Question by EvilNintendoGuy: How much of a challenge is it for a modding team to run PS2 disc on the PS3 Slim?
I was just wondering if the R4 team could create such a revolution and bring down the NDS platform (developers now tend to stay away from the NDS because of piracy) what if a development team put the effort into creating a method that simulated the Hardware of the original Playstation 60GB played PS2… I.E create copy the Emotion Engine =)
How much of a challenge would this be? Is anyone trying?
Best answer:
Answer by kozzm0
Yes, people are trying to hack the ps3, but they’re not trying to do that.
Most people will tell you the ps3 is unhackable, but they haven’t really been paying attention to the progress that’s been made. The biggest breakthrough so far was a year before the otheros attack, it allowed playing ps2 backups via flash or hard drive on ps2-compatible ps3′s. And it still does. You must have swap magic 3.6 or 3.8 for it to work.
The problem to opening up the ps3 is reverse-engineering the hypervisor. The otheros exploit didn’t really do anything by itself, it simply enabled work by others. Geohot himself did next to nothing afterwards, and recently announced his retirement from hacking, probably because he’s embarrassed about it. (He promised to restore Otheros in a CF and he couldn’t do it.) What the exploit allows is dumping of the hypervisor, which has 3 levels, and reverse engineering it to see how it works, and eventually write CF. That takes time, but it’s being worked on, and all levels have been dumped by various people and many of the HV calls are now known.
The team in the lead as far as HV dumps is called team Demonhades. They figured out a way to make the ps3′s system RAM retain its data after a reboot, meaning the console can be cold-reset from GameOS, and after reset the otheros exploit can be used to boot it with most of the GameOS data still in the RAM.
What can be done after the HV is fully RE’d, for most people nothing, unless a CF is made. What geohot made wasn’t a real CF, he merely changed a couple things in the firmware and somehow managed to re-sign it using the Cell. If a CF becomes possible, there’s no way for Sony to stop anyone from using it. If not, you can’t access the HV unless you have an OtherOS ps3, which, if you have a slim or are running fw 3.21 or higher, you don’t.
There are other possibilities for restoring otheros. Fat ps3′s automatically look for a boot flag, which even current firmware probably still have, that tells the ps3 whether to boot gameOS or OtherOS. If the flag were gone, fat ps3′s probably wouldn’t work. A modified firmware could possibly restore OtherOS even on 3.40 simply by adding an HV call that changes the flag to OtherOS. It would be fairly simple if possible. This wouldn’t allow anything like copied ps3 games, but if you use the otheros exploit also, it may be able to access the gpu and then, maybe, just maybe you could port pcsx2 to the Cell architecture and play ps2 games under exploited otheros. That’s a hell of a lot of work; just get a b/c ps3 and use the swap magic exploit, and you can not only play ps2 games, but ps2 iso’s too.
About developers avoiding the DS: I’ve got a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you, if you believe them. They’re not losing any money, and they’re not avoiding the DS. Where else are they gonna sell their games? PSP?
Devs whiiiiiiine about piracy, cry about how they’re losing money, but they’re not losing a dime. Every copy they sell, they would still sell, piracy or not. The main reason is getting pirated games to work is hard to do, and hardly anyone does it. Very tiny percentage. Those who do usually buy the games they really want anyhow, because there’s always glitches and problems with copies. So those who play copies wouldn’t have bought the games anyhow.
Besides that, when a dev says they “lost a million dollars” they really mean they “made 20 million instead of 21 million.” You have to sell a huge number of games for it to be pirated to any significant extent.
look at the current and last-gen non-handhelds. The most secure console is the ps3, and it has sold the fewest units, and has the fewest games sold for it. It’s in dead last. Developers were supposed to love it to death, but they don’t give a rip. They’re liars. The xbox is only semi-secure, after Microsoft cracked down, but the devs like it better than ps3 since they sell more copies of games for it. The highest number of games sold is overwhelmingly for the Wii. While these mostly aren’t 3rd-party, they would be if the Wii had only one competitor. Making a game for all 3 platforms is like making two entirely different games, and it’s more profitable to release on both ps3 and 360 than only on Wii.
And last generation, the mighty ps2, the most hacked and modded console the history, within 12 months of its release. Most consoles sold by far, most games made for it by far, most copies sold by far, and most pirated by far! How many developers really avoided the ps2 because of piracy? Zeeeeeero. A few made xbox exclusives, but that had nothing to do with copying. They made billions. They struck it freakin rich. They STILL make games for ps2, even though there’s the unhackable ps3 to make games for instead. They love that freakin ps2.
Ok done ranting about the devs. Check the haxnetwork to find details about progress on the ps3.
What do you think? Answer below!
