So I have been clocking a few hours into Atlus’ horror puzzler Catherine on my PS3 because Rie Tanaka was tweeting about it and I am easily influenced by Twitter. Surprisingly, it is actually not a bad game, but it takes a lot of patience to overcome the rage-inducing learning curve, and ultimately at the end of the day the puzzle stages are not what people play the game for, or maybe that is just me.

The story is about Vincent, an average shmok, “accidentally” cheating on his girlfriend Katherine with a mysterious hot blonde girl named Catherine.

He starts having nightmares of himself “falling” which are depicted through a series of puzzles in which he has to climb to the top of a tower of stone blocks by moving blocks around in a certain way and escape death before the entire wall falls layer by layer into oblivion. This video should explain everything:

Due to the nature of the puzzle mechanics, a wrong move can totally block your progress and force you to restart the whole stage, ala Sokoban. This can be frustrating when it happens a few times right at the end of a super difficult boss fight. Also it’s rather hard to concentrate on the puzzle when some grotesque monstrosity from hell constantly distracts you with its inhuman howls of rage and infinite despair. D:

Sweet dreams are made of these

When Vincent is not busy having nightmares, he spends his time in a bar called the “Stray Sheep” where he talks to friends and strangers about his love troubles and where most story events take place. This is actually my favourite part of the game because it kind of reminds me of Shenmue (in a very distant and vague way). Vincent’s conversation with strangers he meet in the bar are often linked to the events from his nightmares which he has no recollection of while he is awake. The dialogues have a kind of Kafkaesque quality to their writing.

Some of the story is told through anime

But most of it is rendered in cel-shaded 3D

The title girl Catherine has a very sexy character design and is basically in charge of fan service in the game. She is playful, flirtatious and light on commitments while Vincent’s girlfriend Katherine is kind of a drag and constantly goes passive-aggressive on him over his inability to commit.

Y U NO MARRY ME?

Both of them send emails to Vincent’s mobile phone and the player can customize the replies from a few options. Dialogue choices throughout the game affect an unexplained good-evil meter which presumably has some kind of an effect on the final ending. I always pick the cheating-bastard option because I want to see more Catherine fan service. I’m sure this sentence will come back to haunt me someday.

The real 3D version

The attention to details in the story mode is quite cool. The email gimmick and the illusion of freedom in the way you choose to spend your time in the bar make you feel like you are actually living out Vincent’s life and to some extent make you feel like you deserve to be sent to hell in the nightmares for being such a lying cheating bastard (or not). The game in general also has plenty of style and atmosphere.

You can actually tilt the cutscene camera using the right analog stick ala MGS4… It doesn’t help <_<

I especially like that part in-between stages where Vincent is asked by an disembodied voice questions such as, “Do you think that marriage is the beginning or the end of your life?” After you give your answer, the game uploads it to a central server and shows you a pie chart of actual collated responses from other players sorted by gender. It’s an interesting idea that serves no gameplay purpose but seems oddly appropriate for the material.

The what-the-fuck-omg-shit in-game moment

So yeah, it’s a weird game. The puzzles are so hard even on easy mode that the creators rushed out a 1.01 patch that adds a super easy mode and unlimited retries. But it’s pretty fun overall and I can’t really explain why.

Catherine will be released stateside this summer. English trailer is up on YouTube.

Lots of exciting things happened in the PS3 scene the past few days. The aftermath is that the entire PS3 encryption scheme has been irrevocably cracked and broken, with no possibility of a firmware fix, due to a rookie cryptography mistake made by Sony who is now crying in a corner.

Let’s take a look at the itinerary of events.

The Story

First, a little background.

Sony excluded Other OS (Linux) support from its new PS3 Slim models for unknown reasons. This annoyed some people but did not cause too much stir because hackers who wanted Linux still had their old PS3s.

In his attempt to restore Other OS functionality to the PS3 Slim, George Hotz, a famed iPhone hacker who has a slight ego issue, discovered an exploit in the PS3’s Other OS system that may lead to enabling of piracy. Sony made some legal noise and took the drastic measure of removing Linux support from all PS3 consoles through the 3.21 firmware update. This is illegal in Europe and probably other countries with decent consumer protection laws, but no substantial legal challenges have succeeded thus far. This move also pissed off a lot of hackers who previously ignored the PS3 due to its existing Linux support. George Hotz disappeared like a little girl without releasing his claimed exploit because he was afraid of law suits.

Months later when the uproar had died down, the PS3 was suddenly cracked using a USB exploit by a (presumed-to-be) Chinese hacker group who released the hack commercially as the PSJailbreak. Out of the blue, PS3 homebrew and piracy communities sprung to life. The technique was refined and made open source by various individual and community efforts such as PSGroove and PSFreedom and ported to numerous devices.

However, Sony released the 3.50 and 3.55 firmware to block the exploit. The community remained on 3.41 and no real breakthrough was made after that, with the small exception of a “downgrader” released by the same mysterious PSJailbreak team, which was also subsequently cloned by other jailbreak manufacturers and open sourced. While the downgrader allowed 3.50 and 3.55 firmwares to revert to 3.41 using USB protocols copied from Sony’s official maintenance tools, it does nothing to allow 3.41 firmwares to run new games such as Gran Turismo 5 which are signed by a new encryption key present only in 3.50 and newer firmwares.

The Breakthrough

On 29th Dec 2010, a collaboration of hackers called fail0verflow unveiled a groundbreaking discovery at the 27th Chaos Communication Congress (27C3) hacking conference held in Berlin. By observing files and runtimes in the PS3 using processes made possible by the PSJailbreak exploit, the team discovered that Sony had made numerous mistakes in the design of the PS3’s much-hyped security architecture. You can watch their presentation on YouTube and download their slides here.

Towards the end of their presentation, they revealed the most fatal flaw in the system: Sony had failed to correctly implement the cryptography scheme they used to sign their ELF executables (PS3’s equivalent of an EXE). The encryption scheme required the generation of a new random number each time a signature is created, but Sony’s implementation uses the same “random” number every time. This made it a constant instead of an unknown variable, reducing the number of unknowns from two (private key and random number) to one and making it mathematically possible to derive the encryption keys via algebra, which is what fail0verfow did. They published their method but not the actual keys they obtained through it.

The Keys

Almost immediately after fail0verflow’s disclosure, George Hotz made a sudden grand entrance back into the scene and released the PS3’s metldr keys he discovered by using an undisclosed exploit to dump the “metldr”, which fail0verflow did not achieve, and then applying fail0verflow’s method to recover the private encryption key. I am not completely clear on this part, but I gather that the metldr is some kind of bootloader the PS3 uses to call up the higher-level functions like the Game OS.

The metldr key is a very low level encryption key embedded in the PS3 hardware that can then be used to decrypt higher level keys found in the Game OS firmware that are used to sign actual games. Immediately following this announcement, community members of the PS3 scene used the metldr key to decrypt and post every single encryption keys used in every PS3 firmware version.

The Aftermath

With these keys, it is now possible for anyone to sign any PS3 ELF executable as if he were Sony and there is no reason for any PS3, modded or otherwise, to reject the signed files.

The immediate effect is of course homebrew. Anyone can now create applications for the PS3 and run them without using PSJailbreak.

The next obvious outcome is of course piracy. Since all PS3 games can now be decrypted, it is trivial to decrypt new games such as Gran Turismo 5 using the 3.55 key and re-encrypt them with the 3.41 key so that they can be played on an exploited PS3 running older firmware. Indeed, fixed EBOOT.BIN for the frequently-requested Gran Turismo 5 was one of the first scene releases following the breakthrough.

Going forward, it is likely that the current piracy methods will be greatly streamlined and such manual patching processes will no longer be necessary. This is because the keys allow hackers to decrypt all official Sony firmware updates and use them as the basis for creating custom firmwares similar to those prevalent in the PSP piracy scene. Since these custom updates will be signed with Sony’s official keys, even non-modded PS3s will accept them without complaints. The first custom firmware for the PS3 came out just days later and allows users to install homebrew without using the PSJailbreak exploit.

In the next few months, there will likely be non-stop releases and refinements of PS3 custom firmwares, amazing homebrews (an XMBC port maybe?) and streamlined piracy tools.

An amusing side effect of all these is that PSP’s private encryption keys are also completely exposed and they have been used to implement the HEN exploit on the newest 3000-series and PSP Go hardware running 6.31/6.35 firmware. The keys were presumably being used by the PS3 to play PSP Minis games. Apparently, Sony was very confident of the PS3’s protection scheme.

The Conclusion

For Sony, there is no way to put the genie back into the bottle. The metldr key cannot be revoked through a firmware update and changing it will require new hardware. But a new hardware revision is utterly meaningless, since current PS3 consoles (with their metldr key exposed) must presumably be able to run all future PS3 games and firmwares. As a result, future game- and OS-level encryption keys will forever remain vulnerable to reverse engineering, unless Sony takes the extremely drastic action of breaking games compatibility with current PS3s.

The conventional wisdom has always been that console-hacking is motivated mainly by piracy. This idea is being challenged by the case study of the PS3, a console which remained secured for years despite what we now know is a utterly broken security architecture. The piracy motivation has always been there, but the pirates apparently did not possess the technical expertise needed to make the breakthrough.

The explanation proposed by fail0verflow, which they say apply to themselves, is that highly motivated and technically competent hackers were initially not interested in cracking the PS3 protection scheme because it ran Linux out of the box. Efforts to crack it by capable individuals only began after Sony excluded Other OS from the PS3 Slim and subsequently removed it from all existing PS3s through a firmware update.

Looking at the flurry of activities in recent months, less than a year after Other OS was removed, there appears to be some truth in that explanation.

Sony has completely lost the battle. The war will continue with the PS4.

It’s been just over a month since the sudden debut of the world’s first PS3 mod device. The original release was purely commercial and overpriced (around 150 USD for what is essentially a simple USB development board in a casing), and as a result it was quickly made obsolete by cheaper (and free) alternatives). Still, its spirit lives on in the countless clones that have since flooded the market and we owe the original creators for the breakthrough. If only they weren’t such greedy bastards.

Since the breakthrough, a PS3 homebrew community has blossomed overnight and, though it still has a long way to go, significant progress has been made. It’s really like the early days of PSP’s 1.5 firmware. Here’s a quick summary of the current state of PS3 homebrew.

Jailbreak Method

The method of jailbreaking itself has not fundamentally changed since the original PS Jailbreak was unveiled a month ago. The essential steps are:

1. Have a PS3 (slim or original) with firmware 3.41.
2. Switch off and on the PS3’s main power.
3. Plug in the jailbreak USB device (this comes in many possible forms).
4. Press the PS3’s power button followed immediately by the eject button.
5. Jailbreak device does its magic.
6. PS3 starts up in debug mode, allowing you to install and run all unsigned code.

The general idea is that Sony uses a proprietary dongle to repair and reflash bricked PS3s at their service centres, much like the Pandora battery for PSPs. The PS3 looks for such a dongle when the eject button is pressed immediately after powering on. The role of the jailbreak device is to emulate a USB hub with a USB device plugged into it that shares the same device ID as Sony’s service dongle. It doesn’t actually work as a service dongle, but it uses this access to execute some exploits that put the PS3 into debug mode. The exact payload used is described here for those who can understand it.

The jailbreak device itself has grown to include a whole variety of reprogrammable USB devices thanks to the PSGroove and PSFreedom projects. The list of compatible devices include:

• Nokia N900
• Palm Pre
• Archos 5 IMT
• Dingoo
• TI-84+ calculator
• iPhone 2G and 3G and iPod touch 1G
• MP3 players running Rockbox
• Various Android phones, including the major ones like Droid, Hero, Desire, Legend, Dream, Nexus One
• Various USB development boards, including Teensy, AT90USBKEY, Minimus AVR USB

This is of course not an exhaustive list. In addition to homemade solutions, there are various dedicated jailbreak devices, some of which are reprogrammable with a PC, such as PS3 Key and X3 Jailbreak.

Running the Jailbreak (TI-84 Plus)

I am using a TI-84 Plus because it’s the only compatible device I have on hand. I’ll probably be getting a dedicated dongle (PS3 Key in my case) soon because it’s somewhat troublesome to run the corresponding programme on the calculator each time I start up my PS3, plus the calculator requires four AAA batteries… Here’s how the process looks like:

Run the installed programme on the TI-84+

Ready to switch on PS3

Eject button pressed

Debug mode enabled, allowing you to install arbitrary .pkg files

A FTP server for managing files on the PS3’s internal HDD, an example of a homebrew currently available

Backup Manager

Let’s face it: most people who jailbreak their PS3 are going to play pirated (“backup”) games. The Backup Manager is the tool that lets you do that. Indeed, it was the very first homebrew released for the PS3 and it was made by the original creators of the PS Jailbreak.

Backup Manager, used to rip and load games off internal or external HDDs

That said, there are some very compelling legitimate reasons to use the Backup Manager over Blu-ray. Loading games off the HDD is many times faster than loading games off Blu-ray. The reduced load-time is especially noticeable in games like Bayonetta which suffer from extremely long loading screens. Loading a stage in Bayonetta from the internal HDD takes less than 10 seconds. Using the Backup Manager also reduces wear and tear of the Blu-ray drive. Given that DVD drive failure was the number one cause of PS2 mortality, this is an attractive advantage.

The Manager works by ripping wholesale the entire folder structure on the game Blu-ray disc onto either the internal HDD or an external USB HDD. This means that it will not produce an ISO image, but rather a folder of files and subfolders. There is currently no way to run a game off a Blu-ray ISO image, which is encrypted.

Backup Manager menu. Note the lack of unicode support resulting in Tales of Vesperia having a blank title (still works otherwise)

Upon loading a game, the Manager exits to the main menu. The current game disc is replaced by the loaded backup, much like in very early UMD loaders for the PSP

The PS3 does not support NTFS for external media and only accepts FAT. Since FAT only supports files up to 4GB in size, this may be problematic. However, since the Manager rips games into folders instead of a single ISO image, this is only a problem if the size of a single file in a game exceeds 4GB (usually a movie file) and it is not as common as you may imagine.

The PS3’s proprietary internal file system supports files of any size (at least for current-day purposes) and therefore has better compatibility with games. This serves as an incentive to upgrade your internal 2.5″ HDD. Furthermore, loading games off the internal HDD is significantly faster than loading games through the USB interface. The internal HDD also has better games compatibility, no doubt as a result of the difference in load time. A comprehensive list of compatible games can be found on Google Docs.

The first release of the Backup Manager requires any legitimate Blu-ray disc to be in the drive in order for backups to work, much like the first-generation PSP UMD loaders. A new release removes this requirement but appears to have poorer game compatibility.

Homebrew

Currently, the PS3 homebrew scene is still in its infancy. There are no comprehensive development environments or programming guides available and development is largely carried out by dedicated long-time veterans in the console homebrew community. The use of Sony’s official development kit to compile homebrew programmes also brings legality into question.

But still, impressive progress has been made in the span of one month. There are various proofs of concept such as Pong, a port of SNES9X SNES emulator, a port of NullDC Dreamcast emulator, a port of Yabause Saturn Emulator, a file manager, an FTP server, and various tools for PS3 development such as a registry editor.

The FTP server in particular is a god-sent because it allows direct access to the PS3’s internal HDD.

blackb0xâ€s FTP Server running

PS3’s root folder accessed using Filezilla

Folders containing ripped games

I suspect the next homebrew breakthrough will be a full Linux distro. Sony previously removed the PS3’s OtherOS Linux support in firmware 3.21 due to concerns over Linux being used as a potential vector for exploiting PS3’s anti-piracy protection. This pissed off a lot of people who actually used the OtherOS for things like distributed computing. I am sure a successful Linux port would be too delicious an “up yours” for the dedicated hackers out there to ignore.

The Future of PS3 Jailbreak

Current jailbreak solutions offer no fundamental improvement over the original PS Jailbreak. The exploit used only works in PS3 firmware version 3.41 and older and no new exploit has yet been uncovered for firmwares 3.42 (which was released with the sole purpose of blocking the exploit) and 3.50 (which went one step further by blocking all unauthorized USB devices, including unlicensed third-party controllers).

Much like the early PSP homebrew scene’s reliance on PSP firmware 1.5, current PS3 homebrew development appears to be confined to 3.41. This problem was solved for the PSP with the discovery of new buffer overflow exploits in later firmware revisions and eventually by the Pandora battery hardware solution and the development of custom firmwares capable of spoofing official firmware versions. There is no guarantee that the same will happen with the PS3 due to the complexity of its hardware, but there is no indication that it is impossible either. We can only wait and see.

PS3 Key, one of the more reputable jailbreak solutions currently available

For now, using the Backup Manager and homebrew solutions requires that you do not update your firmware beyond 3.41. This means that you will not be able to log on to PSN, but your PS3 can remain connected to the Internet as long as you disable auto-updating. Games released after September will also start to require firmware 3.42 or newer, which will pose a problem if no solution is found in the long run.

The Xbox 360 and Wii were successfully modded a long time ago and both have now developed more sophisticated jailbreak solutions than the initial exploits. If the same applies for the PS3, future developments will likely see the release of firmware loaders that allow the user to switch between different firmware revisions or custom firmwares that are capable of fooling the PSN and version-checkers that come with games.

However, there is no guarantee for this due to the PS3’s notoriously complex Cell architecture and the fact that it took three years to even produce one viable exploit. On the bright side, should such a solution come to be, most current jailbreak devices are easily re-programmable using a PC and you won’t have to pay for new mods.

Conclusion

I’ve been following the development of the PS3 jailbreak since the first batch of working samples was quietly mailed out to modchip vendors by the secretive people behind PS Jailbreak and subsequently reverse engineered by the community. This article serves as a summary of all the important milestones that have transpired so far.

If you are looking for a more instructional article, please look through PS3 Hacks or PSFreedom.

So, I caved and bought a second-hand PS3 Slim for S$300 (about 220 USD), partly because the PS3 has finally been successfully modded with a hacked debugging dongle reminiscent of PSP’s Pandora battery. (I am a cheapskate…) The awesome part is that my ancient Dell monitor has secret HDCP-via-DVI support through a HDMI>DVI converter and displays 1080p perfectly, so I don’t have to wander out of my room into the great unknown that is my living room to forage for a Barvia.

I finally get to play that (second-hand) copy of FFXIII I bought in Japan five months ago for cheap. Having skipped right passed all the Final Fantasies released during the PS2 generation (because I am such a cheapskate that I didn’t buy a PS2 until the PS3 was released), FFXIII comes as quite a huge leap forward from my perspective. I’m a FFVIII guy, so all this tech futuristic stuff is just right up my alley. After all, there’s no real difference between magic and sufficiently advanced technology.

Anyway, some first impressions after sitting through the tutorials.

There’s something about Japanese society that keeps producing these utopia-turn-dystopia stories, like how Chinese producers love to talk about the Warring States Period. The former is a rather pessimistic view of how Japan’s material-rich society is but an illusion that will eventually be its own downfall, while the latter is a constant reminder of why mainlanders prefer strong leadership to individualistic ideals of democracy. But I digress.

Story

I just started playing the game, so I’m going to extrapolate what I think is going on based on the first generic corridor Lightning runs through, using my keen plot sense horned by years of studying anime modern Japanese visual culture stereotypes. This is what I have so far:

We have the Cocoon (obvious name is obvious), a floating spherical utopia — that looks suspiciously like a Death Star — in the sky where humans lived in peace for hundreds of years. (I’m guessing this is a metaphor for Japan and the sheltered lives the Japanese live.) Then we have the fal’Cie, some kind of non-human supernatural beings who built Cocoon for humans. (Uncle Sam?) I’m playing the Japanese version and the katakana for fal’Cie is exactly the same as that of Farsi, which is the Persian language they speak in Iran. Interestingly, Iran just started fuelling its first nuclear reactor. This is all linked somehow… I just need my conspiracy tin-foil hat to think.

Cocoon hovers over a planet called Pulse, which in kanji is rendered as 下界 (underworld) but read as Pulse. Apparently all manner of wild magical beasts roam free on Pulse. There are also non-friendly fal’Cie living there who apparently want to invade/destroy Cocoon for unknown reasons (probably because they are bored of frolicking around the grasslands). The government of Cocoon is called 聖府 (holy government), which is a pun of the Japanese world for government 政府 and has a decidedly less punny English name — Sanctum.

I’m going out on a limb here and guess that the fal’Cie from Pulse is trying to destroy Cocoon for humanity’s own good and the Sanctum, though ostensibly trying to protect Cocoon’s citizen, is actually a corrupt evil organization hell-bent on preserving some kind of status quo for its own nefarious purposes.

Sanctum is probably demonizing the underworld to stop people from realizing how awesome it is to go out. It’s basically a conspiracy to turn its citizens into hikkikomori. The moral of the story at the end will be that the great outdoors is an awesome place and we should all go out of our room and roam free in the wild like savages. Well, I’m not falling for it.

But seriously, I’m still running straight paths down endless corridors in the game, so I’m just making shit up based on a few paragraphs of flavour text in the game menu. Don’t bother correcting me either. I possess a 10kΩ resistance against spoilers.

Graphics

Graphics-wise, I feel a bit conflicted. While FFVII and FFVIII offered a substantially differentiated experience for their time, it’s a whole lot harder to be impressed nowadays, particularly since the PS3 and the 360 run on three-year-old technology comparable to today’s budget PC graphics. I’m not holding my breath, but I did like the train sequence at the start of the game. That is to say, the graphics and cinematics do have their moments, and it’s nice to not have that the immersion-breaking back-and-forth between curvy FMV cutscenes and blocky in-game graphics for which I remember the PS1.

Gameplay

So far, there’s really nothing much to speak of in terms of gameplay. I hope it gets more complicated than facerolling on the controller’s O button and running in straight lines.

I kind of get turned off by games that require insane min-maxing to win, so I should be happy. But I’m kind of worried that FFXIII goes too far in the opposite direction. Maybe it’s because I haven’t run through enough straight corridors to get to the good part yet.

Conclusion

…Okay, this is turning out to be one negative-sounding first impression. It’s actually not that bad. The high production value basically guarantees a minimum level of quality enjoyment. And if all else fails, there’s still Lightning’s Japanese voice-over by Maaya Sakamoto. She keeps me hanging on. But if you ask me whether I would still play through FFXIII if the Japanese version didn’t exist, I would be hard-pressed to give you an answer.

Maaya doesn’t just tip the balance, she breaks it.

PS3 launched some hours ago in Japan and, surprise! Thousands of people queued up for it. If you follow any gaming blogs at all, you’d think that everyone in the world hates PS3 and can’t wait to fap (to) their Wii. But judging by the turnout today, I think we can safely say that the bad publicity Sony has been getting is not going to determine the success (or failure) of the PS3. The product is.

Sony screwed up quite a lot of things, such as the mass production of blue diodes needed for Blu-ray drives, leading to a massive shortage of PS3. Then again, it happened with PS2 too. Europe got shafted as usual.

Crazy Brits who paid £750 to queue up in Tokyo for a PS3. From Akiba-blog.

It also took quite long for Sony to finalize the PS3, delaying its release from spring to end of the year and giving 360 a one-year head start. Then again, it happened with PS2 too. How many of you own(ed) a Dreamcast? (I do, BTW.)

People are complaining that PS3 and 360 offer no innovation compared to Wii. Then again, there were plenty of innovative games for the PS2 without having to revamp the whole control scheme. It’s a console and what I want for a console is to be a able to lie down on a couch while playing it. If I wanted to play games that required cursor movement and targeting, I’d be playing it on my PC.

Japanese people love to queue, it’s in their blood. From Akiba-blog.

The graphics on PS3 and 360 look good. Metal Gear Solid 4 and Gears of War look like sex. Wii’s graphics are NOT good. “But graphics are not important! Gameplay is!” – Bullshit. Graphics are not as important, but that doesn’t mean they are unimportant. There is absolutely no reason why you have to sacrifice good graphics for gameplay. You can have them both!

Now, assuming that Wii, PS3 and 360 end up splitting the market three-way and they want to find ways to gain an edge over one another, will it be easier for Sony/Microsoft to copy Wii’s gameplay by releasing a remote control add-on, or will it be easier for Nintendo to magically upgrade Wii’s graphics? I think the answer is obvious.

Queues at Yodabashi-Akiba hit 1,400 people. From Akiba-blog.

Sony’s controller already has motion sensing. Clearly, Sony is hedging its bets. On the other hand, Nintendo is placing all its chips on one gimmicky feature alone. I’m not sure if third-party game developers can really utilize such a feature in the way Nintendo intended. Just look at Battalion Wars 2, it’s using the Wii-mote for nothing more than a mouse pointer.

It’s tempting to compare PS3 and Wii to PSP and NDS. Nintendo DS is outselling PSP by at least three to one, even though PSP has the better graphics. But there is a huge difference between the PSP and the PS3 that this comparison fails to account for. The reason why PSP failed (relatively speaking) was because of its lack of good games. PSP is a dumping ground for full-priced PS1 and PS2 ports that people have already played 100 times before. PS3 is not. It makes a huge difference.

Danny Choo, his PS3 preorder secured, terrorizes the queue.

Of course, the high price point of the PS3 can very well be its undoing. If Blu-ray manages to take off like DVD did, then PS3’s selling price will be justified. But I doubt it. DVD offered significant improvements over VHS while Blu-ray doesn’t look all that different without a HDTV. Most people do not own a HDTV. I’m sure either Blu-ray or HD-DVD will eventually replace DVD as the de facto format for movies, but whether that happens soon enough to make the Blu-ray drive in the PS3 worth the money remains to be seen.

If Blu-ray flops, then Sony would’ve done better to use dual-layered DVDs for PS3 games, especially if the supply bottleneck and the high cost price are really caused by the Blu-ray drive. Then again, if Sony did that, it would be the same as burying Blu-ray alive. Sony chose to take the risk with PS3, a risk that Microsoft avoided by choosing conventional DVD over HD-DVD for 360 games. Again, it’s still too early to say who was right.

Metal Gear Solid 4

No matter what the Digg and Joystiq crowds are saying, Sony still has plenty of fight left. Just ask those people who spent last night queuing.

Here is some Christmas Day good news for you! IT Media has announced some details on the Blu-Ray region coding and it holds a nice surprise. Japan, North America, and East Asia will all be sharing one region code. This potentially means that American gamers will be able to import Japanese PS3 Blu-Ray games, and will definately be able to import Japanese Blu-Ray Anime/Movie titles without any hassle. Europe unfortunately will be sharing a region code with Africa so likely not much cross-gaming there. Sorry Europe, looks like you will be getting the gaming bone again. Oh and Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all from all of us here at GR!

Depending on their definition of “East Asia”, this could be a good thing for Singapore. ^^ No need for modchips for play any import PS3 games that matter. Europe, which has the same DVD region code as Japan, has been shafted this time round.

I can’t seem to find the original source article on IT Media, but if this is true, it could seal the deal for PS3. (Well, except in Europe…)