from hackers. It's not that people aren't trying -- rather, it appears that Sony has learned from their mistakes with the PSP.

PSP was rather insecure from the start. A primer from "nikkelitous" explains that "the PSP didn't have any security protections in the first version: Thats right! It essentially ran anything that you put on it." In spite of Sony's continued attempts at fixing PSP security through firmware revisions, the damage has already been done. "The PSP now has a very powerful security system, but like the Greeks, we had people inside. Once a system is hacked and understood, very little can be used to continue to protect it."

Not only has Sony made the PS3 much more secure, but its use of Blu-ray makes it significantly more difficult to hack. "It's not using a DVD drive it's using a custom Blu-ray drive, we can't simply copy the disks, and we don't know enough about the firmware on the drive to accomplish a 'debug mode' even if it's on there." Of course, all of these hindrances aren't stopping the hacking community. They're going to keep on trying, and will probably one day succeed. However, it's clear that this time around, Sony isn't going to be taken off-guard.

Shaky cam video footage of a TV program revealed a few new details on the upcoming PSN title, Metal Gear Solid Online. In it, a Konami producer explains the hacking mechanism that'll be crucial to the online collaborative experience. "You're encouraged to link up with your teammates. If you link up, you can share information. You can see what your teammates say, you can see how they're doing, their battle condition ... One of the guys that was playing, he captured an enemy, and then hacked into his nanomachines that's connected to his team and he was able to get all the information of his opponent's team that was all linked up."

Certainly sounds intriguing! We can't wait until the beta releases later this year, and we hope someone in Kojima heaven will grace us with a chance to play it.

SCEA has declared that they will "actively pursue" legal action against hackers that attempt to crack the PS3 anti-piracy software. This announcement arrives just after recent news that hackers were close to completely cracking the PS3 anti-piracy software found in firmware versions 1.10 and 1.11. Their progress on the crack would allow pirated PS3 games to boot, but they still were not playable. The homebrew community is also still waiting in the wings, as even this latest attempt still prevents any type of homebrew gaming on the PS3 console.

Obviously, SCEA hopes to stalwart further progress and deter hackers from completely subverting the anti-piracy measures completely, because saying "please" just doesn't carry the same weight as legal action. Dave Karraker, SCEA spokesperson says, "the best we can do as a company, is to make our security that much stronger and aggressively pursue legal action against anyone caught trying to use an exploit in an illegal manner."

The pirates who want to burn and run copied PS3 disks? Yeah, they're bad. Bad, bad. Spankings all around kind of bad. And if you're thinking of doing it, you shouldn't. Go find someone to deliver a spanking for even thinking such thoughts. On the homebrew front, we're kind of indifferent. Now, we're stepping out on a very thin limb here, but maybe, just maybe if Sony was a little bit more organized in lining up a steady stream of content for thirsting PS3 owners, we wouldn't have hackers so interested in cracking the PS3 for homebrew. What do you think?