APC administrator18 May 2006, 6:00 AM
Playstation 2 users have got it in style, but Playstation Portable (PSP) owners have had a strange relationship with Linux. Now Playstation 3 owners are set to have a renewed relationship with Linux... in a weird way.
Playstation 2 users have got it in style, but Playstation Portable (PSP) owners have had a strange relationship with Linux. Around this time last year, a few PSP owners started messing with their new toys and discovered that the version 1.0 firmware that shipped with the unit was DRM capable, but not enabled. This meant that there was no mechanism for testing whether code was authorised to run on the device or not, so software like Linux could be ported to the device without much fanfare.
And it was. Didn't take long at all actually.
Most of the “home-brew” for the PSP is compatible with firmware version 1.5, after which Sony began to lock down the unit to protect their revenues. After all, why buy a $60 plus game when you can use MAME32 and DOSbox to play hundreds of games for free? Many users have now had to decide whether they want to play new games, which have minimum firmware requirements, or continue to go the indie way and fill their memory sticks with... well, memories of gaming days past.
So it was a little surprising to see Sony being very forthcoming about the use of the Playstation 3 (PS3), in conjunction with Linux, as a development and general computing platform. What you can't do with it is produce software which hooks into the unique hardware of the PS3 to accelerate performance, because that would make studios who pay insane SDK licensing fees very angry at Sony.
Some cynics might see this as a bit of a backhand across the face of the fighting men and women of Microsoft Xbox division - kind of “see, our console runs Linux and we're not afraid to use it”. I think that it's more of a tacit acknowledgement of the fact that, in this day and age, you make a console and it's going to get hacked - usually within about 10 minutes of it being placed on retail shelves.
By doing everything but encouraging users to buy Linux for their PS3, Sony is ensuring that any “hacks” can be lauded as great work, not derided as evil that will kill your console (and probably a fluffy kitten too). In doing so, they get developers on side, present a friendly face to their customers, and... they also get to stick it to the Xbox folks.