PS3 With Blu-Ray Makes Piracy Very Very Difficult - Reeves

[Zeus]

In an interview with CVG, the head of SCE Europe reveals alot of things about the PS3, PS2 and gaming in Iran. He says 10 million PS2's will ship this year worldwide, he also states that the market in Iran is booming, a new kind of market emerging where coffee shops are setting up PS2 consoles and charging people per play, much like a real arcade. He states that the use of blu-ray in the PS3 will make piracy incredibly difficult and will help to sell software in certain markets which are plagued by piracy such as Pakistan.


<b>Alot of people have questioned whether they're really getting value for money with the PS3's price point?</b>

David Reeves: If people buy the 499 euro version it will be by far the cheapest Blu-ray player on the market. So people are going to buy it for that as well as the games. They will experience Blu-Ray and what it provides. If they then play it on a high definition television it will look amazing.

<B>The announcement of the tilt functionality in the PS3's controller took a lot of people by surprise at your conference?</b>

David Reeves: I think initially it will take third party developers time to understand what it is all about. They have not been introduced to the specs. It was quite a surprise to a lot of them. However the first party people, certainly in Tokyo, who had seen it for two weeks, had put together some good mini games, especially the compatibility with WarHawk. They are also putting tilt capability into the new Sonic game. Really, it's very easy to get to grips with and it's infectious.

<B>What are your aims for the PS3's launch line-up?</b>

David Reeves: Within the launch window, for the first time, we are not going to go just for hardcore gamers. We are going to have a portfolio of social gaming. There will be a SingStar certainly before Christmas and an EyeToy one after Christmas. EyeToy is not playable at the moment but it will come before March 07.

<b>Is it true that you oversee something like 106 countries? Are there marked differences in the markets?</b>

David Reeves: When it comes to hardware sales PAL markets such as Argentina and Indonesia, Russian and the Stans are doing well, as is the Ukraine. What we can't forget though is piracy. It's very difficult to sell software in certain markets. Pakistan for instance has the highest number of factories producing counterfeit PS2 and Xbox disks. We are trying to penetrate new markets, win the Middle East and Africa and some southern Mediterranean countries with the PS2.

Iran is a big market for us. Absolutely booming. What they don't do is buy a console to play it at home. They set them up in coffee shops in say groups of 40 or 50 and they charge people to come in and use them, like an arcade. We ship 10,000 PS2s each month to Iran. And it's one of the few places that doesn't tolerate piracy. We have some problems with content of games (as we do in Saudi). For instance the number of females you can put into games (even if they are fantasy females) is very limited.

<b>Do you think the PS3 suffer similar issues with piracy?</b>

David Reeves: PS3 with Blu-Ray will make it much more difficult to pirate software. If it can be done at all it will be very, very difficult. In fact the movie industry has have been waiting for Blu-ray because they have been decimated by piracy, so we hope not.


Read More: <A href="http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=140627" target="_blank">CVG</a>

[crono]

Do you think the PS3 suffer similar issues with piracy?

Yea i think,they said the same thing about dvd in time of ps2,and well look what happend.

Even M$ said xbox 360 wont be hacked for a long time and it did.
And don't go barfing blabla its only the firmware no real hack.

psx and saturn where hacked the same way(sort alike whit the swap,just fooling the cd drive there's a real game in it),it where hacks then and it still is,only becuase they protected there software now not to run at a swap(or when being alterd) dasn't mean its not being hacked,there playing backups arn't they???¿¿¿

[SLAYERPSP]

it wont be hard for the people that do this stuff. the first thing is you can already buy bluray burners and blank media. so it wont be long after its out that it will be hacked everything is hacked ther is no stoping hackers

[flagon]

Yeah.. I agree with these guys.. I mean just look at the dreamcast gdrom format. That format was different from what anyone had access to and that single handedly stopped piracy of dc games!

[nufan]

i think it should be ez cause it got a hard drive and it use similar OS like the PSP. we just got to figure out what is going on n stuff like that. Another reason i won't buy the ps3 is that you have to deal with the update when you want to play new games! i hate that ****! Sony please leave us alone!

[oldirtdog]

That $599.00 price tag will combat piracy all on it's own cause i for one ain't gonna buy the mutherfugger, i'm happy with my 360 thank you very much

[iratasan]

very good point, dude.

since the xbox 360 uses the dvd-format and microsoft aint planning to do games on HDDVD or blueray at all and sony already implementing the idea of very big and impressive game that need a blue ray medium to fit on and dvd-rs i guess the 360 will become the pirate-console numero uno.

someone who is willing to pay big money for the ps3 is doing this because he wants a cheap blueray player and/or because he demands a real next-gen feeling and is willing to pay for it. if there will be games that really fill up and 3 or 4 layer blueray disc those people, including me, will be willing to pay good money for that games.

as the xbox 360 seem to be just a pimped up XBox 1 and dvd-rs are so damn cheap i guess all cheapos will stick to that or simply keep their xbox or ps2.

anyway, there WILL be PS3-cracks. i guess they will find a security-hole in the firmware and/or an online game, so you can connect to your pc and play a backup throughout your network connection from your harddisk.

and as for me: i will buy me all three next-gen consoles, but the 360 will be definately the last. as i did with the last generation of consoles i will get me the Sony And Nintendo console to play with it and wait until some homebrew-geniusses create a media center for microsoft console and will use that console as a perfect media player and emulation-machine.

[neoryu]

with free homebrew on PS3 is about time to release a ISO loader like on PSP

[Azariel Z]

Offer and Demand, while Ps3 will be a tastytarget to be hacked , many will work to bring a "solution", soon. as the amchien has a HD on it s own, wont be surprisse, they create a ISO loader, as one said already. I am jsut curious with the "automatic" updates, giving problems to play some games, if hacked.

[neilpatel]

Offer and Demand, while Ps3 will be a tastytarget to be hacked , many will work to bring a "solution", soon. as the amchien has a HD on it s own, wont be surprisse, they create a ISO loader, as one said already. I am jsut curious with the "automatic" updates, giving problems to play some games, if hacked.


i think they will give us "user acces"

[Azariel Z]

They should create a side slim entrance, and when you turn on the HDTV would be writting "Insert your credit card on the slot" :D , after that the GPS system authorize your location and user access. They even can give a "disccount" for continuos hours playing, or "multiplayer" games. :o

[AceMilo]

I might as well repost this since its relevant to this thread too:

As far as bluray discs go, they won't be necessary for piracy. Hackers will write a simple app (possibly in linux since it runs linux natively supposedly) and have the ps3 dump the game to either the hdd or transfer it over the network, then just burn it straight to dvd and the chip will tell the ps3 to load anything including games off dvds. Now, for all the fanboys who say "but games won't fit on dvds anymore!" Bullshit. I HIGHLY doubt we will be seeing games larger than 9gb for years and years, and if they do, the space will most likely be large videos and such that can be removed.

In order for games to be THAT big, then developers will have to put more time, energy, and money into developing, making games take longer to make, more expensive to make, and raise the cost of those games. You won't see games larger than 9gb's for the ps3 for a LONG time, if ever. I've also heard rumors that ps3 game discs will be bluray but not full discs, they will be limited to 9gb discs to keep costs down.

[iratasan]

we won't have to wait long for games larger then 8.5 GB. god of war 1 nearly filled a whole dual layer disc and i guess they will have problems fitting god of war 2 onto one and i am sure the first final fantasy part on the ps3 will be more than 8.5 gb. for the price point it wont be that much of a big issue, because it isnt the medium that makes games high priced, the development costs do that. i dvd-rom should cost a publisher i guess around 5 cents a disc in production as they produce about 250.000 at minimum, but the final product does cost a lot more. sure, little studios will be sticking to dvd but the big players with their -will-sell-anyway- series will be happy to put the games full with bonus stuff. when you release a title like GT5, need for speed whatever, final fantasy xx, GTA Mass Murder City.. etc you dont have to worry about any production costs at all, because for sure you will sell that much copys that you profit from the release big time, no matter what the medium or the production has cost. on the other hand these series are especially the games that will need that bigger medium. with at this point publisher releasing collectors editions with bonus dvds, releasing add on dvds and stuff the possibilitys are unlimited. just keep in mind what they as well earn with their Online-rpgs, people have to pay for the game and for using the servers. players of those game are seeking for as much territorys, weapons, shield and characters as possible and a publisher can fit as much on a bd as they want. another point is that the bd disc is a flexible medium. the publisher can choose if he needs a one, two or even a three-layer disc to fit his game. a single-layer bd shouldnt cost that much in production.

please keep in mind, that we are talking next-gen consoles here.

the sega dreamcast went down because it had no dvd-drive though the dvd-technology was already established at that point.
also the chance of getting the user to buy an add-on-drive is very low. just look at the Genesis, SNES and Jaguar.

there is just no point putting out a so-called next gen-console without putting next-gen technology in it.

the wii is an exception on that point because it has a totally different concept, the 360 hasnt.

dont get me wrong, sony is the king of failure in format wars, just take betamax, ATRAC, Mini-Disc..etc but we are talking about their gaming-devision here. they may be a-holes but they know how to put out a great console. i would be disappointed if they wouldnt put in there all that they got and everything that they can steal from others. ;)

[AceMilo]

the sega dreamcast went down because it had no dvd-drive though the dvd-technology was already established at that point.

The dreamcast failed for many reasons, but not having a dvd drive wasn't one of them. People don't go out and buy a video game console because it plays movies, they buy it to play video games, and if you are buying it for any other reason, you shouldn't be playing games on it. Bluray only has a 50% chance of succeeding, and 90%+ of consumers don't even know that bluray/hd dvd exists, let alone care about it. Are YOU ready to buy all your movies all over again? Are YOU ready to go out and buy a 1080p tv set just to take advantage of next gen movies? Are YOU ready to pay 2x the price of dvds just for the "privilage" of owning next gen movies? I'm sure as hell not.

[whackawookie]

actually iratasan at the time the dreamcast came out it was capable of holding more data on disc then any other console so it was a new format for gaming. the gd-rom held i believe over a gig and guess what, the system did just fine until the ps2 came out. Format has nothing to do with a systems success considering half the ps2 games at launch were on blue bottom cd's not dvd's. If blu-ray and hd-dvd both fail then what good would it do to have a small selection of movies on a format that is no longer supported?

[janmincev]

Ok , first of all ps3 supports dvd's and cd's and bluray . So i think there wont be long before the crack the ps3 because the ps2 was safe and what happened they CRACKED it . Si way the go PIRACY :D

[deadsoulasis]

Sony doesnt have to worry so much on burned games running for the cost factor.*burner and blank disks*..what they are worried about is the games being copied aka Xbox 1 style since the HDD is swapable....key's embedded on the firmware.yes.keys on the bios chip.yes....

No doubt the PS3 will be hacked ...but at what cost though ...thats the biggest question ..