AfterDawn: News

Sony hints at homebrew on the PS3

In an interesting announcement, Sony boss Phil Harrison has stated that Sony would like to open up the PlayStation 3 further to independent game developers in the near future.

"I fully support the notion of game development at home using powerful tools available to anyone," Harrison said in an interview.

"We were one of the first companies to recognise this in 1996 with Net Yaroze on PS1. It's a vital, crucial aspect of the future growth of our industry."



Harrison admits that nowadays the avenues into homebrew are not as open as they once were and that is because the processes "are largely closed by the nature of the videogame systems themselves being closed".

"So, if we can make certain aspects of PS3 open to the independent game development community, we will do our industry a service by providing opportunities for the next generation of creative and technical talent," he added.

This is certainly a different approach than Sony has taken with their PSP console. Many homebrew developers for the PSP have often been struck down by firmware updates by Sony hoping to lock out hackers and pirates.

We hope to see something good coming out of this announcement in the future.


Source:
Gi.biz

Written by: Andre Yoskowitz @ 23 Apr 2007 11:37

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• 17 comments

• borhan9

  If they open up homebrewing it can open a can of worms which on the consumer side it would be a great thing. Not to forget to mention that they talk about only letting certain aspects open to consumers so its like a shareware program and you can only mod certain features not a good thing in my book.

  23.4.2007 15:58 #1

• ZippyDSM

  Originally posted by borhan9:If they open up homebrewing it can open a can of worms which on the consumer side it would be a great thing. Not to forget to mention that they talk about only letting certain aspects open to consumers so its like a shareware program and you can only mod certain features not a good thing in my book.if they even let it out a bit it will be hacked and be made worth while so sony either can make money off it or not.

  23.4.2007 16:08 #2

• ogryzek

  A few days ago Wall Street Journal had an article on major game studios being taken by surprise by Nintendo Wii's runaway success. In response to that market coup d'etat, they are pulling resources off the other projects and reassigning them to the new darling of the masses.
  
  Could it be that Sony is anticipating a drop in new title releases ?

  23.4.2007 17:12 #3

• OzMick

  If they open it up, the challenge is lost and the really gifted hackers won't bother with the console, they'll look for something more rewarding.
  
  Also, if developers with full dev units and SDK can't write software that fully takes advantage of the system, most casual developers are going to go elsewhere if they get more productivity.
  
  Nice idea, but nothing worth getting excited over.

  23.4.2007 17:13 #4

• SProdigy

  Anyone remember the shoddy PS2 "dev kit" that only released in Japan, and had the console hooked up basically as a Linux box? Yeah, that went over real well...

  23.4.2007 18:26 #5

• Gradical

  What you mean is no challenging, its really cool!, they only have to open up a little bit, and first of all they may know that they may already be open, but just dont know it, or worse maybe they have allready detected a major flaw in the system wich can grat access to hackers and are just taking advantage on it, since not even firmware updates would stop them, if you dont believe it look at all the firmware downgraders the psp has, and i dont think sony reinvented everything for the ps3, i bet many of the flaws in security carried over, heck if they carried over hardware flaws up to their last ps2 consoles, what make u think they can weed out security flaws so easily?

  23.4.2007 18:34 #6

• OzMick

  PS2 got very low hacker attention due to the fact that Linux was available on it from early on, so there was no motivation to exploit the system. Same will happen now with Linux already available on PS3. If anything, I can only see people writing software for Linux that just so happens to compile for PS3.
  
  On the other hand, Sony has been fighting homebrew on PSP since the first exploit emerged. These people who are writing homebrew are doing it for the thrill of doing something they're not supposed to be able to, remove that and there is little motivation, especially if the thing is incredibly complex to code for to get any appreciable performance.

  23.4.2007 19:17 #7

• Gradical

  I can get your poin from Darkalex side, since it is achallenge only for him and anyone who is programing a customfirmware, but i dont see what is the challenge for the people that is writting homebrew compatible with the 1.5 and custom firmware versions, even if it is mainly written for 1.5 ver and supported in custom firmwares
  
  besides that i dont consider ps2 lacking of homebrew, i think that a hacked ps2 has lots of utilities you can add and they represent a big step forward in functionality for the system, and again i think the real challenge was only for the people making the ps2 to load Linux, all the other programers, psp as well as ps2 are doing is program in a platform available to them
  
  this is just my personal opinion off course and is not intended to take away credit to any homebrew programmer, you Guys ROCK!, thanks to you i love my psp as ive never done with another game console.

  23.4.2007 19:52 #8

• WierdName

  HOLY CRAP! SONY GOT THE HINT!

  23.4.2007 21:31 #9

• simpsim1

  Quote:If they open it up, the challenge is lost and the really gifted hackers won't bother with the console, they'll look for something more rewarding.
  Hmmm! I get the feeling that's exactly why they're "Opening it". The hope is that by opening some little area of user mode space up to the masses, that the homebrew developers will lose interest and look elsewhere for their thrills. I think however, that they'll be far more interested in accessing the kernel and developing stuff we can really get our teeth into.

  23.4.2007 21:59 #10

• jwwolf

  at least this way there might be some decent games for it

  24.4.2007 07:12 #11

• aone

  lol did they do this cause a lot of game companies don't wanna make games for it?

  24.4.2007 09:30 #12

• pigfister

  i doubt if sony will open up the core for bedroom coders because if ppl are playing freely downloaded material they may lose revenue from either mini games or compulsive purchasing of the latest release just to have a new game, or they will charge a ludicrous amount for the sdk which will be out of the reach of most.

  24.4.2007 10:34 #13

• Gradical

  Quote:or they will charge a ludicrous amount for the sdk which will be out of the reach of most. Perhaps we should start making a fund raiser to buy darkalex one of this. that should be a very profitable investment ;)

  24.4.2007 14:48 #14

• REAM

  lets sya they are openenig it for a reason......
  
  ppl realise they can get "free" games for the ps3....
  
  console sale go through the roof liek with the wii....
  
  becuase of this more accessories will be bought.
  
  peopel with buy the sony brand of BD + or - r/RW discs. andd could drive sony BR wrier sales.

  24.4.2007 15:18 #15

• Gradical

  Quote:lets sya they are openenig it for a reason......
  
  ppl realise they can get "free" games for the ps3....
  
  console sale go through the roof liek with the wii....
  I hardly think this is their reason since they are suposed to be losing money on every console, and they are suposed to make it even with the game sales, Notice How i say "suposed" since i have no proof whatsoever about this, nor any proof i could have would mean its not pre-fabricated by sony.
  
  I believe theyre more like losing the fight against hackers, i mean, the 3.30 firmware for the psp lasted what 3 weeks?, that tells you about how deep in trouble they are, since ps3 might be a new console for them, but it is still the same company, and odds are they are using the same focus on security, and even if they try to change it, it would be more likely they couldnt make such a radical change, they would have to reinvent how computers work, and as big as sony is, i really doubt even they can come up with such a thing, proof of that is that it has allways been told about ps3 + linux, its not like PS3 and their new and revolutionary OS

  24.4.2007 16:24 #16

• simpsim1

  Quote:I believe theyre more like losing the fight against hackers, i mean, the 3.30 firmware for the psp lasted what 3 weeks?
  LOL!! The 3.40 firmware even quicker. According to PSP-Hacks.....
  
  Official 3.40 update = 18th April
  
  Dark_Alex 3.40 custom = 20th April
  
  Hmmm!

  24.4.2007 21:53 #17