PSP piracy fears grow

PSP News | Hackers succeed in playing pirated games from Memory Stick slot.

In a rather worrying development for Sony, it's emerged that teams of amateur programmers have managed to make the PlayStation Portable play pirated copies of commercial games from the Memory Stick slot on the console. The revelation has triggered fears that the PSP could now become a target for widespread piracy.

Allegedly, hackers have already succeeded in making the handheld run a range of 'homebrew' games and emulators, as well as unauthorised code. And recently, the problem has deepened, with the hackers having now made the PSP boot pirate copies of four different games - Coded Arms, Lumines, Archer Maclean's Mercury and Puzzle Bobble. All four can now be downloaded from very naughty pirate sites, and then loaded direct from a high capacity Memory Stick.

The pirated software uses a bug in certain versions of the software that ships with the PSP to circumvent the machine's protection system. However, it looks like PAL versions of the handheld - due for launch on September 1st - will be immune from such illegal shenanigans, with the problem already addressed by Sony in more recent versions of the system software. Infact, SCE UK's PR chief David Wilson was positively glowing with optimism about the situation, arguing that the news that hackers had succeeded was 'yet another string to the bow for arguing against grey imports.'

The only versions of the PSP that are susceptible to this exploit are original Japanese consoles which shipped with the 1.0 firmware, and later Japanese and early American consoles, which shipped with version 1.5. No modification is needed to the hardware.

More news as it breaks.

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9 Comments

ObsoletE

7 years ago

immune for now...

someone will eventually hack it and it'll start all over again...

sad but true (from a certain perspective

)

Chris-Leigh

7 years ago

Anyone else of the opinion that this could be a mixed blessing for Sony? Many people purchased the first PlayStation on the grounds that it was so easy to acquire pirated software for...

thechu

7 years ago

ObsoletE wrote

immune for now...

someone will eventually hack it and it'll start all over again...

I agree obsolete, it's only a matter of time. On the other hand, sales of memory stick pro duo's will hit the roof

. Although apparently a comparison between Sony and Sandisk memory sticks by gamespot shows results that data transfer is faster with Sandisk MS pro duo's than the original and more expensive ones from Sony.

I don't know how true this is considering I don't have either memory sticks to test this (not to mention no PSP to test it on yet!) and I'm never gonna buy a Sony one considering the prices they charge.

David

7 years ago

Chris-Leigh wrote

Anyone else of the opinion that this could be a mixed blessing for Sony? Many people purchased the first PlayStation on the grounds that it was so easy to acquire pirated software for...

Yeah, totally true. There was a point where I was the only person I knew who didn't have my PS1 chipped and only 'rent' games.

So possibly what happened (with PS1) is that a good, oh, 20% or more (at least in USA and here) bought it for easy pirating, which boost the install base, which boosts 3rd party confidence, which boosts the line-up of games, which boosts the brand, image and sales.

No way of knowing if it would work again.

themak

7 years ago

Chris-Leigh wrote

Anyone else of the opinion that this could be a mixed blessing for Sony? Many people purchased the first PlayStation on the grounds that it was so easy to acquire pirated software for...

Not really as they now sell the devices at a loss and use game sales to make up for it.
I.E. If I bought 100 PS3's (and trashed 'em) I would have cost sony $1000.

Qbert

7 years ago

Yeah, but all the 3rd party developers see are more playstation's being sold, so they make their games for it, which in turn makes even more people buy playstations.
And anyway we're talking PSP not PS3

ObsoletE

7 years ago

--alex-- wrote

Chris-Leigh wrote

Anyone else of the opinion that this could be a mixed blessing for Sony? Many people purchased the first PlayStation on the grounds that it was so easy to acquire pirated software for...

Not really as they now sell the devices at a loss and use game sales to make up for it.
I.E. If I bought 100 PS3's (and trashed 'em) I would have cost sony $1000.

and cost you 7 or 8 times that...

so i wouldn't advise it, give me the money instead

Matt

7 years ago

Quote

I.E. If I bought 100 PS3's (and trashed 'em) I would have cost sony $1000.

It doesn't quite work that way. Sony doesn't lose additional money on you buying the console - the production run costs them $XXX, they sell the units to the retailer and get a certain amount of money back - in the case of a loss leading console (which is now every console) they don't get enough back to cover the production of those consoles. Your money just goes to the retailer - Sony already got theirs when they sold the consoles to the retailer.

themak

7 years ago

Matt wrote

Quote

I.E. If I bought 100 PS3's (and trashed 'em) I would have cost sony $1000.

I knew something was wrong with my reasoning.