A new era of PSP piracy has begun...
by James Ransom-Wiley 
{ Jul 1st 2005 at 12:00PM }
It was bound to happen sooner or later. Sooner it is, as the first commercial UMD loader has been released, tested,
and deemed functional. The game: Lumines (currently without sound). The catch is you'll need a UMD (any game) in the
drive, but the game data and loader are all stored on the memory stick.
This is just the latest in an ongoing struggle, which is sure to ignite Sony.
But with hackers breaking down the walls of commercial UMDs, how is Sony going to force firmware upgrades? It's no
longer a matter of commercial PSP games vs. "retro" emulation—now anyone can have their NES and PSP games all on one
memory stick and never have to pay another dime to the industry. Thoughts?
[Thanks, Aaron & Craig]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
swarmster @ Dec 18th 2005 9:59PM
Where does it say they've figured out how to remove the upgraded firmware requirement in future games?
narius @ Dec 18th 2005 9:59PM
It is always a losing war against piracy. PS2, Xbox, GC, GBA, DS and now PSP. There is NOT a single system that has escaped this fate.
On the flip side, piracy never kills a system. PS2, GBA & Xbox are still going strong. So I am not too concern about piracy bringing down the PSP.
Johngrey @ Dec 18th 2005 9:59PM
At any rate hackers still need to iron out glitches (like lacking sound) before it becomes a proper alternative to commercial gaming. It's still early days and I'm sure there'll be a few more skirmishes by both sides.
Eventually I'm sure It'll happen though. Unless someone comes up with such thing as an unhackable system...
Myria @ Dec 18th 2005 9:59PM
"On the flip side, piracy never kills a system.
Debatable, really.
"PS2, GBA & Xbox are still going strong."
To pirate a PS2 or Xbox game you need to, just for starters, mod your console -- something unknown, way more of a PITA than it's worth, and/or beyond the skill of most.
To pirate a GBA game you need a linker and a card that costs at least a couple of times what a GBA-SP does and can only be bought from obscure sites on the 'net.
To pirate a PSP game you need a memory stick you likely already own or, if not, you can go down to Best Buy and get.
If there is one thing the internet and the digital revolution have taught us it is that people are thieves, but most are lazy thieves. If it's difficult, costly, or at all risky, most won't steal. If it's easy, cheap, and virtually risk-free, most will.
Sony is in deep doggy-do if they don't plug this hole soon.
Pretty Obvious @ Dec 18th 2005 9:59PM
If anything this will help Sony sell more PSP's. BTW not that many people are gonna shell out for a 1gb or 2 gb memory stick duo.
Christopher7xii @ Dec 18th 2005 9:59PM
--------------------
To pirate a GBA game you need a linker and a card that costs at least a couple of times what a GBA-SP does and can only be bought from obscure sites on the 'net.
To pirate a PSP game you need a memory stick you likely already own or, if not, you can go down to Best Buy and get.
-----------------
That's kind of silly to say. The kit to pirate GBA games was $120 when I got it. Very easily the same price people are paying for a gig stick of memory. So the price really isn't an issue. Also, I don't know what you mean by obscure sites... I was under the impression that EBAY was pretty well known. Not to mention it's easier to sit at home and wait for something to come in the mail then to actual go out and buy it. Gives you more time to collect downloads as well.
---
Personally, I think they should have kept a lid on this for now. Cracking UMDs and making them playable off of the mem stick is a fast way to piss sony off. Before, stopping homebrew was quite possibly just a side effect of trying to patch the hole that allows this. EMU doesn't cause them to lose money, THIS does.
Smiling Polightly @ Dec 18th 2005 9:59PM
In response to #2:
The GameCube has hardly any games pirated if at all. Or else it is so difficult to do that it is not even worth doing it.
In response to #5:
It may sell more PSPs for Sony, but the developers are going to feel the hurt with their product being stolen. Eventually the developers may start to realize why should they make games for the PSP, when they are going to be pirated anyway. This may result in the developer dropping support for the PSP. In the end piracy is not good.
flyNN @ Dec 18th 2005 9:59PM
Hackers will always hack; giving a relatively small community the ability to not pay money for games, but instead endure a different cost- Time & Effort!
I used to spend sooo much time keeping my hacks up to date, dealing with d/l game glitches, etc. Today, my time is worth a lot more to me and hacks just aren't worth the effort.
I feel the kids who can't afford to purchase these games anyways are whom comprise the majority of this community that benefits from the hackers. All the power to them, I say :)
Link @ Dec 18th 2005 9:59PM
I'm sure Sony is gonna do their best to crack down on this but in the end it won't stop them because they can't control the internet. I'm sure a lot of people won't go for it even if they can do this, some might download this to reduce load times (will it also save battery time?), and some just to "demo" a game and later purchase it. You never know.
Personally I think piracy can be really bad (SNK went bankrupt cuz of this), but I think it actually has helped others. At least in latin america, the only reason the playstation (1 & 2) became popular was because pirated games became so cheap and all you had to do was get it modded and you could even download games from the net and burn them yourselves.
That's why they sold so many units cuz prices can go anywhere from 30-100% increase over the US price. A PSP in Mexico will cost you OVER $500 USD! PS2's stil cost $300 and so on... games are usually around $70. Funny how they expect a 3rd world country to pay more.
So back to piracy... For the PSP at least, this is very bad news. I'm sure it may end up selling more PSP's if people see all these extra things they can do with the machine. But consoles and handheld hardware are made at a loss and software is what really makes them money nowadays. So they'll surely fix this soon.
shidoshi @ Dec 18th 2005 9:59PM
Emulation for games no longer actively being sold = Good.
Emulation for games currently being sold = Bad.
Chiablo @ Dec 18th 2005 9:59PM
Piracy has been proven over and over again to not affect sales as badly as game publishers say it does.
Doom 3 was the most downloaded PC game of all time (30,000 downloads within the first day of it being leaked.) And yet, it is one of the highest selling PC games of all time.
The Xbox is the console that has the largest problem with piracy, and yet they've sold an ungodly amount of Halo2 games.
I do not see this hurting the PSP in any way. Most people do not even know where to obtain downloaded copies of PSP games and ripping them requires more work than people are willing to do.
You also have to take into account that the GBA has had pirated games for years now, but hardly anyone does it because of the initial cost (you have to purchase a flashcart that costs upwards of $100.) The same thing here... People would rather buy 3 legitimate games for $100 before they'd blow that much on a dinky memory stick.
This news is tempting me to get one because it's shown to reduce load times and increase battery life. I'll probably wait for a true boot loader though.
Charlie @ Dec 18th 2005 9:59PM
Idk... there are no good ways to stop piracy. All they can do is make it harder for people to become pirates, discouraging all but the most hardcore. For example, a lot of xbox modders decided that they would rather have xbox live than their mod chip and disabled it.
Someone needs to invent a technology that allows publishers to inexpensively stamp optical disks (ie CDs, DVDs, UMDs) uniquely. IE the data on one disk is encrypted differently from the data on another. Each disk should need a unique decryption code. Further, if every disk was unique, they could track where piracy originated. For example, they could see that the disk that was pirated was bough buy James Benson and sue him.
DCoy54 @ Dec 18th 2005 9:59PM
In response to Smiling Polightly,
Please don't speak of things you no nothing about. The majority of GC games are available as ISO's on the internet, and are easily playable through streaming with the BBA or with the use of a modchip. Gamecube piracy is alive and kicking, but and in my opinion has increased the amount of GC's sold due to the console's low price.
Icabod Crane @ Dec 18th 2005 9:59PM
Its not just about availability, as a previous poster said. Its about easy availability. Yes, I know that many of the consoles I have owned have been hackable, but the fact that I had to jump through hoops made me not want to do it. That and I'm a game developer that makes a living off people NOT stealing the content I work long and hard on. Publishers *do* feel the pinch, and even more so the actual developers. Publishers have a stable of games making money, but developers usually make it or break it on a couple titles that they have royalties on, and these are the first to be affected by downward pressure in sales.
I really wish people would stop saying that no one gets hurt by piracy. Whether you like the big companies or not, whether you think that their business model or practices are fair or not, its still the way the economy works. I produce a product, I put it into the Supply and Demand channel. If you want it, and are willing to pay the price, great, if not, I go broke. Thats the way its supposed to work.
JimJam @ Dec 18th 2005 9:59PM
Selling more hardware but less software is going to discourage the growth of the gaming industry as a whole. Most of the profit margins are from software license... the margins from hardware sales are as tight as they come.
elmer @ Dec 18th 2005 9:59PM
Please don't forget, the last thing Sony actually wants to do is sell PSP's seen as in all likelyhood they're losng a fair bit of dosh on each one. Lot's of flashy new console sales + complete lack of software sales = whopping hole in pocket.
And as for PSP game copying being no less expensive than GBA game copying; remember that a lot of people have been buying memory sticks for their PSP's without knowing for sure they can use it for copying. People buy them to watch movies and listen to music (i thought that was the biggest part of their sales pitch), so a lot of people, minus the USB cable, are probably pretty well equipped already.
Now let's look forward to the day the PSP's Wifi can be used to download games direct to a memory stick - who needs an ISP, steal your neighbour's
P.S. I don't condone piracy ;) (or stealing bandwidth)
raindog_mx @ Dec 18th 2005 9:59PM
To me it's obvious SONY wanted this to happen. You rellay believe that they as hardware developers never considered the ease of hacking the PSP when they were designing it? Of course the PSP would sell triple if it had emulators for other consoles right out of the box or if you could easily copy your games but then sony would face a devastating number of lawsuits so what they did? they left it for us to resolve, they did it on purpose.
That's what i think. And i want a PSP now.
Zach @ Dec 18th 2005 9:59PM
Hey,
As a side note, has anyone heard if it is possible to revert an upgraded PSP from 1.52 to 1.50. My understanding from scouring the message boards is no, but if anyone has heard anything otherwise, please inform!
James @ Dec 18th 2005 9:59PM
And this is why games cost $50 a pop.....
benhc911 @ Dec 18th 2005 9:59PM
Selling more psp's are good to an extent. I havent heard as to whether or not Sony is making money on psp sales. If they arent (or are losing money) then selling more psp's, but to pirates is a bad idea. People who dont plan to pirate will not be persuaded to buy because of this, and I doupt that pirates will buy some games and download others. Couple this with that pmp that that transfer onto the psp, will a bunch of games on it (because who only wants 1-3 games?) (assumming that the games dont use the full of the UMD, often games dont use the maximum potential of their media)
Cooper @ Dec 18th 2005 9:59PM
Thanks Sony. In your zealot desire to erase Nintendo from the gaming market, you've given everyone the tools to destroy it. Nintendo's gotta be feeling pretty smug right now.
Seriously though I don't see it killing PSP and will probably move a few units.
Christopher7xii @ Dec 18th 2005 9:59PM
"And this is why games cost $50 a pop....."
No, games cost $50 a pop because it costs several million to make a game, on top of programmers being overpaid.
Johngrey @ Dec 18th 2005 9:59PM
IF Sony is just in for propagation of "Playstation Portable" brand or UMD format for the sake of future endeavour, maybe it's not a bad thing.
If not then I'm thinking, if piracy increased hardware sales, those extra sales would mainly be used for pirated games. And given that software sales is what makes money (and not the hardware), it MUST be a bad thing for Sony.
So ... good or bad would probably depend on what Sony wants from this PSP era :)
MaxSMoke @ Dec 18th 2005 9:59PM
I would like to interject this one point, I'm NOT giving up my homebrew games or emulators, no matter what. Now that I have them and I'm having so much fun seeing what a PSP can do next, I have no intention of ever "upgrading" and loosing this coolness.
If Sony demands I upgrade to play new games, then I simply WON'T be playing any new games. It's that simple. And I *AM* a big buyer of PSP games, I have over a dozen now, something like over $500 I've spent on them thus far. And oddly enough, only one of them has managed to hold my attention for more then 2 hours. I've been playing with homebrew games constantly for the last 3 weeks!!
If Sony wants to keep this customer, they had better back off the homebrew community. I have a pre-order for GTA, but I'm even willing to give it up to keep my homebrew.
If they want to keep hardcore customers like me, and still stop piracy, maybe they ought to consider going after the pirates instead of everybody else. Or maybe just acknowledge the FACT that piracy costs them little to NOTHING, since pirates don't buy games anyways, and just write the whole thing off as a MINOR Cost of Doing Business!
Cu @ Dec 18th 2005 9:59PM
Im an game designer and have been for a long time. Piracy affects everyone. As you may or may not know piracy of psp games does not beneift sony at all. Sony is an Publishing House which means belive it or not they do end up with game sales $. The dev is screwed over by the process and so on. There are 2 options to this growing problem:
1) HARSH penalties for those who host/use pirated
2) Coded copies only. You may see this in the handhold/console market soon. Be aware...
Carey
vakerorokero @ Dec 18th 2005 9:59PM
Sony likes piracy because it makes its money on hardware not software, last comment I heard from Sony is how manny Ps2 they have sold, not how many gran Turismos they sold. Didn't piracy made the Ps1 a sucess? look at the xbox. marketing Estadistics say every xbox owner has a range of 3 to 5 games. Do you believe that?
Sony may see this as a problem because of the movie part of the PSP since they supposedly had a format unavailable anywhere else so you must buy for them the discs (reminds me of the Nintendo dark ages)for you content. They never cared for third parties. They learned that with the other polyphony title ever: Omega Boost which sold about 14 copies despite great reviews and a big budget.
Here in Mexico everyone has a big problem with piracy, but they don't see the problem from the consumer point of view to use piracy. EXPENSIVE PRODUCTS. We had piracy Since the NES but most people bought originals because they were cheap. Now a Gamecube can go for $100 if it has a microphone or a set of kongas. Ps2 go for $60 and Xbox go from $30 to $70. big contrast with $30 games you americans get. and still you use piracy. Now with next generation selling $60 games in the U.S. we might start seeing $120 games here. sounds like software piracy won't go away for now. I guess I'll go buy a PSP and a giant memory stick, but from another brand.
Johngrey @ Dec 18th 2005 9:59PM
MaxSMoke, Sony wouldn't care though. You're a small fish in a big pond.
If homebrew matters to that extent, you might as well go for a small laptop or pocket pc in the first place. PSP's merit lies in the fact that it can play UMD games. When that ceases to be the dominant factor for some reason, that's when PSP becomes "just another computer". Sony wants customers who fit into their design, for obvious reasons.
Everything else is just a bonus for them, and I doubt very much they'd give flying cobblers about you.
Johngrey @ Dec 18th 2005 9:59PM
vakerorokero:
"Sony likes piracy because it makes its money on hardware not software"
That's so wrong... that's completely back to front. They need games sales to make up for the loss they make on hardware! More hardware sales is only good if that encourage more software sales. Piracy goes against this equation, for better or worse.
Bootes @ Dec 18th 2005 9:59PM
First of all PC gaming has been going fine for years, and every game is downloadable.
Second loading is much faster off a memory stick, and uses less power. I think I'll be switching all my games over to memory stick. :)
sheik rattle enroll @ Dec 18th 2005 9:59PM
Christopher7xii: how is it your experience that game programmers are overpaid? If 45k is "overpaid" to you, consider that some of these people work 70 hour work weeks. At that rate they're making about $13 an hour, which is far far far less than basically any college educated job. It's really the publisher/developer model and the constant demand for better graphics that push costs.
dinkaroo @ Dec 18th 2005 9:59PM
This whole thing is pretty much moot, every game coming out on the psp will have the new firmware that you'll have to install to play the new game, so yay, people ripped lumines or metal gear, whatever, those games were on shelves ages ago so they've allready sold what they're gonna sell, anyone who wants to be able to play that small library of psp games that currently exist on the market along with their rom collection is going to need a gig stick if not 2 gigs for some games, a 2 gig stick is over 200 bucks, what is that? 4 or 5 psp games? So that you can play a game or two? lol that means people are probably going to buy a second psp if they want to play new titles while maintaining the old system. So once again, all those old psp titles have probably made as much money as they're going to, 90 percent (made up statistic but relatively accurate) of a games revenue is in the first 2 weeks. If you didn't buy it then you were probably never going to.
Christian @ Dec 18th 2005 9:59PM
I don't consider breaking UMD's piracy in and of itself. As for using a PSP for a emulator, the game industry better get it through thier heads that the older "classic" games hold a special place in the hearts of ALOT of gamers and they will find new ways to play them regardless of what the industry says or does.
pcmerc @ Dec 18th 2005 9:59PM
One thief taking from another. But then again the government teachs everyone about thievery.
Hack the Planet!
Henry Mac @ Dec 18th 2005 9:59PM
It seems that today (Sunday the 3rd of July) More Game Loaders have been leaked for Coded Arms (My prediction is that that one is gonna be the one which is most heavily used) and Mercury. Proof? http://newzbin.com/browse/group/p/alt.binaries.sony.psp/
(You guys will probobly wanna report this on the main page, If you do, please credit me in the post)
Chris @ Dec 18th 2005 9:59PM
No this does NOT make the price $50!
I paid well over 55 CAN for NES games when they came out. That argument is shit.
There is no GC modchip........if you yourself was aware that you knew nothing, you won't have posted. GC games play BACKWARDS......hence, the only way to play them is an illegal production disk (no clue if possible to obtain over ebay or net) or thru that game with network adapter. Theres no such thing as a modchip for it since you'd need a specialezed burner for it regardless.
Thank god for this loader......I pay for games if their Worth my $$$. I have spent over $400 on crap games that make me fustrated as hell. Bout time I can 'sample' it before I buy. As for roms......everyone should be happy :) Including Nin and Sega....Im sure theyll benefit as well.
Tony Rayo @ Dec 18th 2005 9:59PM
Chris said...
"There is no GC modchip........if you yourself was aware that you knew nothing, you won't have posted. GC games play BACKWARDS......hence, the only way to play them is an illegal production disk (no clue if possible to obtain over ebay or net) or thru that game with network adapter. Theres no such thing as a modchip for it since you'd need a specialezed burner for it regardless."
Chris is just not true. Visit maxconsole.net and get yourself informed. There are a lot of other things people have said that I agree and disagree with, but it'd take forever to respond so I'll just deal with you.
ogracer @ Dec 18th 2005 9:59PM
psp sucks anyway
Manoel Neto @ Dec 18th 2005 9:59PM
Of course piracy can kill a console (or at least give it a major help in jumping down from a cliff).
Anyone remembers the Dreamcast? At one point the DC software sales were dropping rapidly, while the hardware sales were actually increasing. Any kid with broadband and a CD burner could run pirated games on it, with no extra costs or any modding. Heck, they didn't even need a broadband since the pirated copies could be re-copied with common CD burning software, as long as they knew someone to borrow pirated copies from.
That quickly dropped the developers' trust on the platform, since they knew their games would be on the net for everyone to download a mere days after hitting shelves (often some days *before* it).
Rodesan @ Dec 18th 2005 9:59PM
in response to Dinkaroo's comment that you would need a 2 gig stick for some games, that is sooooo wrong.
The psp games are really not that large at all.
Ive heard you can fit that lumines iso and loader on the 32 mb stick.
PiratePete @ Dec 18th 2005 9:59PM
I've been running pirated systems ever since I learned to file down the two inside tabs to get Super Famicom games to run on the SNES. I have also paid for games too. And if there is one thing I've learned about getting games for free vs. paying for them is that if it's made too difficult to get all the features of a pirated game to work especially if it's an important one then pirates are willing to pay for it. That's why I purchased Battlefield 2 instead of downloading a cracked copy. The biggest and best feature of that game is the online play. And who wants to have a hard time trying to find a working key when connecting to a game server. Developers take note...
Atif Afsar @ Dec 18th 2005 9:59PM
Playstation 2 and Xbox is going strong mainly because of the reason that almost 70% in Asia and Europe are playing pirated games for Playstation 2 and Xbox and that increases their sales. Now that PSP is hacked, PSP will soon have a boost on their sales. See one thing is clear and that is no one is interested in buying much more expensive games for PSP, Xbox or Playstation 2 and GOD bless those hackers who are capable of cracking down these consoles. Now that PSP is cracked down, now i will go and get a PSP for myself and i am sure Playstation 3 and xbox 360 will soon be cracked also. If any hacker reading my comment i would like to say one thing to you and that is we all appreciate the work you do and keep up the good work