Say I'm Sony. I could have a locked platform, sign up some content shops to make a very small number of titles, and sell a few consoles. Or I could make an unlocked platform, reap all the benefits of the locked one, _plus_ encourage a large community of people making all sorts of new things for it, sharing, and spurring many more console sales.
So why lock when you could instead have an ecology?
I assume it's because they believe that they can make more money by having licensing fees / exclusivity rights for the console than they would be having it be open.
Piracy. They need to enforce DRM, requiring a controlled ecosystem. As for making it open and free, they usually want to keep the average quality of game fairly high.
Or you go the Creative Assembly route, and release less than half the content you already finished for $60, then every two weeks release a $10-15 DLC that unlocks content that shipped on the disk.
DRM does not require a closed/controlled ecosystem. The best protection against the development of game-copying modchips on the PS3 was the ability to run Linux on it as an official feature. The serious jailbreaking (which necessarily allowed game-copying) was done only after they pissed off the "other os" crowd by removing it in a later patch. (the
fail0verflow's talk[1] at 27C3 on jailbreaking the PS3 is really fun, and they discuss this in detail.
(also: as discussed about 35min into [1], using the same nonce for the ECDSA signature of every game? So the keys can be derived from two games, without knowing most of the curve parameters? What was Sony thinking?!)
Sorry to disappoint you but it just shows that a person watched Zero punctuation in 2007. I also happen to own almost any console manufactured after 1998 on the market. I buy them sometime after they are rooted to play the one or two exclusives.
Steam with XBOX controller is mighty fine combo, especially since the gaming industry has been in creative stupor the last decade when it comes to AAA
Steam runs on Linux and Mac though? Your only issue then is graphics card / graphics card drivers. The games are available, about 1,500 of them last I checked. The best thing that could happen for Linux gaming is that graphics manufacturers start open sourcing their drivers, to the best of their abilities, at least enough to make them usable in games.
> Your only issue then is graphics card / graphics card drivers.
Some developers are only developing for DirectX only. Even some developers who, have in the past (Blizzard) supported Macs, have forgone this in their latest product (Overwatch) because of the additional hassle in doing so.
You have the same problem on consoles I suppose, but also if companies don't invest in OpenGL or alternative frameworks, then that's another factor. I'm sure there's plenty of other warts to be fixed in Linux as far as gaming is concerned though.
While this is true, a surprising number of games (using DirectX) run nicely under wine. It's not like 5+ years ago when many titles didn't work and those that did often had problems. Wine now runs a lot of games very nicely.
(Overwatch, unfortunately, seems to be one of the few that doesn't work at all under wine)
It's still a chicken and egg problem. It's not going away any time soon.
Developers are more inclined to develop for PC, because more people use Windows. More people use Windows, because there is a greater number of games in comparison to other platforms.
They reduce the cost of the initial purchase, and make their money from royalties on game sales, similar to Gillette razor and blades.
If your competitor costs $400 and you cost $500, you're gonna lose a lot of potential sales. When Xbox was initially $500, they ended up unbundling the camera and dropping the price to $400 because they were losing against the $400 PlayStation.
Interestingly the hardware becomes more valuable once it's been broken. For example, the jailbroken Apple TV 2 sells for more on eBay than the newer, locked down TV 3.
I remember when the console prices were announced, at an E3 conference I think it was. The wild cheering when Sony announced the PS4's price would be $100 less than the XBone was surprising.
It was surprising because in between announcements a lot of people were still rooting for Microsoft. Call it fanboyism, brand loyalty, media spin, or maybe even Stockholm Syndrome, but a $500 Kinect-laden console actually seemed to sound appealing to the XBox crowd.
I think the last major unlocked console was the Atari 2600, and by the end it had an incredible amount of low-quality games out there (not to mention shit like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Custer%27s_Revenge)
According to what I've read, the main reason it wasn't locked is that it didn't even occur to Atari that outside developers would be able to make 2600 games. After Custer's Revenge (and, more consequentially, after failing to sue Activision out of existence), they locked down the 7800 pretty hard: much like 6th-generation consoles, it required games to be signed, though presumably with a weaker algorithm.
They lock because the product isn't the hardware, it's the walled garden (for which end users, developers, and publishers all pay their respective admission fees). They're not interested in encouraging anything outside of that except as lip service to "indie" developers (limited to less efficient frameworks and smaller package sizes if they're allowed at all; if you want to compete with the big boys, you have to pay for the privilege). It's basically the same model as the iOS App Store, except everything is more severe.
I think ID@XBOX allows for indies to get proper access to the hardware? You can ship as a Windows app, but it doesn't appear you're limited to it. I don't personally have access, but that's what their media seems to say.
By my reading, this is basically a "lite" version of the full-blown approval process: Microsoft still has to individually approve each developer and each game, but the process is much cheaper and less stringent.
Origin just doesn't have very much selection to begin with. If you filter out the different editions of the same games (GOTY, Gold, Premium, Washington-Redskins-Go-Frak-Yourself edition), there's only a couple dozen versions of Battlefield, FIFA, NFS, the other sports games, Sims & SimCityand BioWare games.
At least the user review process on Steam seems to penalize the garbage pretty effectively.
That's Origin's weakness as well, they don't have much as far as third parties is concerned, hopefully they change that eventually, but they still make (EA) enough games to where you get a great selection. In my particular case I enjoy BioWare so I at least get their collection there, and sometimes for free, whenever they give out a game.
Steam used to be relatively hard to get games on to, and while it meant that a lot of good indie games weren't on steam, it also meant that in general (with obvious exceptions), most games on steam were pretty decent.
Now that they've been running the Greenlight program for a while, I've found that the number of games I actually buy on steam has gone way way down. There's just too much crap to shovel through; if a game is worth buying, I'll probably hear about it through some other channel, instead of by finding it on steam, and go to pick it up. Even during the sales events, I don't bother doing anything besides looking at what the 12 to 24 daily specials are, and I'll rarely buy them now.
Steam is also a victim of its own success. I now have a huge backlog of games to play through and have not been especially motivated to add to the backlog.
On the other hand, I'm starting to appreciate games where the primary complaint was "it was too short". There's something to be said for one of those 2 hour walking simulators as a palette cleanser.
I'm hoping this is the last generation of dedicated gaming consoles from the big three. I think the time of that idea has passed. At one point, dedicated graphics and sound hardware on consoles gave better performance and quality than you could get on an equivalent PC, but those days are long over. I'm getting a little sick of gimped PC games, that are held back by console limitations. I could get a RaspPi and have enough power to play a surprising number of games.
I've got a Steam Link and a length of ethernet cable that almost cost more to tie into the switch at my desktop, so I certainly won't ever be buying a gaming console.
I will commit heresy here and quote someone from NeoGaf[1] directly:
"PC gamers don't understand the purchasing habits of the console market. Your typical console every-man is buying <6 titles a year. All at full price. All on day one. From a brick and mortar store. They don't care about shopping around, they don't care about sales, they don't care about indies, and they don't care about PC exclusives. They're not going to build their own PC. They're not going to troubleshoot or mess with settings. They don't care about mods. They're not going to research shit.
For that motherfucker, of which there are millions, there is no cost benefit to moving to PC gaming.
You're all imposing your own habits on the mass market - which is what the OP was talking about - and wondering why everyone doesn't see things the way you do. You are not the mass market.
Nevermind the irony of the same people who complain that AAA publishers either outright ignore and put no effort into PC gaming while bragging about buying their products on launch day for fractions of their full price."
Personally, I work at a games company, making games(for both consoles and PC). I have literally every gaming system at home, and a really powerful PC. And in my humble opinion - consoles are the way to go. Take Witcher 3 - both me and my significant other were playing it at the same time. Me on PC, while she played on PS4. She was a good 5-6 hours into the game, while I was still fucking around with my drivers, overclocking the GPU and CPU, going into bios every 5 minutes just to make sure I definitely have a locked 60fps experience. Did I get it in the end? I did. Was it worth it? No. Any new game I would rather get on a console and not have to worry if my experience on PC will be good or not. Obviously for you(or anyone else) it might be worth it, I would never try to convince anyone otherwise - play on what you really like.
> Take Witcher 3 - both me and my significant other were playing it at the same time. Me on PC, while she played on PS4. She was a good 5-6 hours into the game, while I was still fucking around with my drivers, overclocking the GPU and CPU, going into bios every 5 minutes just to make sure I definitely have a locked 60 fps experience.
I've never has this issue when playing games on PC? Usually I can just buy a game, wait for the thing to download and get on with playing it within 10 minutes of it being installed. Usually I change a few settings such as resolution and I put it in windowed mode, and maybe reduce some graphics settings, but that's it. I very rarely have to mess with drivers, and I've certainly never had to overclock my CPU or GPU, nor did I have to enter the BIOS just to play a game. And if the game isn't at 60 fps? Who gives a shit, as long as it's a playable 30 fps or more then I'm happy just playing the game. PC gaming for me isn't about the superior graphics or framerate, it's the fact that I can have a game on one monitor whilst having easy access to a web browser or IRC on another so I can do something during loading screens. It's the fact that I can mod the game to add new features, especially in strategy or management games.
I think having a PC encourages that practice though. On a console, I pop the disc in, play. On a PC, I notice the screen does tear a bit(the game runs at 40-50gps, so no v-sync) so I go into settings and try to play a bit to make it work nicely. While I am at it, I might as well overclock my GPU a bit. Since I am doing that, I might order a new fan from Amazon. Oh, actually, Nvidia released beta drivers which are said to improve the performance a bit. Hmmm they do, but now my PC crashes randomly. Maybe I need to go into bios and increase the voltage on the CPU so it's more stable. Wait, I was going to play that game, wasn't I? It's late now, I'm going to bed.
That's literally my experience recently. I also bought Batman Arkham knight on PC(which was famously broken on that platform) and ended up installing it on a seperate SSD just to make it run smoothly, and actually spent quite a while looking at trace statements and driver forums trying to make that game run in an acceptable way. Meanwhile, everyone who had it on PS4 just played it.
But again, I'm not trying to say that consoles are any better. I'm saying that they have a place on the market and to think they will disappear is a bit foolish.
Your experience at the end there makes me kinda glad I game on my iMac nowadays (booted into Windows, of course) instead of continuing to build PCs like I used to. It's the retina 5k model with the best GPU option. It's plenty fast if I play at half-res (2560x1440) or less.
My frame rates are Fine, Just Fine for all the AAA titles... Not always 60fps but good enough. But the fact that I can't tweak anything in the bios, there's only one good driver, and I definitely can't overclock makes it feel more like a console in that regard. And I can just concentrate on playing games.
(Apple took a while to come out with Windows 10 drivers though, but that was my only negative experience.)
For example marvel at the self-entitlement of people for getting free stuff while not giving a shit about publishers and note that this happens on Hacker News, so what can you expect from the public at large: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10729068
All goods that are non-excludable and non-rivalrous suffer from free rider problems. Blaming "self-entitled consumers" is an excuse, not a reason. Every time I take a whiff of my neighbor's cooking, I am freeloading off a positive (for me) externality. Any producer of such goods knows the risks.
Because around 1983 the amount of crap was so much that it drove the entire videogame industry to a crash, as no one knew any longer which games were worth buying.
Nintendo then introduced the concept of locked down consoles as a way to control game quality.
Plus it's hard to find a major games journalism web site that isn't getting paid by the developers or publishers for good reviews, or threatened with blacklisting.
Not so, in the case of Nintendo. They've instituted a strict policy against posting long-form gameplay content unless you agree to monetize the video and send them 40% of the proceeds. If you don't agree, they'll submit a DMCA claim against the video.
it's not really necessary to have a long form let's play video to assess the gameplay anyway, but just going by what I see on youtube, I don't think nintendo is actually enforcing that rule there.
Isn't the point being made that the threshold doesn't really matter, as long as the quality games are surfaced? Would the top games in the App Stores be better if Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo could set the threshold?
If Sony cared about game quality they would never have allowed Knack to happen.
More likely consoles are locked down because:
1. Exploits may allow cheats in games, most worrying for multiplayer titles.
2. Exploits may allow unfair unlocking of achievements, which add to overall "gamer rank" systems.
3. Locking down the ecosystem ensures you pay the console tax to get your game on the system.
4. Locking down the ecosystem prevents game piracy, which is one of the very few advantages consoles have over PCs.
Edit: A surprising number of downvotes for claiming console makers care more about money than they do about their customers. Need I remind you that one of the only titles available for the PS4 on launch was a $50 port of Angry Birds?
Quality issues still happen of course, but it is still way better than the majority of shareware, public domain, or many of the open source games one now has access to.
The anti-cheating system is really the one aspect of a locked platform that benefits consumers by ensuring that people you play against are also locked down.
Valve's anti-cheat seems to be merely OK and may have a false positive problem.
It's a fine line on PC. There was some recent controversy over a relatively obscure title called "osu!" which did things like take screenshots, upload file contents, and upload a list of running processes, which many gamers were fairly upset about. Since a PC can do so much more than a console, there are privacy and security implications that anti-cheat systems have to take into consideration.
The article unusually omits the Nintendo "Seal of Quality"[1], which was intended to counter exactly what you're describing[2].
> Sid Meier in 2008 cited the Seal of Quality as one of the three most important innovations in videogame history, as it helped set a standard for game quality that protected consumers from shovelware.
However you are correct, they did lock down future consoles with the intention of increasing quality of published games. The flipside is that Nintendo has few third-party AAA titles and the majority of their game hits are first-party Nintendo franchises. Nintendo commands a loyal fanbase though, which is hard to come by (especially since it spans multiple generations now).
I thought the videogame crash was largely the result of mismanagement and companies really not knowing what the heck they were doing.
The effect of shitty shovelware is a little hard to describe when even the best games of the time are a blocky mess and can support only a handful of game mechanics before running out of space in the cart. The Atari 2600 was insanely limited and even relatively simple games like Space Invaders required near god level hacks to implement.
Quality control. In our studio we have an entire team(at the moment 4 programmers + 1 artist + 1 designer + 2 QC testers) who do nothing else but check our games for compliance so that Sony/MS actually accept them. I think it's a really good thing.
Need is relative. The console manufacturers are all publishers too, locking their ecosystems provides them the following benefits, all of which they want, but not all of which you "need" or want.
- DRM. This prevents piracy, as others here have pointed out. This aims to prevent unauthorized copies, but it also gives them control over primary markets, and over payment systems.
- Quality. Locking allows them to review and approve content before publication. It raises the overall quality of the ecosystem, and reduces shovel ware and bad actors. This is good for publishers, because it increases safety and consumer confidence. This happens to be good for consumers too, because you get less crappy, less crashy software. (This doesn't meant you don't get crap... It just means that overall there's less crap.)
- Control. A locked ecosystem controls many aspects of the second hand market, even more so as downloading takes over hard copy. It has in the past also allowed publishers to have proprietary advantages.
- Ratings. They review content for age appropriateness. It could be self reviewed like the Google play store, but they prefer to be certain. Especially important for Nintendo.
Anyway, they would not be able to reap all the benefits if it were open, and they're in charge, so I guess it won't happen soon. I slightly disagree with the premise that locked vs ecology is the dichotomy. The locked systems do have ecologies, they're just probably different than the one you want, and unfortunately they shut out us makers and experimenters, relative to the platform itself, so they are ecologies of pure consumers.
Given that this uses a FreeBSD kernel vulnerability, what is the impact of this upon general FreeBSD usage? It sounds like an arbitrary process can read and write to the memory of another process. I'm sorry if this is a dumb question, but this is something I'm not really familiar with!
From talking with people on #freebsd on freenode, it sounds like freebsd should be unaffected. The system calls involved are Sony-specific additions to the kernel.
This uses an known (and patched) FreeBSD vulnerability (BadIRet). It only works on PS4 <= 1.76 (pretty old now) and is not publicly available (CTurt does not have permission to release it). I think this whole article is just an advertisement for this "green Monday" sale tacked in on the last paragraph.
76 comments
[ 0.23 ms ] story [ 149 ms ] threadSay I'm Sony. I could have a locked platform, sign up some content shops to make a very small number of titles, and sell a few consoles. Or I could make an unlocked platform, reap all the benefits of the locked one, _plus_ encourage a large community of people making all sorts of new things for it, sharing, and spurring many more console sales.
So why lock when you could instead have an ecology?
If you don't want AAA games, well all the major consoles have digital games a la Steam that cost less.
fail0verflow's talk[1] at 27C3 on jailbreaking the PS3 is really fun, and they discuss this in detail.
(also: as discussed about 35min into [1], using the same nonce for the ECDSA signature of every game? So the keys can be derived from two games, without knowing most of the curve parameters? What was Sony thinking?!)
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4loZGYqaZ7I
Steam with XBOX controller is mighty fine combo, especially since the gaming industry has been in creative stupor the last decade when it comes to AAA
Some developers are only developing for DirectX only. Even some developers who, have in the past (Blizzard) supported Macs, have forgone this in their latest product (Overwatch) because of the additional hassle in doing so.
(Overwatch, unfortunately, seems to be one of the few that doesn't work at all under wine)
Developers are more inclined to develop for PC, because more people use Windows. More people use Windows, because there is a greater number of games in comparison to other platforms.
It sucks, but thats what it is.
If your competitor costs $400 and you cost $500, you're gonna lose a lot of potential sales. When Xbox was initially $500, they ended up unbundling the camera and dropping the price to $400 because they were losing against the $400 PlayStation.
We're $100 cheaper.
Why was the cheering a surprise? It's classic showmanship. And they could afford to do it because they weren't bundling the controversial kinect.
At least the user review process on Steam seems to penalize the garbage pretty effectively.
Now that they've been running the Greenlight program for a while, I've found that the number of games I actually buy on steam has gone way way down. There's just too much crap to shovel through; if a game is worth buying, I'll probably hear about it through some other channel, instead of by finding it on steam, and go to pick it up. Even during the sales events, I don't bother doing anything besides looking at what the 12 to 24 daily specials are, and I'll rarely buy them now.
On the other hand, I'm starting to appreciate games where the primary complaint was "it was too short". There's something to be said for one of those 2 hour walking simulators as a palette cleanser.
I'm hoping this is the last generation of dedicated gaming consoles from the big three. I think the time of that idea has passed. At one point, dedicated graphics and sound hardware on consoles gave better performance and quality than you could get on an equivalent PC, but those days are long over. I'm getting a little sick of gimped PC games, that are held back by console limitations. I could get a RaspPi and have enough power to play a surprising number of games.
I've got a Steam Link and a length of ethernet cable that almost cost more to tie into the switch at my desktop, so I certainly won't ever be buying a gaming console.
Only after 1983's crash.
"PC gamers don't understand the purchasing habits of the console market. Your typical console every-man is buying <6 titles a year. All at full price. All on day one. From a brick and mortar store. They don't care about shopping around, they don't care about sales, they don't care about indies, and they don't care about PC exclusives. They're not going to build their own PC. They're not going to troubleshoot or mess with settings. They don't care about mods. They're not going to research shit.
For that motherfucker, of which there are millions, there is no cost benefit to moving to PC gaming.
You're all imposing your own habits on the mass market - which is what the OP was talking about - and wondering why everyone doesn't see things the way you do. You are not the mass market.
Nevermind the irony of the same people who complain that AAA publishers either outright ignore and put no effort into PC gaming while bragging about buying their products on launch day for fractions of their full price."
[1] http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1156919
Personally, I work at a games company, making games(for both consoles and PC). I have literally every gaming system at home, and a really powerful PC. And in my humble opinion - consoles are the way to go. Take Witcher 3 - both me and my significant other were playing it at the same time. Me on PC, while she played on PS4. She was a good 5-6 hours into the game, while I was still fucking around with my drivers, overclocking the GPU and CPU, going into bios every 5 minutes just to make sure I definitely have a locked 60fps experience. Did I get it in the end? I did. Was it worth it? No. Any new game I would rather get on a console and not have to worry if my experience on PC will be good or not. Obviously for you(or anyone else) it might be worth it, I would never try to convince anyone otherwise - play on what you really like.
I've never has this issue when playing games on PC? Usually I can just buy a game, wait for the thing to download and get on with playing it within 10 minutes of it being installed. Usually I change a few settings such as resolution and I put it in windowed mode, and maybe reduce some graphics settings, but that's it. I very rarely have to mess with drivers, and I've certainly never had to overclock my CPU or GPU, nor did I have to enter the BIOS just to play a game. And if the game isn't at 60 fps? Who gives a shit, as long as it's a playable 30 fps or more then I'm happy just playing the game. PC gaming for me isn't about the superior graphics or framerate, it's the fact that I can have a game on one monitor whilst having easy access to a web browser or IRC on another so I can do something during loading screens. It's the fact that I can mod the game to add new features, especially in strategy or management games.
That's literally my experience recently. I also bought Batman Arkham knight on PC(which was famously broken on that platform) and ended up installing it on a seperate SSD just to make it run smoothly, and actually spent quite a while looking at trace statements and driver forums trying to make that game run in an acceptable way. Meanwhile, everyone who had it on PS4 just played it. But again, I'm not trying to say that consoles are any better. I'm saying that they have a place on the market and to think they will disappear is a bit foolish.
My frame rates are Fine, Just Fine for all the AAA titles... Not always 60fps but good enough. But the fact that I can't tweak anything in the bios, there's only one good driver, and I definitely can't overclock makes it feel more like a console in that regard. And I can just concentrate on playing games.
(Apple took a while to come out with Windows 10 drivers though, but that was my only negative experience.)
For example marvel at the self-entitlement of people for getting free stuff while not giving a shit about publishers and note that this happens on Hacker News, so what can you expect from the public at large: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10729068
Nintendo then introduced the concept of locked down consoles as a way to control game quality.
http://www.ign.com/articles/2011/09/21/ten-facts-about-the-g...
More likely consoles are locked down because:
1. Exploits may allow cheats in games, most worrying for multiplayer titles.
2. Exploits may allow unfair unlocking of achievements, which add to overall "gamer rank" systems.
3. Locking down the ecosystem ensures you pay the console tax to get your game on the system.
4. Locking down the ecosystem prevents game piracy, which is one of the very few advantages consoles have over PCs.
Edit: A surprising number of downvotes for claiming console makers care more about money than they do about their customers. Need I remind you that one of the only titles available for the PS4 on launch was a $50 port of Angry Birds?
Valve's anti-cheat seems to be merely OK and may have a false positive problem.
> Sid Meier in 2008 cited the Seal of Quality as one of the three most important innovations in videogame history, as it helped set a standard for game quality that protected consumers from shovelware.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo#Seal_of_Quality
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shovelware#Shovelware_video_ga...
However you are correct, they did lock down future consoles with the intention of increasing quality of published games. The flipside is that Nintendo has few third-party AAA titles and the majority of their game hits are first-party Nintendo franchises. Nintendo commands a loyal fanbase though, which is hard to come by (especially since it spans multiple generations now).
Really makes me shiver :S
The effect of shitty shovelware is a little hard to describe when even the best games of the time are a blocky mess and can support only a handful of game mechanics before running out of space in the cart. The Atari 2600 was insanely limited and even relatively simple games like Space Invaders required near god level hacks to implement.
- DRM. This prevents piracy, as others here have pointed out. This aims to prevent unauthorized copies, but it also gives them control over primary markets, and over payment systems.
- Quality. Locking allows them to review and approve content before publication. It raises the overall quality of the ecosystem, and reduces shovel ware and bad actors. This is good for publishers, because it increases safety and consumer confidence. This happens to be good for consumers too, because you get less crappy, less crashy software. (This doesn't meant you don't get crap... It just means that overall there's less crap.)
- Control. A locked ecosystem controls many aspects of the second hand market, even more so as downloading takes over hard copy. It has in the past also allowed publishers to have proprietary advantages.
- Ratings. They review content for age appropriateness. It could be self reviewed like the Google play store, but they prefer to be certain. Especially important for Nintendo.
Anyway, they would not be able to reap all the benefits if it were open, and they're in charge, so I guess it won't happen soon. I slightly disagree with the premise that locked vs ecology is the dichotomy. The locked systems do have ecologies, they're just probably different than the one you want, and unfortunately they shut out us makers and experimenters, relative to the platform itself, so they are ecologies of pure consumers.