Sony Must Embrace PSP Hackers

December 4th, 2005, 20:41 Posted By: wraggster

Source - Insert25

The same way Apple made sure to let anyone who owns an MP3 play it on their iPod, Sony must embrace the fact that people will download movies and television shows from their P2P software and will want to watch it on their PSP. Without doing so will only push to further increase the marketshare of Apple’s latest iPod with video and god forbid Apple come out with a portable media player with a bigger screen.

In their article, Attack of the Playstation Hackers, BusinessWeek writes about a man who was able to put his hundreds of movies and TV shows he his 1GB memory cards. That’s cool and all, but still way too complicated. Not to worry though because hackers will find a way and create programs that will make the device even more easy to use and useful in the future and you know this won’t sit well with Sony who will probably think of ways they can shutdown hackers because the free stuff they do doesn’t help out their profits.

A month later, it followed with similar upgrades for U.S. users. Sony officials won’t say whether they are considering suing hackers. “We cannot guarantee PSP hardware that has been modified,” says SCEI spokeswoman Nanako Kato.

If profits are made from games and videos sold, why not let the device prosper amongst the hacker community so it becomes even more enticing to the mainstream community. Isn’t it better to have people buying 1M PSPs because they think they can do cool stuff with it and buy games and movies, instead of 1,000 people buying them because they know they can just play games and watch movies with it?

Would the first Playstation been as successful without the ability to add a modchip and therefore play burnt games? How about the XBOX? We all know Linux wouldn’t even be close to where it is without the ability for people to dig in and hack it to death so why aren’t larger companies pushing aside their old mentalities and embracing the hackers?

David Prochnow, a technology writer, says the PSP had all the potential of a powerful multimedia device but was “crippled” by its software. Using a soldering iron and a screwdriver, he tore open his PSP — and now it prints photographs, shares music with other portable players, and runs all types of converted video files. “Any, and every, PSP owner can become a hacker,” says Prochnow, whose book, PSP Hacks, Mods and Expansions, goes on sale in December.

To me that is so cool and if I didn’t have a PSP already, reading that would definitely entice me further to get one. Instead I get to read this paragraph next:

Sony says it can stay ahead of the hackers. With recent updates, the PSP can now play a variety of music formats and podcasts, as well as digital video clips downloaded form the Net. In October, Sony added its newest option — a LocationFree program that lets users stream videos to the PSP by tapping into a PC or DVD player at home over Wi-Fi or broadband connections.

You can stay ahead of 1000s of hackers just like Microsoft can keep their Operating Systems secure. If anything use the hacker community as a radar for what might be popular and then develop programs and functionality around that. Make it official and you have just added a couple more customers. Doesn’t it make sense?

There are 32 comments - Join In and Discuss Here