Nintendo says Wii! Options

[Kagetenshi]

[hyzmarca]

Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft all use Draconian copy prevention measures. However, they don't do it for the copyright protection. The amount of piracy they stop by using opy prevention dwarves the cost of implimenting it and they know it. In fact, there are some very large and obvious video game piracy sites operating that the big 3 completely ignore with a wink and a nod.

However, the copy prevention built into their games has a much more sinister role. It also prevents the publication of unlisenced games. Any gamemaker who wants to publish a game for these systems has to pay for a license. This has been going on ever since the NES. But, during the NES days some companies learned how to circumvent Nintendo's lockout chips and they published unlicensed games. Subsequent court cases established that this was completely legal. Hardware manufacturers have no right to prohibit people from writing software for their machines

However, in modern game systems the same measures that prevent the playing of unlicensed software also prevent the playing of unlawfully coppied software. Due to anticirmvention laws that are now common it is illegal for unlicensed publishers to circumvent these measures thus few are willing to risk it. This gives the hardware manufactures monopoly control of game publication.

There are, of course, loopholes that have lead to a thriving homebrew scene but both the PSP and the 360 suffer from forced firmware updates that plug these holes almost as quickly as they are found. Microsoft has been the most draconian of anti-homebrew manufatures with th permenant lockout of modified consoles from Live but the others are certainly not homebrew friendly.

[Kagetenshi]

You mean aside from the fact that Sony has already announced that it's going to allow full access to the PS3 hardware and partial access to the PS3's development libraries to all comers? Real hostile towards homebrew, that.

~J

[hyzmarca]

I'll reserve judgement untill I learn exactly how easy it will be to load homebrew on the PS3. There is a thriving PSP homebrew community but loading homebrew on the PSP requires rather annoying exploits and firmware downgrades or access to a UMD printing facility. Since UMD is a properitary Sony format that is impossible without permission. If the PS3 can run unsigned programs from memory card, hard disk, or burned optical disk it will be great and a good excuse to fork over $600 for it. However, if it will only run software from proprietary stamped disks without illegal mods or exploits (like Sony's previous systems) then there is a big problem.