First PlayStation 3 Custom Firmware Created 269
Stoobalou writes "Hot on the heels of the discovery of the the PlayStation 3 private root key, and its subsequent leakage by iPhone hacker Geohot, the first custom firmware for the formerly impenetrable console has been released. A code wrangler known only as Kakaroto reckons he has created the world's first custom firmware for the popular console — although if you're expecting it to help you play pirated games, you might be a little disappointed."
Re:Not really working that well (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Increased Sales? (Score:4, Informative)
Increased sales of a console are meaningless to these companies without an accompanying high attachment rate on buying games.
Re:Increased Sales? (Score:5, Informative)
Indeed, sales of all three consoles are now profitable (and have been for about 2 years). The margins are still small on all three, though. Last numbers I remember seeing indicated that for the console manufacturer, one console sale was roughly equivalent to two game sales. That's not bad, but it's not fantastic either. Might be outdated, of course; you'd expect the margins on hardware sales to get larger as time goes on.
The Kinect, however, has an absolutely stonkingly huge profit margin for each unit sold. No wonder MS were treating its release as a new console launch. Even if the Kinect attach rate for games is awful, as I suspect it probably will be (unless games improve from the launch titles), MS are probably already laughing their way to the bank on that one.
Re:Won't Be Long... (Score:2, Informative)
Now your response:
Re:Won't Be Long... (Score:5, Informative)
Don't waste your time (and hair). Just get a small $250 ION nettop and install XBMC. It is the bees knees. If you're lazy you can google for "xbmcfreak", the guy releases customized LiveCDs that take most of the hassle out of installing it.
No DRM, no transcoding, and it will play 1080p H.264 with ease thanks to the onboard GPU. Share your movies over SMB, FTP, NFS, HTTP, whatever. Way easier than trying to coax your PS3 into doing piratey things.
Re:CFW != piracy (Score:5, Informative)
You're missing the point. If the firmware checks for media type, a BD-R's signature will never be checked, because its the wrong type of media. You still need a firmware bypass to allow that. Note: we can already do 1-to-1 copies of BD-R discs, and they don't work. Those are signed already, being 1-to-1 copies.
The signature issue only applies to unlicensed software, not pirated software.
IE someone can make a printed non-burned game/application disc and sign it without paying Sony for licensing. That's a whole other problem.
Re:Are there video drivers? (Score:4, Informative)
The PS3 ALREADY PLAYS all the stuff XMBC does.
Except for MKV files, and except for certain codecs in AVI files, and except for OGM files, and except for certain subtitling schemes, and except for...
Sorry dude, the [native PS3 OS/XMB] doesn't play anywhere near "all the stuff" XBMC does :|