Sony, Homebrew, and the PSP/PS3 - A Dose of REALITY CALL

Everyone seems to be picking up on some of Phil Harrison's comments on Slashdot the other day. Oddly he comments on precisely the issue that I pitched to "The Escapist Magazine" a few months back, which they declined...

Anyway, hopefully he doesn't regret the comment, which was relatively brief, but has spurred a firestorm of media reaction. Most of it has been positive, but picked up on the differentiation of "Homebrew is sometimes a misused term and so for the purposes of this answer I will exclude pirates and hackers with illegal intentions from the definition." This was exactly what I was getting at when I pitched to The Escapist that emulation and the frequent homebrew emphasis of getting emulators up and running on homebrew systems as a process that tends to hinder rather then enable the homebrew scene.

I think one important difference that should be made and seems to be getting conflated in the coverage of this is that Sony has yet to actually announce anything here. The comparison to Microsoft and XNA has been made, but XNA Express is actually available to developers right now. Today. Not some vague plan in the future. We hear rumblings like this all the time from Sony and Nintendo, but as of now we haven't seen a single indicator that something will be released even in the next six months. By that time XNA Express will have been available for nearly a year.

That being said, Nintendo and Sony could benefit from releasing tools that don't require developers to be locked into a proprietary language like C#, which Microsoft has done. It would also be nice if they were interested in supporting open standards like OpenGL, Cg, or any of the other various standards, in favor of Microsoft's DX10 thrust.

All in all it is nice to hear executives at Sony thinking about this.

I'll actually be giving a talk at MiT5 (Media in Transition) at MIT this weekend in Boston on this very topic.

Slashdot - Phil Harrison Answers Your Questions

4.) 'Homebrew Gaming' by Anonymous Coward, maynard, and flitty
If someone manages to get homebrew games running on the PS3, will there be firmware updates to stop this kind of development, to protect your software developers, or is homebrew something you are planning on and even encouraging? Is there a chance that the policy of restricting access to PS3 graphics hardware (via the hypervisor) could be revised to encourage us homebrew developers? How does this strategy differ from your strategy with PSP homebrew? Has Sony considered offering kernel patches and an RSX optimized OpenGL library for PS3/Linux?

Phil Harrison: Now, let me first say that Homebrew is sometimes a misused term and so for the purposes of this answer I will exclude pirates and hackers with illegal intentions from the definition.

I fully support the notion of game development at home using powerful tools available to anyone. We were one of the first companies to recognize this in 1996 with Net Yaroze on PS1. It's a vital, crucial aspect of the future growth of our industry and links well to the subtext of my earlier answers. When I started making games on the Commodore 64 in the 1980's, the way I learned to make games was by re-writing games that appeared in magazines. Really the best bit about a C64 was when you turned it on it said "Ready?" with a flashing cursor - inviting you to experiment. You'd spend hours typing in the code, line-by-line, and then countless hours debugging it to make it work and then you'd realise the game was rubbish after all that effort! The next step was to re-write aspects of the game to change the graphics, the sound, the control system or the speed of the gameplay until you'd created something completely new. I might share this with a few friends but not for commercial gain at that time. But the process itself was invaluable in helping me learn to program, to design graphics, animations or sounds and was really the way I opened doors to get into the industry. Now, those industry doors are largely closed by the nature of the video game systems themselves being closed. So, if we can make certain aspects of PS3 open to the independent game development community, we will do our industry a service by providing opportunities for the next generation of creative and technical talent. Now having said all that, we still have to protect the investment and intellectual property rights of the industry so we will always seek the best ways to secure and protect our devices from piracy and unauthorized hacking that damages the business.

Gamasutra - Sony's Harrison Embraces Homebrew Development

Harrison prefaced his answer to the question of whether firmware updates would prevent the running of homebrew software by stating that he would “exclude pirates and hackers with illegal intentions” from the definition of homebrew.

Although the phrase homebrew has never commonly been understood to include such activities, Harrison’s implication that it might could explain Sony’s continual aggressive attempts to lock out unlicensed software from use on the PSP.

In regards to the PlayStation 3, Harrison appears more sympathetic, saying, "I fully support the notion of game development at home using powerful tools available to anyone. We were one of the first companies to recognize this in 1996 with Net Yaroze on PS one. It's a vital, crucial aspect of the future growth of our industry."
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"The process itself was invaluable in helping me learn to program, to design graphics, animations or sounds and was really the way I opened doors to get into the industry. Now, those industry doors are largely closed by the nature of the video game systems themselves being closed", he admitted.

"So, if we can make certain aspects of PS3 open to the independent game development community, we will do our industry a service by providing opportunities for the next generation of creative and technical talent", stated Harrison.

GameDaily.BIZ - Harrison: Homebrew Development Vital to Future Growth of Industry

Harrison also talked a bit about his own vision for the future of the industry. "I want to see the audience of people who play videogames, of any type, on any device, include practically anyone on the planet. Whether it be an immersive action game that appeals primarily to young adults, or a casual game that is enjoyed by the entire family, I hope that videogames and electronic forms of interactive entertainment continue to expand to new audiences, all the time. Linked to that, I want to see videogames given more credibility as a mainstream form of entertainment through appropriate cultural commentary and criticism," he said.

"What I hope is that 20 years from now... videogames as a pastime will be given the same cultural and social currency as a book, a film, a TV show or a piece of architecture," he added. "After all, the popular culture creators of 20 years from now will all, largely, have grown up playing, or at least being intimately aware of, videogames. The writers and commentators on those same popular culture creators will all have had the same experience playing videogames growing up - at which point the circle is complete. I don't think there is a culmination to this overall vision - it will be a constant process. Each successive platform brings new technology to the experience of games and helps expand the audience still further. I hope PS3 will be seen 20 years from now as a crucial influence in the growth of our industry."

GamesIndustry.BIZ - Harrison hints at PlayStation 3 homebrew plans

"I fully support the notion of game development at home using powerful tools available to anyone," Harrison said in an interview with Slashdot.

"We were one of the first companies to recognise this in 1996 with Net Yaroze on PS1. It's a vital, crucial aspect of the future growth of our industry."
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But he admits that these days the doors into the industry that might be opened by going through that process "are largely closed by the nature of the videogame systems themselves being closed".

"So, if we can make certain aspects of PS3 open to the independent game development community, we will do our industry a service by providing opportunities for the next generation of creative and technical talent," he added.

While Sony has encouraged legitimate independent development in some areas - notably with Net Yaroze with, in this generation, Beyond Playstation - it has been accused of adopting a heavy-handed strategy in its dealings with PSP developers, with legitimate or at least non-threatening projects often struck down by firmware updates designed to lock out pirates and the hackers who facilitate piracy.

Harrison's interest in allowing for homebrew development puts Sony on a similar path to Microsoft, which recently launched its XNA package of tools. XNA offers the ability to develop games on both PC and Xbox 360, with a complementary educational focus that will plug game development modules into a number of university courses.

Leasing my PS3's CPUs

It's interesting that Sony has completely changed their tune with the release of the PS3 from the PS2 when it comes to alternative uses of video game consoles. I suppose that happens when you're desperately looking for people to make use of your system in new and interesting ways but you haven't really given game developers enough lead time to do that.

Instead they've had to resort to using scientific computation models like Folding@Home which has been built from the beginning in a cross-platform and highly distributed model, something that is able to make good use of the multiple cores on the PS3.

Game developers on the other hand have had relatively little time to scale their applications up to systems like this, and Sony certainly didn't go out fo their way to get emulators or other tools to developers early enough for them to get themselves and their tech up to the task of working with these technologies.

I like that they're looking elsewhere, but I'm not so crazy about leasing my PS3 out for "free" stuff from Sony. I'm sure there are some distributed computing projects that need donated cycles. AIDS research? Cancer? SPAM? Let's get a bit more imaginative than "lease it!"

Sony in talks on commercial use for PS3

Sony PlayStation 3 users may soon be asked to share the supercomputer power of their video game consoles with companies that lack their own technology to run complex research projects, the Financial Times was told.

Sony Computer Entertainment is in discussions with a number of companies about possible commercial applications for the PlayStation 3. This comes in the wake of its non-profit partnership with Stanford University in March that harnesses the spare computing capacity of registered PS3s for the analysis of protein cells.

However, because this would be a commercial proposition that would benefit profit-making organisations, Sony is studying whether it would need to offer incentives, such as free products, to persuade PS3 owners to participate.

Yes, Yes, XNA Express is Cool

This is an interesting discussion from the Microsoft camp about the differences between Sony's Home and XNA Express. There is also some interesting discussion about the differences in how MS and Sony approaches their developers. I certainly think MS has an edge in that respect.

Either way it's an interesting read and insight into the worlds of developers and those that make tools for them.

Microsoft on Lowering the Barriers of Creativity

With XNA Game Studio Express, it is a different approach. It's not just about modding a game that somebody's made; it's about making your own game. I definitely take your point [because] you need some skill to do it. Now I do think we've made it much easier with XNA Game Studio Express than it's ever been before, but when you add our partner products on top—like what we've done with Garage Games—then you actually have systems like Torque GameBuilder (TGB), which is drag and drop game development. You literally drag pieces in and you drop them. And then we have starter kits, so if you just want to mod an experience you can do that... So imagine if you take TGB and load up a pack and there's all the cool animated things—you just drag and drop them in, say what behavior you want and can start playing a game. And we actually licensed that from Garage Games so if you're a member of the Creator's Club in XNA you get that in your subscription.
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And XNA is attracting a lot of professionals as well. A lot are doing this in their spare time because they're like, "I've got a great idea and I just want to make a real fun, simple game and I don't get to do that at work anymore." I think what you'll mostly see is lots of smaller games.
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The thing that we do at Microsoft is we're a software and services company. We build tools to build software and we build software; that's at our core. We're very passionate about enabling developers and we've been working on things like visual studio for the last ten years... So I am very confident that we provide the very best tools in the industry, and if you talk to developers they will back that up. And we have the best services that we put around it – our consulting services and developer support services. I mean, when I used to do PS2 development I still used Microsoft technologies like for debugging and for the IDE for the compiler because it was the best you could use. It's great for developers that Sony is bringing these new components out, but we've already got that in our SDK. PIX, our profiling tool, is probably one of the most favored tools in the developer industry. So I feel very good [about our tools]. That's why now 3 out of 4 are leading on our platforms because it's just the most productive environment.
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It's also questionable that in their keynote they spent about 30 seconds talking about their tools. It's like one slide; they're checking off a box.

The other thing is what we're doing with Game Studio and XNA Express is, no one else is doing in the industry – we are really, truly democratizing game development. 250,000 people have downloaded this, and there's only 20-25 thousand professional developers in the industry. So we're going well beyond that audience. And this is our commitment to the industry, with computer science enrollments being down, high-definition game development budgets rising, people needing more teams... that pipeline has to be filled. We want to make sure that the 15-year-old girls that are thinking about what they want to study, that they have programs where they can get involved in the sciences and gaming. It's an investment for us. The 'community arcade' ... We don't make any money off this. It's part of our responsibility to the industry.
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There's nothing free about a $600 console. Once you've spent $600 the online is free, but you still have to spend $600 to get out of the gate, before you have any games.

Ouch... GBA Outsells PS3

Numbers like these are always highly interpretable, but things definitely look good for Nintendo at the moment. My only hesitation really is that the only software titles in the top 10 for Nintendo systems are First Party titles, meaning that they're made by Nintendo.

If you look at the other platforms (360 for example, or the PS2) they're third party titles. Nintendo is going to have to not only work with developers to get more software onto their systems, but they're really going to have to encourage publishers to take some chances with new material.

Breaking: Nintendo Dominates February; Total Industry Sales Up 53%

Taking a closer look at the data, it's clear that Nintendo is dominating. On the hardware front the DS sold more than any other platform with 485K units, followed by the Wii with 335K units. The PS2 once again outsold the Xbox 360, 295K vs. 228K. Meanwhile, the PS3 sold a disappointing 127K, far below analysts' estimate of 200K. In fact, the old GBA even outsold the PS3, with 136K. Sony's PSP managed to sell 176K. Finally, trailing the pack (essentially on life support) was the GameCube with 24K.
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1. Crackdown (Xbox 360) – Microsoft – 427K
2. Wii Play w/ remote (Wii) – Nintendo – 371K
3. Diddy Kong Racing (DS) – Nintendo – 262K
4. Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (Wii) – Nintendo – 130K
5. Guitar Hero 2 w/ guitar (PS2) – Activision – 130K
6. Gears of War (Xbox 360) – Microsoft – 119K
7. Major League Baseball 2K7 (Xbox 360) – Take-Two – 113K
8. Lost Planet: Extreme Condition (Xbox 360) – Capcom – 111K
9. WarioWare: Smooth Moves (Wii) – Nintendo – 109K
10. NBA Street Homecourt (Xbox 360) – Electronic Arts – 102K

Analyst: Next-Gen Underperforming; PS3 Price Cut 'Critical'

With PS3 sales not meeting expectations, at this point Patel said that a price cut on the hardware is "critical," but the analyst does not foresee that happening until at least the start of Sony's next fiscal year (April), and even that is a "long-shot," Patel stated.

To put the PS3's situation in context, Patel said, "PS3 consoles are available at retail but sales are lackluster. Its 130K units sold in February was less than Xbox 360 sales last year (160K) and even less than the original Xbox sales of 140K in Feb-2002."

Deutsche Bank was equally unimpressed with the Xbox 360, however. "Particularly disappointing is Xbox 360 HW sales of 230K in February, which puts its installed base at 5mn or in-line to the original Xbox which was an unproven console and faced substantial competition from the PS2," Patel noted.

The Power of the "Enthusiast Press"

This story began to unfold about the time I was getting stuck in a snow storm in Iowa, from which I returned and immediately left again for San Francisco and the Game Developer's Conference (GDC).

It's actually fairly impressive that Kotaku was able to pull this move, and in many respects demonstrates how the enthusiast press surrounding the gaming industry is able to exert its force not in any direct kind of way, but based upon the networks they've managed to build amongst readers, other news organizations, and other enthusiast press outlets. Kotaku is of course one of only many of these sites, but it has an impressive readership, and has also managed to get themselves well inserted.

This particular controversy is interesting. While I'm not in the business of locating rumors which to speak on, I am in the business of having a whole lot of information about where companies are going. Thank goodness I'm covered by NDA's most of the time, and I have no real interest in publishing right now everything I think I know about what's going on, which might be wrong anyway.

It's impressive what many of these organizations are able to find out about the inner workings of companies, but even more interesting the amount of respect that they are able to garner from both gamers and game developers alike.

GDC was peculiar in many ways, because there were almost two "tracks" of people who were visiting. One was the developers, and the other the press. Two very different interests, and I suspect that with the demise of E3, you're going to see a widening of the press tracks at GDC. I can only wonder what this will do for the folks interested in making games.

Sony and Kotaku Make-Up

First, I have to say thank you to all of the websites, newspapers, magazines, people who were so quick to come to our defense and supported our decision to stand by our story.

Second, I want to thank Dave Karraker, head of SCEA PR, who was big enough to call me and talk the whole thing through after this exploded.

He told me his take on the story and his frustrations and I told him mine, in the end we agreed to disagree on some level, but also decided that our readers and gamers in general would be best served if Sony and Kotaku could still play nicely together.

Sony Blackballs Kotaku (UPDATED)

The Playstation Home, we reported, would be an intriguing blending of the Mii and achievements, allowing gamers to create a virtual world for customized avatars and then decorate that space with items unlocked through game play.
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Sony's decision is disappointing, not because of what it means to Kotaku, but because of what it means to the industry.

Game Development is Hard, and Made Harder by the Manufacturers

I love it when developers get the chance to give glipses into their worlds, and Dave Perry does just that here. The truth of the matter is that in general Sony (and other console manufacturers too) need to get better about not working in secrecy for years and then introducing a console to developers a couple of months ahead of the release of the actual device.

It takes time to learn the way these systems work, and since (especially with Sony) your tools are never really that great to begin with you're fighting the machine. Sony actually released some new tools at GDC this year, which is pretty neat that they're giving tools to all licenced developers that they've kept previously for special developers, which really, is a problem. Don't do that! Of course if you're not giving out tools or hiding tools or changing tools or any of these things you're going to make it really hard for developers to make the most out of a system.

The other piece of this is that documentation and just general knowledge of how these systems work is not known or provided. Developers often have to figure out (and re-figure out) how to do things on each and every console, with each and every generation. This means that you wind up putting a ton of effort into developing systems for each console you've already developed, or hacked together on another system, because of some undocumented hardware/API issue you've encountered.

This is why it takes years to see something like God of War.

PS3's power will be untapped for years - Perry

Former Shiny Entertainment boss Dave Perry has praised Sony's PS3 hardware, describing it as "the best piece of hardware, without question" - but claims that it will be years before developers tap that power.
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"I haven't seen anything even close to what the machine's capable of doing," he claimed. "So that's the sad part for Sony - I feel really bad for them that somebody hasn't really stepped up to show us the hardware all singing, all dancing."

He attributed this under-utilisation of the machine to a common cycle in the console market, using God of War as an example of a game which finally tapped much of the power of a system which had been on the market for several years.

"The point is you're not going to get to see the PlayStation 3 for probably a couple of years, and then you're going to go, 'Wow, that's incredible.'"

Perry lays the blame for this problem squarely at the door of the hardware designers, who he believes have far too much control over the design of console systems. "This is how sad the industry is right now," he said. "If Sony thought of a way that their architecture designers could somehow add even more power for less money, but made programming a misery - actually made you just want to kill yourself - they would do it."

He believes that the way through this impasse is to allow top developers to have more input into the design of console systems, a move which he claims would help to "focus on what's important" rather than building in secondary features such as web browsers at the cost of both affordability and game functionality.

Getting Hit with the "No Sh*t" Hammer...

This is an exciting prospect for game developers. Much of my criticism of the game industry comes around inability for developers to honestly and openly communicate, and an inability to plan. Hardware road maps are a big part of this, and it was exciting to see (via GameDaily.Biz via Newsweek) that at the behest of Sony of America this might be changing. It's still got Nintendo by the neck, and in part I understand why, if they were all sharing, each new console would end up with all sorts of features of it's competitors. At the same time it tends to leave all but those developers on the extreme inside loops with these companies with their pants down come time for a change in hardware.

Apple ought to learn from this too.

Harrison: We Should Be Sharing Our Road Map

"There is a cultural thing about our approach in Japan that has to change. Our approach in Japan is, 'Once it's perfect, we'll share it with everybody else.' Whereas I think in order to engender trust in our users, we have to share some things that might be not quite perfect, but are ready to give you an indication of what's coming," Harrison explained. "So we could say, 'You know, we're not sure when it's coming, but we're going to have DVD upscaling on Playstation 3.' There you go. There's a scoop for you. In my view, we should have a slide on a Web site, or a blog. We should have [Playstation head of platform development Izumi] Kawanishi blog his road map for the Xross Media Bar for Playstation 3. I think he would probably have the biggest blog after yours in the world."

He continued, " ...we have to become more comfortable in sharing our road map. We have to get more liberal in the ways we experiment with some things. Because some things that we think are important may not be important to our consumer. Conversely, something which is lower down on our road map may be the most important thing to a consumer, unexpectedly so. And we need to be a little more open in that regard."

PS3 to Win by 2010... With no Games

I'm not really quite sure how this works. So Screen Digest finds that the PS3 will win the "console battle" but that most publishers are going to lose their shirts, "if they aren't careful." So either publishers are going to get careful in the next three years, or the PS3 is going to win with no games... Or SD is just wrong.

The thing that either they're not paying attention to or ignoring deliberately is that right now the production costs for the PS3 are the highest of the three consoles. The Wii is the lowest. So, if I'm a publisher the Wii and the 360 look good right now. I don't have to "be careful" because we've already pretty much figured out these consoles, we just need to get better at them. On the other hand we're more likely to lose our shirts on a console that is really expensive?

Seems a bit ... confused if you ask me. I suspect the correct answer to this conundrum would be that either publishers are going to get smarter and handle all three consoles better, or they're going to do the same ole and the PS3 is going to suffer the most because of the added cost for producing for the PS3. We've also seen numerous reports from Sony at the moment that price on the PS3 will not come down for two years or so, which means that apparently in 2009 to 2010 a whole boatload of cheap PS3's are going to get sold. Perhaps.

I think more likely Sony will realize their pricing mistake and lower the price. More will sell, however production costs aren't really going to change, so the real issue is publisher intelligence increasing dramatically within the next year or two.

Oddly enough this years IGDA sponsored GDC Developers Rant is actually stacked with publisher types. It will be interesting to see what they've got to say on this.

Report: Small Portion of Next-Gen Titles to be Profitable

If publishers aren't careful, they could be left with empty pockets on most next-gen game projects. A new report from Screen Digest has found that a tiny proportion of next-gen titles will achieve profitability. Also, Screen Digest believes Sony's PS3 will win the console battle by 2010.

Iwata Cautious About Early Wii Success

It's amusing that Iwata despite the Wii selling like hotcakes, is aware that software sells hardware more than anything else. It's at the same moment you hear from Sony top people, "We've Got a Better Machine & We're Going to Win" but they sure don't have much software to go with it. Not to mention that Sony isn't doing much to make developers lives easier... And anyway, isn't the PSP's biggest problem not enough games?

"Any system will sell well following launch," Iwata remarked, "but there will definitely come a time where it will stop selling. Even the DS hit a rough spell after selling 1.5 million units a month after launch. The flame was really lit a year after launch, after Nintendogs and Brain Age became big hits. With the Wii, we have to make good software just as we did with the DS."

User Created Content vs. User Created GAMES

I saw the following post, and thought two main things.

1. User created content is WAAAY different than what Microsoft has done with XNA Express. [and]
2. Anyone that compares Second Life or any other user created content with actually opening up the development environments for consoles needs to have their web-publishing privileges revoked.

While it is exciting to see Sony considering the value of users being able to create content and work with and within games to make their own worlds, art, etc. is powerful, it is nothing compared to the ability to create new games. I think it has been obvious thus far on Sony's stance on "home brew" games with their treatment of it on the PSP. At the same time I suppose there is some trouble there, because a lot of the "home brew" interest actually comes from people wanting to run MAME on their PSP rather than making new games.

Harrison Predicts Major Role for User Created Content on the PS3:

"I have to be really careful not to give the game away because we're keeping this secret, but don't think about it in terms of maps, think of it in terms of behaviours, environments, physics, rules... All the tools that you could want, but in a very consumer friendly way."
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News that Sony is considering how to make use of content creation facilities is likely to draw comparison to Microsoft's XNA Studio Express suite, which is already up and running in beta, and will soon allow users to make their own playable Xbox 360 games using simple tools - albeit for the cost of a subscription fee.

GH on the Wii Too I Suspect!

Activision has long been a supporter of multiple platforms. I suspect that you'll see GH in a revised incarnation on the Wii, Xbox 360, and possibly later on the PS3. The difficult component of this is that you have to have different connectors for each of your distributed guitars. I also presume that there will be demand for wireless controllers on systems that support it. All three platforms will support network connectivity, so perhaps you'll be able to purchase new songs, a long coveted feature. The trouble is, where will you put them all?

GameDaily BIZ: Guitar Hero Goes Multi-Platform

According to numerous Internet reports, Activision's CEO and Chairman Robert Kotick revealed that Guitar Hero will release on every format deemed "significant." This was revealed during a keynote address at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia XV Conference. It was not announced which platforms Guitar Hero will be coming to specifically, but the release will apparently come in 2007.

This announcement comes on the heels of rumors that state that Guitar Hero will be coming to the Xbox 360 in early 2007. RedOctane, the game's publisher, has yet to release an official statement on the matter. Guitar Hero II will release on PS2 in November 2006.