Why Game? 1 - TextFiles.com

tion and - as a final nail in the coffin - plays
“free” games. If it sounds familiar, this is
because it happened before. This was one of the
key factors in putting the Dreamcast under and
Sega out of the console business.
All things considered, Sony was pretty
lenient about their security. They allowed gam-
ers to play, out of the box the US PSP came in,
Japanese PSP games - rare for an optical disc
system, but unheard of for Sony. Considering
the 29 wire connections you needed to solder
to get a PS2 to play Japanese games, this is a
blessing for those familiar with import gaming.
We were greedy. We abused Sony’s le-
nience. Like children, we looked a gift horse in
the mouth. It wasn’t enough to play imports, we
needed more, and the emulation coders have
allowed us to play everything from classic NES,
to Turbografx, to soundless Game Boy Advance
games.
Of course, not everyone is out to use the
PSP as an emulator. Some are genuinely out
there to make full games. Most homebrew
games are simple board games or ports of DOS
games, but there is the occasional innovative
game of vertically-oriented Break-Out or quirky
Japanese dating sims. Perhaps had we left well
enough alone we would have been permitted to
keep the ability to run these programs, but the
taste of emulation was too sweet.
Sony struck when Japan saw their first
mandatory firmware update in the form of Cod-
ed Arms, a Konami published game. If you had
an original Japanese release PSP with version
1.00 firmware and wanted to play Coded Arms,
you needed to upgrade to version 1.50. At least
they made it so that the system won’t upgrade
on its own with out your knowing. You’re given
a prompt beforehand to physically plug the
system in during a firmware upgrade so that you
don’t lose power while flashing the bios and turn
your system into a $250 paperweight. Forcing
upgrades is Sony’s way of giving emulation us-
ers an ultimatum: “Play our games, or play your
games.”
Who cares, this is just the evil Sony em-
pire. Right?
Then why do I feel like someone crashed
my party? I don’t really like Sony. I bought a
second Playstation when my first one com-
pletely stopped reading discs after months of
only playing them when the system was turned
upside down. My original PS2 also stopped
reading discs, and its replacement has recently
been having trouble booting up from time to
time. The first shipment of PSPs had flaws,
illustrated by a high system return rate, which
were initially passed off as “design features” by
its designer. Currently, just as games like Okami
and God of War are making the PS2’s graphics
and potential shine like never before, we are
being urged to buy a third Playstation that Sony
has been quoted as calling “a device consumers
would be prepared to work overtime to afford.”
So why should we care if the lining of
Sony’s pockets gets a bit thinner? Morals are a
good enough reason, but heavy piracy of the
Dreamcast’s GD-Roms proves that we as gam-
ing consumers don’t have morals. Or at least
- we don’t listen to them. What about keeping
competition healthy? Nintendo has not had any
competition in the handheld department in years
- no stiff competition, anyway. Competition
breeds excellence. Now Sony has mandatory
firmware upgrades with each new game, making
it even more difficult to play emulators alongside
PSP games. The already-high cost of UMDs,
when compared to DS and GBA games, should
be expected to stay or even rise. Who knows,
piracy and emulation could even chase Sony
completely away from the portable market.
But who cares, it’s just Sony, right?
In a Sea of Intellectual Propery, Pirates Arise. 123