Monday, January 2, 2006
Quake II for the PSP
Quake II has been ported to the Sony PSP. Older Quake games are available under a free software license, and as a consequence they find themselves being ported to every platform under the sun, from smart watches to handheld game-consoles like the PSP. Unfortunately, to run Quake II, you need to do battle with worse monsters than those of the Quake franchise: you have to fight it out with Sony's unbelievable business-practices.
Out of the box, the PSP will only run software that has been authorized by Sony, and it contains countermeasures to stop "homebrew" programs like the Quake II port from running. Every couple weeks, enterprising software authors find a way to subvert the PSP's ban on "unauthorized" software, and Sony promptly responds by reducing the value of its device by forcing its customers to downgrade their device and reinstate the restriction.
So Quake II will run on a PSP, for now. But if you buy authorized games to play alongside of it, expect some of them to sneakily re-break your device and lock it out. Which leaves you with an interesting choice: in order to get the most out of your PSP, you should really only play older games or ones that have been created by homebrew writers; buying your games new from Sony is a one-way ticket to tech-support hell.
Now, that's a business-model.
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(via Wonderland)
posted by Cory Doctorow at 10:34:09 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments
