My Thoughts on the Whole PS3 3.21 Firmware Update

Morning All,

Now I read last night that apparantly Sony has decided to cut the OpenOS system out of the Phat PlayStation 3’s entirely due to “Security Exploits”. I am sure unless you have been living under a rock for the last few months and actually care about the PS3 that certain exploits have been made accessable for the PS3 through a linux interface. I dont know any details because simply, I dont care what they do, they do their stuff I shall not do what they do xD. However, this has come noticable to Sony and therefore this is the action they take.

Before going any further, I would like to state my bias that will affect my opinions so at least I can make it clear why my opinions are based on what I say.

1. I do own a Phat 40GB Playstation 3, however that being said I have never used the OpenOS due to my moderate dislike of any other OS besides Windows. Linux was personally never visually appealing to me and I have had a lot of trouble with Mac computers in the past.
2. I would consider myself a fully legit gamer. I purchase my games legit. This being said despite the fact that the Australian marketplace for games is an absolute rip off, with most games coming in at $AUD 109.95 or judging from the latest exchange rates, $US 100.
3. I personally consider gaming consoles exclusively for gaming and other entertainment. I have a computer myself and I have no need for anything else for a gaming console besides as a Blu-Ray player, DVD Player and of course, playing games.

Okay, happy that someone actually posted their bias into their comments on this? First of all, I do wonder how many people who claim that they bought the console because it was able to use linux, actually bought it for that reason. At least over here in Australia, I dont recall it ever being advertised that it had linux and the first time I actually heard about it was when I saw the icon in the settings menu. To me, it just seems like a genetic comment that people are making, either to troll, Xbox/Wii Fanboys/Fangirls and I suppose some would have actually used it simply for linux. I can understand people being annoyed if they actually did buy it for linux, however the number of comments with the same phrase bring into question if at least some comments are being posted to encourage people to switch consoles.

Now, I do not claim to be an expert in business, however I am pretty sure that Sony isnt just going to widthdraw this functionality without knowing that they can protect themselves from any sort of legal advancement. If you actually read the terms of service for anything from a game console to a game, then you will no doubt see that they have phrases in there that can protect themselves from anything that can occur from the removal of a functionality to even the shutting down of service entirely. Just like if they banned you from the console because you were breaking the terms of service, which for each the Xbox and PS3, this means losing all online functionality anyway, and heck, there has not be any successful case against either companies for things like this. Of course, if all of you keep posting on the Playstation Blogs with your normal PSN accounts about you personally going to use the hacked firmware said to be coming out, you could quite possibly end up this way as well, banned with no internet access on your console.

Lets also look at it from a business perspective. I have used this a number of times towards the occasional crap said about IAHGames, but a company is here to make money. If the risk of losing substancial profit due to a possible hack is present, then as a business they have to think of themselves, since if lets say, someone does allow functionality for the PS3 to run backup or downloadable copies of games, this could lead to millions of dollars of profit loss in most countries (I said most because 1 game download would blow a whole months bandwidth before you even finished downloading it here in Australia). The Playstation 3 has undeniably been the most hack-proof system and I suppose this is the most effective way to fix the problem.

At least the groups of people who do have lots of PS3’s for research purposes can still keep using it without updating it. Since I doubt that university researchers or government groups use PS3’s for both games and research, they do have the option not to update. For the more casual hobbyist, unfortunately that is the side effect for the innocent.

I will say one thing however, it was irresponsible of Sony to announce this with only a few days until the update. This does not allow people ample time to first see that there is an update to backup data, start a new linux environment on the PC or allow individuals to give creative feedback (Not the one line “ZOMG! PS3 IS EPIC FAIL WITH NO OPENOS!”) but more constructive criticism or compliments. They should have at least announced it a week or two in advance. I think legimate users to have a right to be angry with this, I do not deny it and I respect their opinions, but with the number of comments on the official blogs that are one-line “I will never use PS3 AGAIN!”, may I personally suggest a bit more constructive criticism than this.

Of course, this could be an April Fools Day joke which may be accompanied with Ps2 Emulation which has been flung around for years, which is a personal hope for me…. heck, you can never really deny it.

I welcome any constructive comments here however please respect each others opinion, no flame wars and no one liner comments like the ones I mentioned above. I personally support the sharing of opinions within the reason of non-spammy. If for whatever reason your comment does not appear, it might be my spam blocker, I will try and fix that up each night.