Sony Hints At PS3 'Homebrew' Linux Plans

simoniker writes "Talking to the Japanese press, Sony executive Izumi Kawanishi has illuminated some of his company's PlayStation 3 Linux plans, indicating that it will be possible for individual 'homebrew' coders to create playable content for PS3, something actively blocked for Sony's PSP handheld. He commented: "Other then game studios tied to official developer licenses, we'd like to see various individuals participate in content creation for the PS3"."

Comments

Fool me once!

[Inoshiro]

Ken Kutaragi will not get a cent from me.

The PS2 was supposed to support Linux. How many homebrewers bought the PS2 dev kit and actually had success?

How about the amazing no-show on the PSP?

And now the PS3 is supposed to be friendly? It'd be cheaper to buy a MacMini and howebrew up something for Ubuntu or OS X than the Sony PS3.

Two different stances for two different platforms?

[KeiichiMorisato]

So, on the PSP, they are currently actively blocking any attempts of "homebrew" software. But for the PS3, they are going to allow it?

I don't see how there can be such a big difference in the stance of homebrew applications for their 2 main flagship products. Unless they are going to stop cracking down on these applications for the PSP, or else, this is just some lame attempt to recover from the bashing they are receiving at E3, since they've been bashed about a lot of things, including the crack downs on homebrew apps.

If they learned anything from PS2 "linux"...

[drinkypoo]

...then this might be the one thing that would convince me to buy a PS3. They'd have to give me access to all the hardware, though. Otherwise, why would I be interested? It seems very unlikely that they'll cough up, so it seems very unlikely that I'll be buying a PS3 before they start hitting garage sales and flea markets.

Re:Don't get your hopes up

[Russ Nelson]

Sony is terminally stupid. The problem is that they are of two minds about everything. One part of the company makes bit-copying hardware, and the other part sells bits. There's nothing they can do that will please themselves, so everything they do is a bad compromise between making it easy to copy bits and making it hard.

Right

[SmallFurryCreature]

You are going to run a Sony piece of hardware as a linux machine. You think that might not make Sony very happy. Now think a little bit further. Who might not like it as well? Does the word Wintel mean anything to you?

Cause you would be running a IBM/Linux desktop NOT the everpresent Wintel setup. I think Sony would like it because MicroSoft would totally not like it.

It is offcourse unlikely that this will have any effect but at least something is being tried.

Re:THIS IS WRONG

[LionMage]

They only blocked access to the DVD file system. everything was intact down to the kernel source.

Do you think it's possible that somebody other than you might find this restriction to be too onerous for PS2 Linux to be worthwhile?

Personally, I would never want to write code for a system where one major piece (the optical drive, for crying out loud!) is inaccessible. I'm sure this was Sony's bright idea to prevent piracy -- and we see how well that's working. Game piracy seems to be happening regardless, so this policy really only hurts Linux enthusiasts who wanted to do development work on the PS2.

Modern day equivalent of Amiga or Atari ST

[marvelite]

I started in computing with a ZX81 connected to a TV and moved on to a Sinclair Spectrum. Later bought an Atari ST set but had access to a nephew's Commodore Amiga. This was at a time when PC had crappy graphic and cost an arm and a leg. Now on to my third PC in 10 years which is good enough for everything but play the games at their best. (A good graphic cost more than a PS3). A PS3 with Linux installed and off the shelf USB keyboard and mouse will be a viable alternative to a Windows PC.

Re:Target Audience?

[bnenning]

The PPE in the Cell is essentially IBM's "G5" PowerPC 970 core, complete with Altivec/VMX.

Not really. The PPE is much simpler; for example it's an in-order processor, as opposed to the 970's deep OOOE. It does have SMT, but can only dispatch 2 instructions at once. From discussions among people who know much more than me, the suggested rule of thumb was that a PPE at N GHz is roughly equivalent to 2 G4s each at N/2 Hz.

The SPE's are the really interesting parts though.

Right. I think how easy it is to use the SPEs will largely determine how successful Cell is. I wouldn't be suprised if Apple offers Cell coprocessor cards for high-end Macs; it seems like a good fit for offloading image and video tasks.

PS3: What Sony should do

[10Ghz]

PS3 is a very expensive console. $599 or $699. That's a lot of money for a console. Now, what Sony should do is to provide a lot of functionlaity for that money. What could they do?

a) Make it a good DVD/Blu-Ray player. Yes, PS2 and Xbox can play back DVD's. But they are not very good at it. Make the PS3 actually a good DVD-player, and consumers have no reason to buy a separate DVD-player.

b) Make it a computer. People still need computers. And while Cell might not be ideal for general-purpose computing, it should still be fast enough. So put Linux in the PS3, make it easy for the consumer to use it. They could use it for email, surfing, word-processing and the like. So the consumer has no need to buy a separate computer that costs several hundred dollars. And, this way Sony can attack Microsoft on it's home-turf. If the PS3-Computer" fails, no big deal. If it succeeds, it hurts MS where it counts (Widnows and Office. Less money to put to their console-business).

If sony does thosetwo things, they could say (truthfully) that Why buy a console that costs 499 dollars, and then buy a computer that costs 699 dollars and DVD-player that costs 109 sollars, when you could jsut buy a PS3 for 699 dollars and be done with it?