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Sony Wants To Put Your Game Saves In the Cloud
itwbennett writes "Sony may be planning to have three platforms (Android devices, NGP, PS3) running PlayStation Suite content and needing access to the same saved data stored in the cloud, says blogger Peter Smith. At last week's PlayStation Meeting, game developer Hideo Kojima said his 'dream' was to offer the same game on the PS3 and the new PlayStation Portable with saves in the cloud. If Kotaku has it right, that dream may be coming in firmware version 3.6. Also, in an interview with Engadget, Sony's Jack Tretton first said that PlayStation Suite games would work on the PS3. He then retracted that comment, but it's sounding a lot like Sony just isn't ready to talk officially about plans to bring Suite content to the PS3, says Smith."
Although there's plenty that can go wrong, 'cloud' storage is a cool concept for my save data. It's not fun having to scrounge up a compatible device to backup my PS3's saves when I've upgraded the drive, and I'd hate to have to restart a game on my portable just because I lost my save on a Tiny-Micro-Whatever SD card no bigger than my pinky-nail.
That said, it raises the stakes on what happens if I decide to jailbreak my devices. Is there always going to be a hard copy, or do I get a nastygram message at startup saying "Your account (and all of those saves) have been locked out due to unlicensed use of your hardware"? Let's not forget that many manufacturers (Sony and Nintendo included) are moving towards digital delivery systems.
That could be really good! So long as I wasn't required to be connected to the internet in order to play my games. If there was some kind of consolecloud replication and games could function in a completely offline state it would be pretty great. It sucks balls when Blizzard is offline and I can't get my StarCraft 2 injection.
No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
...they don't abuse the power.
For instance, Nintendo happens to sign your save game files with a per-console key. This allows developers the option to lock their game's saves to the console, preventing you from moving them from one machine to the next. Certain homebrew applications were created that allowed you to actually back up your save file.
This hit me when I bought Ghost Squad. I unlocked a bunch of guns, and wanted to take the game to a friend's house to play on his Wii. I tried to copy my save file to the SD Card, and it told me no. That's some balls, telling me that I can't copy my own save file. WTF?
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