I would like to see Sony release a legitimate dev kit for PSP home developers, like the PS2 Linux kit, but I can understand why they haven't yet.
The main reason for them making this kind of thing as difficult as possible at the moment is to try and reduce piracy. Let’s face it; the number of us that are interested in writing homebrew programs for the PSP are tiny in comparison to the number of PSPs sold. The vast majority of people with PSPs couldn't give a fig about compiling their own code. Many more people however are interesting in playing pirated games, and it's these people that Sony are trying to discourage. They know they can't stop them, but they can at least try and make it as difficult as possible.
In some ways it's worked. The PSP has established itself well in the market, and the games and UMD movies are selling well. Maybe now this is the case we might see an official dev kit; but is it worth it for Sony? It would cost them a considerable amount to produce a 'reduced' SDK that allows homebrew apps, but not widespread piracy. They would have to provide documentation and support for it, and all this costs money. Would they get this money back from a few thousand unit sales?
BTW, if you're really hungry for a portable home-brew device then check out the Dell X50v PocketPC. It's about £70 more than a PSP (in the UK), but has a 624Mhz processor, 64MB ram, 640x480 screen, OpenGL ES accelerator (PowerVR), and can accept a micro hard drive (currently up to about 6GB). The SDK is freely downloadable, and you can use freely available compilers to build your apps.
PSP 2.0 Firmware Security Circumvented
Quote:Original post by ProzakQuote:Original post by Sluginator
So a coding malapropos in the .png loader allows you to cram your code into an execution space?
Back in my days, we didn't have time to exploit a buffer overrun. We were too busy churning butter!
Yep, it's more or less that. I don't know exactly how the buffer overflow is calculated by the programmer to actually overflow into a code area that will be run.
I guess the coder just filled the .tif image with "nop" (no-operand, or a null instruction), and when the PSP jumps to a memory address that contained original code, it instead falls on the "nop" code of the image.
It keeps running those "nop" instructions till it reaches the end of the buffer, where the programmer's code is.
Once there the programmer can discover the address the program came from, and re-adjust his oflerflow technique.
I'm knowledgeable with x86 assembly, but I have zero experience with the PSP, but I guess what I said translates well to that system.
That is a very clever method! Thanks for explaining it to me.
Author
And here is Sony's official response to the latest 2.0 to 1.5 downgrader:
Sony cracks down on PSP hacks:
Sony cracks down on PSP hacks:
Quote:"It is not...what the device was designed for," (...) Sony is not "actively going after the people doing it," Seybold said, but the company does not advise running homebrew code on the PSP. "Running unauthorized software will void the warranty," he said.
Quote:Original post by Prozak
Well, I've always been of the opinion that pirated games make up a fixed percentage of a game's target audience.
No matter how famous or obscure the game is, the ratio of games pirated to those sold remains more or less the same.
Statistical evidence please.
Author
Well, I've either read on Games Developer Newsletter, or on Gamasutra, but that's beside the point, common sense dictates that the more famous a game is (Doom 3, Halo 2), the more copies it will sell, and the more copies will be pirated, but the relative ratio remains the same.
You can divide the market into:
1- Those that will buy your product
2- Those that are not going to buy your product
3- Those that are interested but not convinced
Piracy comes in at number 3. Someone might be interested enough to buy it, if the marketing works right, or that person might not be interested enough to buy it, in which case they may fall back to piracy, or just wont care about your product at all.
The most sane busniess model is to never take into account people in the 2 and 3 slices of the market, just number 1.
Also, as an aside to this topic, remember that every original game will have copy protection which might cause issues between the game and the drive, but none of the pirated games will have copy protection.
Copy protection's job is not to make your game uncrackable, but to keep it safe from cracking for as long as possible, because for each day that passes, people in the slice 3 will have to make up their minds withotu recurring to piracy, they'll either not buy it, or they'll buy it...
I hope I made that clear enough, they may be my views, but I think they're grounded in common sense...
You can divide the market into:
1- Those that will buy your product
2- Those that are not going to buy your product
3- Those that are interested but not convinced
Piracy comes in at number 3. Someone might be interested enough to buy it, if the marketing works right, or that person might not be interested enough to buy it, in which case they may fall back to piracy, or just wont care about your product at all.
The most sane busniess model is to never take into account people in the 2 and 3 slices of the market, just number 1.
Also, as an aside to this topic, remember that every original game will have copy protection which might cause issues between the game and the drive, but none of the pirated games will have copy protection.
Copy protection's job is not to make your game uncrackable, but to keep it safe from cracking for as long as possible, because for each day that passes, people in the slice 3 will have to make up their minds withotu recurring to piracy, they'll either not buy it, or they'll buy it...
I hope I made that clear enough, they may be my views, but I think they're grounded in common sense...
This topic is closed to new replies.
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