Developer Claims 'PS4 Officially Jailbroken' (networkworld.com) 133
colinneagle sends word that a developer has claimed to have achieved a jailbreak of the PlayStation 4. Networkworld reports: "If you have a PS4 and want to run homebrew content, then you might be happy to know developer CTurt claimed, "PS4 is now officially jailbroken." Over the weekend, CTurt took to Twitter to make the announcement. He did not use a jail vulnerability, he explained in a tweet. Instead, he used a FreeBSD kernel exploit.
Besides posting "an open source PlayStation 4 SDK" on GitHub, CTurt analyzed PS4's security twice and explained PS4 hacking. CTurt updated the open source PS4 SDK yesterday; he previously explained that Sony's proprietary Orbis OS is based on FREEBSD. In the past he released the PS4-playground, which included PS4 tools and experiments using the Webkit exploit for PS4 firmware version 1.76. To put that in context, Sony released version 3.0 in September. However, CTurt claimed the hack could be made to work on newer firmware versions.
Other PS4 hackers are reportedly also working on a kernel exploit, yet as Wololo pointed out, it is unlikely there might be more than proof-of-concept videos as the developers continue to tweak the exploit. Otherwise, Sony will do as it has in the past and release a new firmware version. In October 2014, developers nas and Proxima studied the PSVita Webkit exploit, applied it to the PS4, and then released the PS4 proof-of-concept. Shortly thereafter. Sony pushed out new firmware as a patch."
Besides posting "an open source PlayStation 4 SDK" on GitHub, CTurt analyzed PS4's security twice and explained PS4 hacking. CTurt updated the open source PS4 SDK yesterday; he previously explained that Sony's proprietary Orbis OS is based on FREEBSD. In the past he released the PS4-playground, which included PS4 tools and experiments using the Webkit exploit for PS4 firmware version 1.76. To put that in context, Sony released version 3.0 in September. However, CTurt claimed the hack could be made to work on newer firmware versions.
Other PS4 hackers are reportedly also working on a kernel exploit, yet as Wololo pointed out, it is unlikely there might be more than proof-of-concept videos as the developers continue to tweak the exploit. Otherwise, Sony will do as it has in the past and release a new firmware version. In October 2014, developers nas and Proxima studied the PSVita Webkit exploit, applied it to the PS4, and then released the PS4 proof-of-concept. Shortly thereafter. Sony pushed out new firmware as a patch."
So not really broken (Score:3)
Broken in the sense that as long as you want to only play current games and never connect to the internet again, sure.
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I'm totally baffled why console users put up with the subscription schemes in the first place, or why the console makers don't compete to have the cheapest or free-est subscriptions.
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Re:So not really broken (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:So not really broken (Score:4, Interesting)
A million years ago (more like a little over a decade) I had a friend who worked for a gaming company. He was hoping that the XBox, which was just coming out, was going to become popular. I expressed some surprise since Microsoft wasn't widely respected in other fields. His explanation was that Sony was sucking too much money from the development houses, the Playstation tax that every game must pay, and Microsoft was being much more lenient. But then fast forward and we see that Microsoft was deliberately selling below cost to get a market share, then added their subscriptions, then got into and out of hot water about plans for xbox one, console exclusives, etc. Maybe game devs got some more margins from xbox but in the end the customers of consoles have a choice between two or three evils (or more with pc).
Re:So not really broken (Score:4, Interesting)
> Online play was free for PS3 and paid for Xbox 360. This generation Sony decided to start charging too.
And that's the point where the advantages of PC gaming outweighed the disadvantages for me. Up until that, I was willing to put up with consoles, but that was the last straw.
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Sony thought it would make a difference, PSN online play was free, PSN+ came with a bunch of great free games, XBox online play cost money.
People voted "we don't care" with their wallets.
So Sony followed Microsoft's move.
I'd say, shame on voters.
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This phenomenon can be summarized as "corporations hate private ownership of property, and want us all to be serfs instead so that they can collect rent in perpetuity."
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I haven't gotten a subscription, but you *do* get free full games (that work as long as your subscription lasts) every month. Usually one or more of the highest caliber games. (So yes, you might already own them.)
Sony has been doing it for several years, and even though Microsoft had the more "required" subscription (even to use things like Netflix until the past year or two), MS only started the free game thing in earnest within the past year, IIRC.
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I haven't gotten a subscription, but you *do* get free full games (that work as long as your subscription lasts)
How do you figure that something you have to pay to get is in any way free?
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Because you are getting this in addition to what the subscription previously contained.
They're full games.. If you finish the game, _most_ people don't go back and play them again.
You're not paying for the game itself specifically, you're paying for the subscription.
You're being incredibly nitpick (which is a good thing usually), but it is clear what I mean.
If you get a sample of food at Costco, does that count as "not free" because you have to pay for a Costco membership?
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I am not being nitpicky at all. If you have to pay to be able to obtain something, then it is not free. They can call it a "bonus" or whatever but that is just marketing jargon.
I'm baffled why customers pay me a subscription (Score:4, Interesting)
I used to sell some specialized professional software for $150, flat fee it yours forever. The competition charged $35 per month. A LOT of customers preferred the $35/month option, even after I pointed out that's $420/year. They all use the software for several years, not for a month or two.
After a couple of years of customer requests , I added a $25/month option to our order form, and pointed out that $150 flat was a better value - buy 6 months, get forever free. A lot of people still chose $25/month.
The current version is now $269 flat or $59/month. Just the other day I spoke to a customer who has had two installations and wants another. I pointed out so far he's paid for 36 months x $59. = $2,124 each, when he could have paid $269; for the next one he should just pay $269 and save $2,000. He didn't want to! He wants to pay $59 every month for the new installation as well. Wtf?
Often in this situation, when I notice it, I just tell the customer to stop paying. It's silly as heck to keep paying every month, but that's what many customers want.
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But compare to paying $0 a month for PC games, version $>0 on consoles.
Though there are definitely demographic differences between the two camps. Huge demographic differences even on PC between I-love-DRM players and older players. There is one camp of players that only want new games and nothing else. If the game is a month old and their friends don't play it then they don't want it.
But I'm just suprised that the first day that Sony said "there's a monthly fee if you want to do things that other plat
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But I'm just suprised that the first day that Sony said "there's a monthly fee if you want to do things that other platforms do for free" that no one said "what the hell?!"
Microsoft did it first. Pay attention to history.
And when single player games that are paid for and downloaded can't be played without a monthly fee and there's no rioting in the streets?
Yeah, that's a bit wacky, but Sony customers have already proven beyond any shadow of a doubt that they will put up with shit behavior so that they can have more stuff that says Sony on it. Back when they made quality hardware (i.e. not since the early eighties) that was slightly understandable, but these days it makes no fucking sense. The only thing they do better than other people is camera sensors, but they then proceed to wrap a camera with a shitty crip
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And when single player games that are paid for and downloaded can't be played without a monthly fee and there's no rioting in the streets?
What game's that then? I've got an xbox not a playstation but there isn't a game I'm aware of that requires a full subscription for single play, some will require an internet connection sure but you'll only be blocked out of multiplayer portions on a free account.
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I just read up on some consoles and I think the PS4 does that, if it's a downloaded game and not on disk.
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Just like people who pay every month over 2 years for a phone instead of buying the phone as a one off... Short term is usually more important, people will rarely consider the long term implications.
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I wonder if it affects the accounting in some manner that would cause them to make that sort of decision.......operational vs capital expense, maybe? Tax advantages?
Re: I'm baffled why customers pay me a subscriptio (Score:1)
I'm surprised with software that's so inexpensive your customers go for the monthly, but where ijwork we went with the subscription creative suite.
It was 18 months before the subscription became more expensive than the upgrades (we had very old version).
With the subscription we never have high capital expenditure, we saved a lot on day one, and didn't spend extra for 18 months, and we're always up to date.
Six month repayment is a little silly though, especially when it was only $150 a seat.
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For companies, 'leasing' an item as a service has pros compared to purchasing a product outright and depreciating it over 3 years.
So, yes, for companies, leases are better than purchases.
simpler, slightly more expensive, but section 179 (Score:2)
Leasing is -simpler- on taxes than figuring depreciation, but it normally costs slightly more taxes to lease (and the actual lease cost is normally higher) . For small businesses, section 179 allows purchase expenses to be deducted rather than depreciated. The section 179 limit was reduced from $500,000 to $25,000, though.
Bottom line ,leasing is simpler but more expensive.
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People are idiots?
I have had close-to EVERY PS4 owner I know ask me to get PS+, so we could play online together - I've told each-and-every-one of them no, since paying monthly rent to play your bought-and-paid-for games is stupid.
But this peer-pressure, your mates asking that you please spend 5 Euro/month to play Destiny, or Call of Halo, or Star Wars BattleField or any other full-price, multiplayer-centric game, will make a lot of people go, "fuck it, I'll spend the money", and Sony+MS are basically count
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Why would you want to? It's almost a PC. There's not a single interesting part in there. Why not just hack on the real thing?
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Too many games are "exclusives" now. They only appear on one console ever, and never even on a PC. Designed to make the player buy brand A instead of brand B, even if the developer making the game would prefer everyone to buy it if possible. Another reason why the PC is not a bad choice for gaming.
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Why would anyone want to climb Everest? Why would anyone want to write yet another OS? Why would anyone want to write a new browser? To do something different because it's there.
That said, this is built on FreeBSD. Wouldn't it be easier to just, you know, intercept the data and figure out what it's looking for or doing and then throw a shim layer in there or the likes? By easier I do not mean simple, just easier than going about this in the manner that they're attacking it. I don't recall hearing about any
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Why would you want to? It's almost a PC. There's not a single interesting part in there. Why not just hack on the real thing?
Because one day there will be super shitloads of them at yard sales and flea markets and if they don't have hack value then the next stop is landfill.
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Here it comes (Score:1)
Here comes the DMCA takedowns. Better git checkout pretty darn quick.
Sony still harasses people posting the PS3 jailbreak.
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Better git checkout pretty darn quick.
https://github.com/CTurt/PS4-SDK [github.com]
git clone https://github.com/CTurt/PS4-SDK
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In a related news, Sony Legal Department announced the PS4 developer has been broken.
cracked in about two years. (Score:4, Insightful)
I guess they should have let people use OtherOS like the PS3... until they didn't. Coincidentally, a couple years after OtherOS was disabled the PS3 was cracked.
The lesson to be learned here: lock out Linux hackers and you're gonna get pwn3d.
Re:cracked in about two years. (Score:5, Insightful)
I guess they should have let people use OtherOS like the PS3... until they didn't. Coincidentally, a couple years after OtherOS was disabled the PS3 was cracked.
The lesson to be learned here: lock out Linux hackers and you're gonna get pwn3d.
The Cell based PS3 was seriously powerful hardware being sold at a very attractive price by Sony. PS3 clusters made economic sense if you were in the market for a cheap distributed computing platform. The x86 based PS4 was little more than a mid-range PC when released and was sold at break-even price by Sony. Now it would be considered obsolete hardware in the PC world. OtherOS on PS4 would be nothing more than a novelty.
Re:cracked in about two years. (Score:4, Informative)
Except that wouldn't really be a great experience because AMD's drivers are still terrible on Linux [phoronix.com].
Both of the current PC-like consoles use AMD GPUs derived from the GCN 1.0 family. The PS4's is roughly somewhere in between a Radeon HD 7850 and 7870, where the XB1's is harder to compare due to the memory configuration being rather unique (fast ESRAM cache but slow DDR3 main memory). It has less cores and a third the memory bandwidth but clocks higher.
Considering that even nVidia's optimization on Linux isn't as good as it is on Windows, most benchmarks I've seen show SteamOS delivering 50-80% of the framerate seen with the same hardware on Windows, you'd be giving up a LOT by trying to run SteamOS on a PS4 rather than just building a cheap gaming PC.
Since the flaw being exploited will likely be patched soon after it goes public, if not before, the better plan if one wanted to switch from PS4 to something else would be to hang on to your potentially exploitable console and keep it offline until someone releases an exploit. If Sony is able to fix the hole with a patch any unpatched boxes immediately jump up in value, like we saw with the Xbox 360 and PS3. That of course means giving up online features and possibly new game releases for a while, but if you're one of those users who doesn't game online and/or uses it mostly as a Bluray player that might not be a big deal. You can then use the money to build a budget gaming PC that'll beat the pants off of any of the consoles.
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if not before, the better plan if one wanted to switch from PS4 to something else would be to hang on to your potentially exploitable console and keep it offline until someone releases an exploit. If Sony is able to fix the hole with a patch any unpatched boxes immediately jump up in value, like we saw with the Xbox 360 and PS3. That of course means giving up online features and possibly new game releases for a while, but if you're one of those users who doesn't game online and/or uses it mostly as a Bluray player that might not be a big deal. You can then use the money to build a budget gaming PC that'll beat the pants off of any of the consoles.
Where does the PS4 hold its OS? If it's on the HDD you could just back it up to one or two others and let them sit around.
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Where does the PS4 hold its OS? If it's on the HDD you could just back it up to one or two others and let them sit around.
I don't actually know any specifics about the current generation consoles' security, but in the last generation there were protections against downgrading the OS.
I'm most familiar with the Xbox 360, which used eFuses to prevent downgrades. Older versions of the OS would refuse to boot if a certain number of fuses were burned. You could do a hardware mod to prevent the fuses from being burned, but once they're gone there's no going back.
If I remember correctly at least the fat PS3s could be downgraded afte
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Except a jailbroken PS4 could in theory boot/run STEAM OS,,,,
In theory, but in practise you would need to have decent drivers for all the hardware. If you want to run SteamOS then get the right tool for the job - hardware that is actually supported by it - rather than all this effort to shoehorn it on to the wrong hardware where it won't even work properly.
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It's Linux. Someone will figure out a way to install it on a toaster. A few of us will even download their work and make our own toasters run Linux. It'll take four weeks and then three hours of figuring out the man pages, each time, to make toast but we'll do it - and we'll like it. We might even make it run our mail server.
Mmm... ToastOS.
Re:cracked in about two years. (Score:4, Interesting)
The console makers like to sell them below cost at times because they get a nice kickback from sales of the games. There's a naivete with the console makers in that they don't expect anyone else to use the boxes for other purposes, and naivete in thinking that they can stamp it out or that it's hurting their profits if they don't.
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There's a naivete with the console makers in that they don't expect anyone else to use the boxes for other purposes
I'm not sure you can call it "naivete" when they actively work to stop it.
and naivete in thinking that they can stamp it out
In general they can, sure you can hack it to make it do something else but these days that ruins it for its primary purpose and the alternative uses are a crappy version of what you would get if you used the correct hardware instead. For example the
Re:cracked in about two years. (Score:5, Interesting)
You have to think a bit more thoroughly.
First, a console that could somehow run homebrew means homebrewers will likely use that mechanism to run homebrew. Like OtherOS, or XNA. This keeps a highly technical crowd busy and happy. This leaves pirates to work by themselves trying to figure out how to pirate games.
But take away that ability, and suddenly the homebrewers and pirates goals have aligned - homebrewers want to write code and pirates want to run code.
So when Sony took away OtherOS, the homebrewers were suddenly looking at how to get it back. And that's when they discovered the fatal flaws of the Sony OS. Pirates rejoiced because homebrewers, who are some of the most technically skilled people around, were doing all the hard work and found the critical bugs - now not only could homebrewers write their own code, but pirates had full access too.
Microsoft learned this the hard way with the original Xbox - homebrewers found critical flaws in the system and broke it open. The homebrewers even kindly asked Microsoft for an "official" way to homebrew after they found the bug - revealing they found a critical system flaw. Microsoft didn't give way, and the homebrewers released their code, resulting in the complete breaking of the original Xbox.
I'm sure the homebrewers did the same for Sony, but Sony refused to allow OtherOS and they released their code. At which point other hackers discovered the keys were easily obtainable and got the official master keys.
In the meantime, Microsoft created an official way to homebrew called XNA, charged a little money for it, and the Xbox360 was never completely cracked - there were optical drive exploits (for pirating games, but those were detectable by the OS), and odd versions of software could run Linux, but that's about it.
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But take away that ability, and suddenly the homebrewers and pirates goals have aligned - homebrewers want to write code and pirates want to run code.
Homebrewers want to run code as well, they can write code no problems, the issue here is running code. How exactly are you going to have an open system where "homebrewers" can run code but "pirates" cannot?
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The code written by homebrewers can then be run, but pirates cannot run copies of games as they do not have the unsigned version that they could sign.
What stops them from just re-signing the binary with a homebrew key?
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and the Xbox360 was never completely cracked - there were optical drive exploits (for pirating games, but those were detectable by the OS), and odd versions of software could run Linux, but that's about it.
Not even true. I guess if you are looking for a software hack, then ya, the xbox 360 never got hacked, but there is a couple different hardware hacks that gives you complete control over the Xbox 360. Actually, I'm not sure how you can have not known that when you posted this considering that is what comes up if you google xbox 360 hacks.
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OtherOS mostly existed as a way to try to classify the PS3 as a personal computer rather than an entertainment device, which would have meant it would have been taxed at a lower rate in a lot of countries
Why does this wrong idea never die? Linux on the PS3 (and PS2 for that matter) post dates the removal of the tariff. It was simply NOT the reason for Linux on the PS2/PS3..
What you're thinking of is the YaBasic disc included with EU PS2's. THAT was the attempt to dodge the tariff, not Linux.
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Sadly only if you didn't need much memory for what you wanted to do, but it seemed like the only way to get to use the Cell for under $10k.
I tried to get a very low end Cell machine around that time - about three weeks of the very slimy vendor carefully weighing my companies wallet and strongly hinting at kickbacks finally resulted in a quote that was about the same as buying three similar x86_64 machines.
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> The Cell based PS3 was seriously powerful hardware being sold at a $400 loss price by Sony.
FTFY SCEA / Sony was in the red for 4 years due to the high cost of the hardware.
These days, a cluster or Raspberry Pi gives better watt/$
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Or even Parallella:
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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Yup, the PS3 was a loss leader -- they expected to make up the difference through licensing PS3 games and Blu-Ray movies. In a way, it worked. Even if SCEA was in the red, Sony won out when its format became the defacto standard for HD movies.
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OtherOS on the PS3 was little more than a novelty toy unless you clustered it for research purposes, and still then, there was a very short window when that was price-competitive with PCs. The hypervisor on the PS3, which still ran when OtherOS was booted, locked any non-Sony-PS3 OS out of many system resources, including graphics resources. Sony was so scared that people would be able to use OtherOS to play pirated games and emulators that they intentionally crippled it. Many a PS3 owner like myself was qu
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> The lesson to be learned here: lock out Linux hackers and you're gonna get pwn3d
Yeah, extortion rules!
Also, look up !(correlation => causation).
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The lesson to be learned here: lock out Linux hackers and you're gonna get pwn3d.
Sony didn't give a damn about the hacker so long as he wasn't taking the PS3 out of retail distribution channels and buying it in wholesale lots to build his cheap-ass HPC.
Sony's problem is obvious: (Score:3)
I'm being humorous, but it is good to be occasionally reminded that all software has vulnerabilities.
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Their own page reports that they've fixed a whole host of bugs. They'd not have fixed those bugs if they were bug free.
Here's a recent example:
http://www.openbsd.org/errata5... [openbsd.org]
I'm not sure why one would lie about such.
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Not having remote holes is nice, but Sony's trying to secure a computer against its own user, a much thornier problem.
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By that metric, the last thing you'd choose is Linux, since it was not designed. It grew.
Besides, FreeBSD is well-designed, maybe not quite as well as NetBSD, but still; you're obviously clueless about the matter.
Legal? (Score:3, Insightful)
When is it going to finally be illegal for device creators to lock us out of our own shit? Hardware DOES NOT EQUAL software. Saying you want one does not automatically imply the other.
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You're confusing your own set of personal ethics with a managed system of laws. Neither are absolute, but one group is much, much bigger than the other.
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Hardware DOES NOT EQUAL software. Saying you want one does not automatically imply the other.
There are times when the geek loses touch with reality.
People buy a PS4 console because ---- like about 30 million others--- they like the games, programs and services that Sony and its partners have to offer. T
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I very seldom hear someone speak in favor of the programs and services.
Nah, you hear it fairly often -- they can play games, but it also lets them stream from Netflix or play Pandora without requiring a different device for every service. It's why the Roku became so popular; it's basically everything you got with consoles and a few services more... except the ability to play games.
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When is it going to finally be illegal for device creators to lock us out of our own shit? Hardware DOES NOT EQUAL software. Saying you want one does not automatically imply the other.
It's a product and it's offered under certain terms. If you don't like those terms then don't buy it, go buy a PC or an open source console instead.
Jailbroken doesn't mean Piracy (Score:1)
Just so everyone is aware the Jailbreak doesn't mean piracy. I expect there to be more dragons lying in wait protecting Sony from pirating masses. Sony has undoubtedly learned from their mistakes and failings with the PS3 and have made very secure system with the PS VITA. Despite the jailbreak, I have my doubts Sony's signed keys for running games will be broken, unless MS lends help to break the PS4 and destroy a competitor.
Hoping that this allows a full PSP, PSX, and PS2 emulator to be run on the PS4.
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Steam Box? (Score:3)
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So does anyone want to try installing SteamOS or Debian/Steam on one of these?
PS3 allowed a Linux install till it was used to jail break (Root) the system. Just after the break - Sony patched it and took away it's Linux capabilities; an advertised ability of the PS3.
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Getting mentioned on ArsTechnica or Slashdot, isn't advertising. Neither was Sony having the openplatform site, which wasn't originally indexed by search engines.
OtherOS wasn't widely known.
Why would anyone install SteamOS pretty please? (Score:1)
Exactly what is available on SteamOS that is not available on Win PC?
The main point of "jailbreaking" the consoles is pirating console exclusive games.
Other, lesser incentive, might be, simply pirating console games, not necessarily exclusive (sofa gaming vs table + mouse)
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BSD is quite fragmented. Different teams, different goals, different talent sets.
This is a pointless endeavor. (Score:3, Insightful)
PS4 and XBoxOne are just AMD APU PCs in a nice box.What's the point?
FreeBSD (Score:3)
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I disagree. That's like claiming that glibc is a big gaming platform or something. A PS4 game is a PS4 game, the fact that part of it is BSD doesn't help you if you are running Free BSD and wondering why no one ever ports their Windows / Xbone / PS4 game to your OS.
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Get a normal PC + Steam big picture mode instead (Score:2)
Why spend extraordinary effort to run custom apps on a locked down system, when you can get an open by design PC that will cost you less money long term? Top game releases are the same as on console once you buy a controller, but you also have a choice of countless indie and abandonware titles to occupy your time. Can even run Android games with Bluestacks.
You can get usable systems at the same price or cheaper than PS4. But even if you pay several hundred more (not sure what is the GPU equivalence point),
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Because some of the biggest titles are console-only, and even if there is a PC version it may not be released until long after the console version. One of the biggest games of last year, Destiny, was console-only. I purchased a second-hand xbox 360 for myself because I wanted to complete the single-player campaigns of all the Halo games.
Also because few games allow multiplayer interoperability between console and PC, which means if you are a social gamer you won't be able to hang with the same crowd.
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Are games really worth that these days? I am legitimately curious as to why it's worth it to someone to pay for this, as much as this, and with devices and games that seem to often be reported as being openly evil to their customers. I did play some games a while back. Fallout and Fallout 2 were pretty good but then came Fallout Tactics. I don't think I've really played any games since.
Hmm... I used to be pretty fond of Zork.
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There are also plenty of PC exclusives like "The Stanley Parable", or games that are first released on PC like "Vanishing of Ethan Carter". Those are clever games that take risks, not just generic first person shooters. There is at least a decade of back catalog of games that are perfectly playable and entertaining on today's hardware, and prices drop much more quickly than for console games because of competition.
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Seriously... (Score:1)
Steam has "be online" DRM, I'd understand if you'd mention gog.com (yeah, steam supports "just install, no online DRM mode" but it is rarely used).
PS4 allows you to play offline and/or trade your games.
Which, last time I've checked, you couldn't do on Steam.
Next gen of consoles will likely be x86 based again (likely AMD again), so technically could easily support older games. (PS4 does support PS2 games, by the way, PS3 is too different a hardware and PS4 isn't fast enough to just emulate it)
Last, but not l
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Steam supports offline play, but whatever - there is GOG like you said, and nobody stops you from buying and trading DVDs. The point is that you have choices, and can incrementally update your hardware without losing them.
And how many people will use it for homebrew (Score:2)
I expect Sony will crack down on this as hard as they can - expect PSN bans for anyone using CFW for example. And FW integrity checks embedded into games etc. This hacked had better get himself lawyered up too. I'm sure we can also expect the usual whining from idiots on Slashdot that Sony is somehow wrong to protect its multi billion dollar investment.
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A lot of people don't know this, but Sony did test a live version of their PS2 Linux distro I was told performance was an issue, even more so than the standard PS2 Linux release.