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Sony Taking Down PSP Titles In Response To Vita Hackers
Carlos Rodriguez writes "The hacker community has found a way to make the Vita run unsigned code by exploiting weaknesses in PSP games available for download in the PSN store. In response, Sony has made the affected games unavailable for download for all platforms — PSP and Vita both — even if you had already paid for it and hadn't had the chance to download it yet. In the case of 'Everybody's Tennis', the game was removed from the PSN worldwide after the modder community bragged about the game being exploitable but before any exploit was released for it. Is Sony being too overzealous in its fight against piracy?"
Not that I am defending their actions, but I do wonder if there is something cultural going on. Is there something in particular about Japanese culture that encourages that degree of control (or perhaps "order")?
The extents to which they are willing to go seem extreme, even compared to other companies who are charter members aboard the DRM bandwagon. Is there something more to it than just "Sony = teh sux?"
Money is just tokenized power, control is another. Powerful people seek, well, power, and being able to control how people use what you sell gives just as much of a high has making lots of money off of it. That power then translates to respect within your community, which results in promotions and options at other companies.
In other words, once you realize that the motivations are not corporate profit but instead individual advancement and status, such behavior seems a lot less insane. This is also the core of the MPAA/RIAA's behavior, both are industries where careers are made or broken by reputation, so control/power are more important to the individual then group profit.
Note, however, that Nintendo is from a different region of Japan (Kyoto), with a significantly different culture.
Think of the difference between a New York City company, and a Boston company, or perhaps a New Orleans company. It's... something like that.
From what I can tell, Kyoto is much more conservative and traditional, but also more rural and more... relaxed, I suppose. They have a different accent (kansai-ben), which loosely corresponds to either a southern accent, or a boston accent, at least culturally.
There's also the fact that Nintendo is now effectively run by the game developers - Miyamoto is still a Senior Managing Director, and Iwata (the President) worked on Earthbound and Kirby as a programmer. Sony, meanwhile, is run by businessmen, for business.
To explore this a little bit, consider that Nintendo is a gaming company. Everything they do is centered around producing video game consoles and games to play on them. As long as the devices they sell can do that, I imagine most people don't care that they are locked down. Plus, it's not like you can do homebrew/hacking any more easily on the Sony or Microsoft systems.
Apple, on the other hand, sells more general "lifestyle" devices. The iPhone isn't just a phone--it's a media device, it's a portable game console, it's a web client, etc. etc. And given that it is advertised to have those capabilities, I think it's fair for some to cry foul at the fact that even though the device can do a lot of things (and is advertised thusly by Apple), it can only do them Apple's way, for no good reason except that Apple wants to maintain strict control over the platform.
Granted, most people don't care how hackable and open a particular device is, and I just avoid this whole issue by not purchasing Apple products. But I don't think the comparison to Nintendo is valid, because Nintendo sells devices for very specific purposes, and Apple's control of the iPhone is criticized because it is a more general-purpose device, intentionally crippled to serve Apple's interests.
Check out my world simulator thingy.
I'm still using a Sony amp from the 80s. Goes to show you what a decade or two of corporate greed can do.
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