Sony’s PlayStation 3 Seeing Hacks En Masse

Over the course of the past week, Sony has amped up its stance against “hackers” by trying even harder to prevent its console from being circumvented. You might recall that a mod kit was released about a month ago to allow the playback of “backed up” game copies, and clearly, Sony wasn’t too pleased. Now, the company has gone even further, by blocking many USB devices from being used. This has even caused some legit third-party products (PDF) from being used.

I’m personally against piracy, but at the same time, I can’t help but giggle at the fact that Sony is getting a lot more than it bargained for. When it removed the ability to install Linux on the PlayStation 3 earlier this year, it ignited the passion of crackers all over, and now it seems like this is a war that the company simply isn’t going to win. As far as I’m concerned, disabling USB devices is pushing things… the only thing the company is accomplishing is removing much of the functionality that set the console apart in the first place. To this day, I still haven’t updated my PS3 to recent firmware that removes the Linux OS, and at the same time, I haven’t bought a single PS3 game since.

Over the weekend, one hacker managed to get his Sixaxis gamepad to work against Sony, by modding it in such a way that it enables the PS3’s debug mode, all while allowing the console to be updateable as normal. Obviously, this is something that Sony might still be able to stop, but where’s it going to end? Perhaps the company should just issue a firmware update that bricks all PS3’s out there. That would end the problem.

To make all of this PS3 breaking even more fun, there’s been some new software released that will enable the loading of custom firmware. Again, whether or not Sony can stop this is up in the air. It might be that the only consoles capable of using software like this are those that don’t have the most recent firmware (in this case, 3.50).

At the end of the day, while I have no intention of ever dabbling with these products, I don’t feel too bad for Sony either. It sold us all a console with set features and continues to remove a lot of them. That just doesn’t fly with me. Whatever these hackers are doing is inevitable… Sony can’t stop it, at least not easily. Despite that, it continues to take away features from its legit customers. The logic there simply defies me.

“People now recognise what a smart decision it was to keep the [Xbox 360] pricing low,” he said, referring to Microsoft’s decision to omit a next-generation high-capacity optical storage drive. The company also quietly sidelined its lame duck of an HD-DVD add-on for the console. Gill clearly believes that the beginning of the end for physical media is here.