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Sony and Nintendo Step Up Anti-Piracy Efforts
Edge reports that Sony and Nintendo are both expanding their anti-piracy operations in an effort to reduce piracy rates on the PSP and the DS respectively. Nintendo has hired Neil Boyd, who handled anti-piracy operations for Warner Brothers, to help them demonstrate their "willingness to take action against criminals who are making money out of the infringement of games developers' copyright." Sony has taken a more direct approach, choosing to alter the hardware used in the PSP Go so that things like the Pandora battery can no longer be used to alter the firmware.
What, Warner Bros. anti-piracy strategy? Suing people?
No, really. The've shown that they believe that Wii homebrew == Wii piracy (having attacked generic homebrew almost exclusively, not just piracy tools, and considering that they harassed us when we attempted to notify them of a security issue), and yet it's been over 5 months since the latest security-related update. Somehow I don't get the felling that Nintendo is interested in combating Wii piracy very much (it's not like they've done a whole lot to stop modchips either).
How is $30 for an r4ds flash cart for my dsi TONS of cash? Thats less than the price of one new game, plus i can keep "backups" of all my games on one card. Cheaper and more convenient, not a tough decision for me.
I know like 7 or 8 people (friends, friends of friends, etc) with the Nintendo DS and NONE, I repeat, NONE of them, has a single original game. Why so? Because using downloaded games for NDS is ridiculous easy, that even the girls who don't even know to burn a CD, know copy&paste, and that's pretty much it to play "pirated" games on the NDS...
ps: Here, NDS flash cartridges are even sold at the groceries...
in every way.......
Sony produced the PSP Go for a very specific market, whether they understood it or not. People buying that are not interested in stupid fucking "snackables". Dear God, they make it sound like something a 2nd grader would eat at lunch.
The PSP Go is for people that *already* understand how to take existing UMD's in their collection and convert them and play them on the PSP. The attraction of the Go model is more memory, less power consumption (UMDless), and a smaller form factor, and possibly longer battery life.
Their attempt to cripple the unit so that you cannot play UMD backups, while being blatantly offensive towards supporters of Fair Use, just totally destroyed their *real* market for the product.
I am actually interested in the PSP Go. ONLY IF I CAN PLAY MY UMD BACKUPS. If not, then STFU Sony and you don't get my money.
Total Morons.
P.S - Yes... it can be used for pirated ISOs as well as Fair Use ISOs, but that does not make my point any less valid about their market does it?
How is $30 for an r4ds flash cart for my dsi TONS of cash?
$30? That's too expensive. You should visit this store *free shipping*
They said something about people who make money off pirated games, don't seem very interested in going after P2P and stuff like that.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
Come on, fixing the Pandora problem was as easy as changing the firmware that listened to the battery.
It is an enormous stretch to think that the PSP Go! doesn't have a removable battery because of the Pandora battery. Wouldn't you think it would be more because non-removable batteries are in vogue in high-line devices like the iPod Touch and Zune HD, both of which the PSP Go! competes with?
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
I know like 7 or 8 people [...] NONE of them, has a single original game. Why so?
Because they come ask you when a new title comes out if you couldn't by any chance put your hands on it? ;)
There are at least a dozen different ways to make cartridge based games self destruct their data if they're opened. You can't get the ROM off it if a system wipes it any time oxygen is sensed inside the cartridge which has a vacuum in it.
sure you can, I can dump my legitimate games onto cf card using my actual ds.. you do realize that for the cartridge to be usable the system has to be able to read the data... right?
dumping does not involve removing cartridge chips these days (ok.. well... arcade games sometimes) it either involves putting the cartridge into an original system that's running a dumper program, or making something yourself that has a cartridge port that can read it.
A new fleet of ships of the line, bristling with cannons and hung with sails.
Let's see how those pirates handle a few hundred pounds of cannonballs coming at them!
Also, they're sending in the Plumbers to clean things up.
Where is here? Eastern Europe? Southeast Asia? South America?
No they don't. My little brother also has a flash card, he got it himself, he found out how to use it himself. And he is not that handy with computers, he only uses a computer for email, msn and myspace. And when myspace people are pirating games then you better start doing something about it.
I think piracy on the consoles... the Wii and 360... is pretty much negligible. I'd be shocked if it hurt total software sales by 1%.
However, it's MUCH worse on the handhelds. A flash cart for the DS is something like $7, if you look in the right places (Cough*dealextreme*cough)... and games are generally well under 100 mb, so they're quick and easy to download.
And the PSP... cripes, I don't think ANYBODY uses it like Sony intended. I don't blame or begrudge Nintendo or Sony for tightening them down, so long as they don't adopt strategies that interfere with legitimate purchasers.
From where I stand it seems that the DS is so insanely popular (almost 110 million units sold to date) exactly because its games are so easy to pirate, not in spite of it.
Its not like the games aren't selling either - close to 450 million DS games sold so far
siener's youtube channel
England - hell, I got myself one just so that I can avoid having to carry lots of carts around with me when I go on holiday.
It's far more likely that Superman and Wonder Woman will actually become real, eliminate the Taliban, deliver Osama Bin Laden to the White House steps, and then top it off with a Sex Tape. Ohhh, and the Wonder Twins get caught doing each other in Central Park.
NONE of the console manufacturers have even a measurable amount of respect for Fair Use. NONE. As far as they are concerned, they own the hardware 100% and should be able to 100% control every single one of your actions with their product as if they are in the room holding your hand. That game you bought gets a little too scratched? That cart get dropped in the pool? Well FUCK YOU. Buy another.
I feel you about what they are going through. It's just wishful thinking they are going to try to find a middle ground. They are just as extreme and inflexible as hard core pirates who will never compensate anyone for any intellectual property whatsoever.
It might as well be religious fundamentalism. Your reasonable position has no place here.
Why don't they open source the game software and sell subscriptions to the server.
Because then every player would have to buy a $1,440 two-year subscription to mobile Internet access. Not everybody wants another $60/mo phone bill.
NONE of the console manufacturers have even a measurable amount of respect for Fair Use. NONE.
OpenPandora does. Its Linux-based gaming PDA isn't out yet, but there is video evidence that it's much farther along than the Phantom ever got. And I have a couple more arguments that depend on where one draws the difference between a gaming PC and a console.
I can dump my legitimate games onto cf card using my actual ds
I know what you're talking about: Rudolph's dumper. But do makers of DS copiers even make the CF card adapters anymore? I thought all the manufacturers had moved on to SLOT-1 solutions.
it either involves putting the cartridge into an original system that's running a dumper program, or making something yourself that has a cartridge port that can read it.
Any ideas on how to build an NES copier?
Any ideas on how to build an NES copier?
http://www.tripoint.org/kevtris/Projects/copynes/
Afaict the trickiest bit with copying nes carts is actually identifying them. nes carts (unlike gameboy carts) use a huge range of mapper chips and don't have any header information to say which mapper is in use. So if you are trying to dump a cart that hasn't been dumped before you may well have to open it up to find out what mapper is in there.
If you want to actually copy the cart rather than just make an image for use on emulators you will also need to either clone the mapper chip or find a donor cart with the same mapper chip to host your copy.
There is also the security chip issue but afaict clones of that are readilly availible nowadays.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
Which makes a lifetime (to date) attach rate of what, just over 4? That is not that much, really.
"Success is based on knowing how far to go in going too far"
NONE of the console manufacturers have even a measurable amount of respect for Fair Use. NONE. As far as they are concerned, they own the hardware 100% and should be able to 100% control every single one of your actions with their product as if they are in the room holding your hand. That game you bought gets a little too scratched? That cart get dropped in the pool? Well FUCK YOU. Buy another.
I see what you try to do, but your argument is stupid and wrong anyway.
If what you said was true, they would never allow you to download games you buy online as many times as you want. Erased that online game because you need place on your Wii? You can download it back as many times as you want.
The sole reason that they don't allow that on physical properties is because they fear you would get several legitimate copies when you actually paid for one.
Did you even try getting a new copy? Usually, a cart dropped in the pool will still work once dried up. And usually you can phone them and arrange for you to get back a new copy if you send the malfunctioning copy back to them.
Perhaps not in every country, I don't know.
It's just wishful thinking they are going to try to find a middle ground. They are just as extreme and inflexible as hard core pirates who will never compensate anyone for any intellectual property whatsoever.
It might as well be religious fundamentalism. Your reasonable position has no place here.
You just come off to me as someone trying to put them on the same level as hardcore pirates, thus deeming them unworthy of not being pirated. That's just a straw man to me.
If they don't even have a console out, then they can hardly be considered a console manufacturer, let alone one with respect to fair use.
In all honesty, I suspect that Pandora will be vapourware.
I wont say this will kill the DS but, when the Dreamcast was around and after a few people figured out how to run debug mode the Dreamcast began its down fall. It was so easy to pirate a game, all you needed was the Dreamcast boot disk which was found everywhere online, and a BIN file for the game which could be downloaded easily, the worst part was if you were on dial-up or not cause this was 1999/2000 and broadband wasn't readily available.
Hell, eventually they managed to make all pirated game self-loading and because the Dreamcast used a proprietary disk format that could hold more then 750mb, some people managed to remove content from the game to fit it on a regular CD. Thus making the GD-Rom's piracy measure of going past the 750mb useless.
I read a post-mortem article from one of the leads at SEGA after support was dropped. They took a gamble with the Dreamcast and knew they had to reach a certain number of units sold both in games and in systems to be able to compete with the Playstation 2. They never officially blamed piracy but they said it definitely hurt them, especially in the last six months before the PS2 arrived.
In my opinion the arrival of the PS2 didn't kill the Dreamcast, piracy did.
My enjoyment of our Wii doubled when I installed the Homebrew Channel, and I always bring it up when people ask us if we like the system. It's funny that they are in a constant fight to stop stuff that contributes so much to the value of what they're selling to us.
Jesus told him, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me. - John 14:6 NLT
I know what you're talking about: Rudolph's dumper.
I used an original gameboy advance media player, with modified firmware, and I had not heard of rudolf's dumper until you mentioned it then, I had a tool around 2005'ish that could dump ds firmware, ds slot sram, and ds slot rom, very handy multi-functional tool, featured a debugger also. Cannot for the life of me remember the name of it but if I can remember I will post in a reply.
Any ideas on how to build an NES copier?
best bet to follow petermgreen's advice, my main experience is snes where we don't have memory mappers, just silly co-processors in cartridges :)
...because Sony and Nintendo will just be annoying us homebrew users. Indiscriminately criminalising your customers will not make the "bad guys" go away - they'll just multiply!
The real problem is that the industry - and that's not just Sony and Big N - still keeps ignoring is pricing. Maybe you gotta stop labeling crap the same as diamonds. (and yeah, I know Third Parties don't get a say in this!)
I think a general drop in prices is called for - and maybe the dropping of the belief that "Visuals are Everything".
Non-supporter of Online Activation and any other draconian DRM
If, instead of putting the "SELECT" and "START" buttons in the little round spot in the mirror-image position of where the thumbstick is on the Go, they had put in another thumbstick and put those two buttons somewhere else, they would have made ports of shooters and other PS2 and PS3 games to the PSP a lot easier. Backward compatibility with old PSP games would be trivial - the old games don't "know" about the second thumbstick, so they'd automatically ignore it.
I like my PSP quite a bit. It has served me well on long flights and on bus trips between Rio and Sao Paulo. I've watched movies and TV eps on it, and I've enjoyed some of the games, especially some of the shooters like the Syphon Filter games, which I think do the best job of working around the problem of having only one joystick, but it would be nicer if all the shooters could have the same controls, which would be the case if there were two thumbsticks plus the direction and "shape" buttons. Y'know... like EVERY console controller. And as I said, it would make ports of console games that much easier, which could greatly expand the number of games available for the PSP.
It's a huge pain in the ass to switch between different shooters on the PSP, because I end up confusing the control schemes between different games. Since the controls are only that different from game to game because the games use different workarounds for the single-joystick problem, the solution is obvious... to everyone but the geniuses at Sony.
The PSP hardware has gone through three updates in the last few years, and the most obvious change to strengthen the platform has not been part of any of them. Instead, they've focused on making it smaller and lighter, which I don't want at all. In fact, I have a case and leave the PSP in it at all times because the whole thing feels sturdier in my hands. One of the reasons I chose the PSP over the DS was because the DS felt flimsy and easy-to-break to me. So of course, when Sony updated their hardware three times, it was to make it lighter and smaller, but not to, y'know, do the one thing that would really improve the platform as a whole.
I will give them credit for the video out that they added on the 2000, though. That's the one feature of the newer models I really wish I had. Battery life is a decent one, but I just bought an extra battery (with a larger capacity than the original Sony one) and make sure both are charged before I leave on a trip. I also use the power cord when I can (in airports or bus stations, at home, etc.). I've never had to quit playing because of lack of battery power.
"It is nice to know that the computer understands the problem. But I would like to understand it too." --Eugene Wigner
One has to wonder if the the money wasted on redesigns and protection schemes doesn't actually exceed the revenue that would have resulted if piracy wasn't possible. Every pirate I know fills one profile...cheap bastards that wouldn't buy anything to start with. Nearly all the friends I have that pirate speak about "homebrew" but do no development themselves and their idea of homebrew is emulation so they can pirate other stuff.
However, the current software model is a dead end. Many people are just not willing to spend $30-$40 on a portable game. IMHO thats why even with inferior controls the Iphone is starting to cut into sales on the DS and PSP. There are many games now that are 1/4th the price on the iphone and doing quite well. When you have a choice of Peggle for $30 on the DS or $1.99 on the iphone it doesnt exactly give the traditional gamer warm and fuzzies. If handheld games were an impulse purchase many of the piracy issues would drop drastically.
I bought a PS2 with the intent of purchasing $20 games. If I can't find them (out of print or not sold here or whatever), I'll just download them. I intend to give them my money, but if they make it impossible to do that I won't do it.
Of course, that probably means I'll stop buying console stuff and move back to computers. I feel better about giving hardware mfrs my money anyway, even though PC gaming is a constant upgrade treadmill.
Ever higher game prices are only shooting yourself in the foot.
Which makes a lifetime (to date) attach rate of what, just over 4? That is not that much, really.
Nintendo makes a profit on the lowest of attach rates, which is why you haven't seen Nintendo react quite as quickly in updating the DS and Wii lockout as Sony has in updating the PSP lockout.
Ahh, the days of Dreamcast. I recently purchased Shenmue 2 EURO for DC. I just have to locate a Dreamcast that can accept boot discs. They removed CD-R readability in later models to combat piracy, but it was far too late.
Dreamcast was a really good system. It was almost same generation as PS2.
How come the arrival of super-easy piracy for the PS2 (Available shortly after V2 arrived on the market, so a matter of months) didn't kill it?
Or the fact that pirating a game for the XBOX (also available mere months after XBOX's existence in the market) meant faster load times and easier game selection?
And how come the Gamecube lagged behind both, despite that "quality" piracy wasn't available until several years after its launch?
Or the PS3 lagging behind, despite no widespread piracy? Or the XBOX 360 surpassing it despite simple-as-a-flash piracy? Or the Wii also surpassing it with also rather simple pirate mods?
Your argument is backwards. Pirateable consoles have always been the winners. Look at the NES, they didn't just make 1,000,000-in-1 carts and do away with the lockout chip, they pirated the ENTIRE SYSTEM!
Dreamcast died because of a lack of marketing and availability. I never even saw one in my entire life, and I own almost all consoles from most all generations. It's the 3D0 of the modern world.
pppffffttt
Total BS. The downfall of the Dreamcast happened before the unit even shipped.
All of the big studios decided that they weren't going to bother supporting it.
THAT killed the Dreamcast. Whether or not it had easy to use pirating tools
really didn't have anything to do with it.
People with big money to spend didn't want to waste their effort on any more
platforms than they absolutely had to. So Dreamcast got the short end of the
stick as it was seen as an "also ran".
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
http://www.tripoint.org/kevtris/Projects/copynes/
CopyNES: $125, plus the price of a working NES and a PC from the Windows 98 era (you'll need a parallel port for the CopyNES and a USB port to get your files onto a USB stick). Unless you have a lot of games that aren't coming to VC any time soon, it's cheaper just to buy games on VC for $5 each.
Afaict the trickiest bit with copying nes carts is actually identifying them. nes carts (unlike gameboy carts) use a huge range of mapper chips
If one restricts oneself to NES games (72 pin), there are only a handful of common NES mappers: NROM/CNROM/GNROM, UNROM, BNROM/AOROM, MMC1, or MMC3. Even most of the unlicensed games are clones of CNROM (Panesian), GNROM (Color Dreams), UNROM (Camerica), or MMC3 (Tengen). That's few enough for a dumper to take less than one second to try each mapper's handshake and see how the cart responds.
If you want to actually copy the cart rather than just make an image for use on emulators you will also need to either clone the mapper chip or find a donor cart with the same mapper chip to host your copy.
Plenty of mappers have been cloned already: PowerPak. For something more permanent, RetroZone has reproduction boards designed for NROM/CNROM/GNROM, UNROM, BNROM/AOROM, and MMC1 games.
Use the DVI/HDMI port that comes with many PCs now and plug the PC into the TV.
CRT SDTVs already in homes have no DVI/HDMI input. Should I just point anyone who wants to buy my game to SewellDirect.com, which sells VGA to composite adapters?
I'm not a fan of videogame/software piracy because there are good legitimate alternatives (and no MAFIAA), however my brother and his friends justify it because ds/wii games are not full games ( there are some and to be far to him he has a fair few of them). While he doesn't mind paying £30-£40 for a full xbox360 game, he finds paying £30 for a collection of minigames is too much. pc game piracy is pretty easy too but i believe that the pricing on a ds games is what makes many turn to the dark side.
I disagree with him as imo, if you don't want to pay £30 for a collection of minigames, you should just go on flash websites and not splash out on a DS in the first place.
IranAir Flight 655 never forget!
Bullshit. Look at any video game console - they can be cracked as easily as the Dreamcast ever was. These markets are slowing down gradually, yes, but so is everyone else right now. Piracy is far from the reason for anything's "death."
The Dreamcast died because developers stopped developing for it. Easy as pie.
I bought my PSP used & bought nearly all of the 20 or so games I own used as well. I think I know the real reason that Sony wants to get rid of the UMD on the PSP Go
There is a war going on for your mind.
Make a game console and sell it then.
While I like dealextreme and order from them often, you should point out that said orders with free shipping generally take 4-5 weeks to arrive.
"The more you (they) tighten their grip the more (gaming) systems will slip through their (corporate) fingers...." Hmm, does that make Sony the "Sith Lord" and Nintendo the "Dark Apprentice" or is it the other way?
Sony's outright LIES about the PS2 did far more damage then ease of piracy to the Dreamcast. Im not saying Sega didnt drop the ball, they had been sowing the seeds of ruin ever since the Saturn surprise launch.
Good-bye
Yeah and how many games will be made for it? I know it will emulate probably even ps1 games, but I lug around my laptop already and the screen is a lot bigger, plus I can throw a usb gamepad in my bag and have some nostalgia on the go.
zosxavius photography
Nintendo has hired Neil Boyd
He was named Nintendo's official milkman.
He was entitled to deliver what the world wants. What the world deserves.
The good, the evil and the vacuum tubes.
...when there are already successful anti-piracy methods in the market. Has changing the firmware ever worked? No. Has suing the distributors ever worked? No.
If these people had actually sat down in a room and looked at a PowerPoint detailing what anti-piracy methods have and have not worked in the past, they would have released an online marketplace alongside their handheld consoles. Not only would that have killed piracy, it would have killed competing consoles.
tl;dr: If you want to compete with piracy, then you need to be more convenient than piracy. Steam and iTunes are perfect examples of this.
Interesting. I remember buying a used game from an online store, and when I got it, it was entirely obvious that it was a CD copy with an inkjet printed label. It played perfectly without me needing a mod chip in the console, and I always wondered why it worked without needing hardware modification.
I also wondered why the online store agreed to take the disc back without any objection, because I thought for sure they had just ripped me off. I guess they didn't realize it was a pirated copy, despite the obvious lack of any Sega hologram markings. They probably just popped it into a Dreamcast, saw that it worked, and figured it was a legit copy, safe to re-sell.
Piracy is downloading and playing a game that is sold in stores without purchasing the game or any other software in question.
Webster disagrees: "3 a : the unauthorized use of another's production, invention, or conception especially in infringement of a copyright". But at this point, the discussion has fulfilled Layne's Law, and we can agree to disagree.
The R4 is quite possibly the worst flashcart. Try an AceKard.
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