Stir: Console Hacks And Mods

Chris Forbis | MensaDad | Twitter |

Modding / Hacking of consoles has been in the forefront of the news in the past year.  The PS3 was succesfully modded, the 3DS was jailbroken soon after its release in Japan and Microsoft continues to police Xbox Live for modded hardware.  Here are just a few of the headlines and coverage from this past year:

• Lock and Load – Episode 45
• PS3 Has Finally Been Modded
• Nintendo 3DS Hacked Already?
• Kinect Has Been Hacked
• Sony Statement: Hackers Will Be Banned
• Stir: The BanHammer

When refer to modding I am specifically talking about modifying the console hardware or software so it will perform differently than the manufacture intended.  I’m not referring to case modding – which I am convinced is art and I have displayed several examples in the inset pictures.  I’m focusing on running homebrew software or rigging the hardware so copied or pirated games can be played.  While not all modding is related directly to piracy, piracy relies on modding, and therefore used as a profiling flag to detect pirates.  But is this fair?

When you purchase a gaming console, you own the hardware (the physical machine).  What you do not own is the software or operating system that makes the machine a usable gaming console.  The software is technically licensed for your use with a long list of provision that you agree to in order to use the software.  These provisions are in the small print that was probably disposed of as soon as it came out of the box.  Here are some of the terms you have agreed to:

PlayStation 3 (Via Sony)

1. LICENSE GRANT

Subject to the terms and conditions of this Agreement, all System Software is licensed to users solely for personal, non-commercial use on the PS3™ system in the country in which the PS3™ system was designed by SCE to operate. To the extent permitted by applicable law, your rights to use or access the current version of the System Software will cease upon installation of a newer version of the System Software onto your PS3™ system, whether such installation occurs through manual or automatic download by SCE through SCE’s online network, or otherwise. SCE does not grant any license to System Software obtained by users in any manner other than through SCE’s authorized distribution methods. Your use or access to open source software or freeware included with the System Software is subject to additional terms and conditions set forth in the instruction manual or documentation for the PS3™ system or at http://www.scei.co.jp/ps3-license/index.html. Such additional terms are hereby incorporated by reference. You do not have any ownership rights or interests in the System Software. All intellectual property rights therein belong to SCE and its licensors, and all use or access to such System Software shall be subject to the terms of this Agreement and all applicable copyright and intellectual property laws. Except as expressly granted in this Agreement, SCE and its licensors reserve all rights, interests and remedies.

Also -

7. TERMINATION

If SCE determines that you have violated the terms of this Agreement, SCE may take all actions to protect its interests, including denial of any services such as warranty services and repair services provided for your PS3™ system and termination of your access to PlayStation®Network, implementation of upgrades or devices intended to discontinue unauthorized use, or reliance on any other remedial efforts as reasonably necessary to prevent the use of a modified PS3™ system, or any pirated material or equipment. SCE and its licensors reserve the right to bring legal action in the event of a violation of this Agreement. SCE reserves the right to participate in any government or private legal action or investigation relating to your conduct.

Xbox 360 (Via Microsoft)

2.License

(a) The Software is licensed to You, not sold. You are licensed to use the Software only as pre-installed in Your Xbox 360 S or Authorized Accessory, and updated by Microsoft from time to time. You may not copy or reverse engineer the Software.

(b) As conditions to this Software license, You agree that:

(i) You will use only Authorized Accessories and Authorized Games with Your Xbox 360 S or Authorized Accessory. You will not use Unauthorized Accessories or Unauthorized Games. They may not work or may stop working permanently after a Software update.

(ii) You will not use or install any Unauthorized Software. If You do, Your Xbox 360 S or Authorized Accessory may stop working permanently at that time or after a later Software update.

(iii) You will not attempt to defeat or circumvent any Xbox 360 S or Authorized Accessory technical limitation, security, or anti-piracy system. If You do, Your Xbox 360 S or Authorized Accessory may stop working permanently at that time or after a later Software update.

(iv) Microsoft may use technical measures, including Software updates, to prevent use of Unauthorized Accessories and Unauthorized Games, and to protect the technical limitations, security, and anti-piracy systems in the Xbox 360 S or Authorized Accessory.

(v) Microsoft may update the Software from time to time without further notice to You, for example, to update any technical limitation, security, or anti-piracy system.

For all the complaining that goes 0n about users being banned or consoles being bricked or even someone being sued for making software available that directly violates these contracts between the corporations and the consumer,  the rules are spelled out clearly enough.  And yes, you agreed to these terms simply by using the system software on the console.

Now, Sony doesn’t just go after anyone who uses their PS3 for more than just gaming.  In fact, the military has a supercomputer (The Condor Cluster) build from a matrix of 1,760 interconnected PS3 systems.  I’m guessing they are not running the standard system software on Condor – and have probably been banned from PSN. <Grin>

I moved from PC gaming to console gaming which gave everyone the same platform – and I’m good with that – and I won’t be jacking around with my console in order to bypass anti-piracy measures – I’ll buy my games.  It’s a small price to pay to be able to pop in a game, jump on-line and play with my friends without trying to out hack them or stay ahead game updates (the early days of Diablo II come to mind).  I’ll stay operationally stock – but I wouldn’t be opposed to having this sick Iron Man Xbox 360.

All of my inset photos are of some fantastic gaming console case mods I have admired and chose to share with you.  If you want to know more about any of the case mods pictured here, links to all of my sources are at the bottom of this post.

Continue to see what the Platform Nation writer’s had to say

My first experiences with PC gaming were with text based games.  If the text based Star Trek was not the first then it was Zork or Bedlam on the Tandy CoCo.  Back in those days (1980-ish), many times games would be published for free in gaming magazines.  Literally – the source code (usually in some form of BASIC) would consume page after page and all of it would have to be hand-typed into the computer.  Since I was already a computer geek, it worked out great.  I got to play games and mess with programming all at the same time – even at school.

My next chapter of PC gaming was closer to what we think of today as Video Games.  Ken and Roberta Roberts had this little company called Sierra On-Line and I gladly spend hundreds of hours playing nearly every Sierra title that came out.  The Space Quest series was my favorite but Kings Quest, Police Quest and Leisure Suit Larry were all among the very best games at the time.  Since audio was very simplistic on computers at the time, MIDI support was the big advance in game music.  I had a Roland MT-32 connected via a MIDI controller to my PC and the music sounded amazing.

Then digitized speech came along.  This was ground breaking and opened the door for adventure games to be more interactive outside of the realm of reading and typing and then id Software released DOOM – and that was an entirely new take on PC games – a first person point of view.

All along this evolutionary path I had to upgrade my PC in small steps.  Add a little memory here, an audio card there.  It was affordable and infrequent.  The straw that broke my camel’s back was DOOM 3 released in 2004.  That was the game that made me take a look at console gaming.  I had reached a point where my PC was maxed out and to jump to the next generation of games I would need to replace my entire PC.  I still play some casual games on PC, but no high end games.

Recently, I started getting the itch to return to PC gaming so I priced out the parts to build my ultimate gaming PC.  Here are a few specs: Intel Core i7 Processor overclocked to at least 4 Ghz, 3 Nvidia video cards (2 for graphics + 1 for PhysX), 12 GB high speed RAM, large hard disk array(RAID 5), MSI Big Bang motherboard, Nvidia 3d Vision, Silverstone Raven RV02 case, liquid CPU cooler, THX certified audio, 3D monitor, etc.  This PC wouold last me a very long time and be able to handle 3D gaming with ease.  It’s simple enough to research benchmarks and spec out an ultimate PC – but the $3,000 to buy it is pretty hard to swallow.  Would it really be that much better of a gaming experience to justify the cost?  That’s the same as buying a new Xbox 360 every year for the next 10 years.  The DirectX 11 graphics look amazing and the PhysX processing is so realistic – but how long will it be until we can get all the same features in a $400 gaming console?

Perhaps I will find the answer someplace in the middle.  Having a mid-range gaming PC only for the PC games I want to play – without 3D – or THX – but it’s all so sexy and seductive.  The lure of playing Metro 2033 in hi-res 3D with DX11 haunts me – but I’ll probably get over it.  With $3,000 being the price of admission (granted I am pricing out an overkill PC), I can be happy with my console games for quite some time still, but not forever.  Maybe it’s time to revisit Zork.  At least I know it will run on my antiquated PC.

Have a look at what PC gaming used to be.  Try Zork here for free.

See what the writers had to say at Platform Nation

Chris Forbis | MensaDad | Profile | Twitter |

Nearly every game review I read expresses some distain if the game being reviewed does not support multi-player.  I myself like the ten foot pole version of multi-player – where I can compete against my friends on leader boards, etc. and we go back and forth trying to best one another (Such as my Platform Nation rivals in Pinball FX 2).  I don’t particularly care for most multi-player games for several reasons.

I have found that most multi-player online frag-fests are just an exercise in tolerance and frustration.  The only exceptions to this have been racing games (Blur, Split Second, Burnout Paradise) and a couple organized Platform Nation events where everyone was cooperating in Red Dead Redemption.  Aside from these few examples I prefer to take heed of the wisdom put forth by the philosopher Thorogood who said “When I drink alone, I prefer to be by myself .”

It’s not that I am completely anti-social.  I used to love playing Diablo II with a full group of people hacking and slashing side by side – for hours on end.  Multi-player games nowadays are different and my gaming experience can be completely disrupted by another player in the game.  I’d much rather have an in game companion (Fallout 3 / New Vegas) whose only purpose is to assist me rather than some twelve year old who is trying out being an adult by cursing and talking up his (or her) latest sexual exploits.

Split screen multi-player is great.  I play games with my kids all the time like this and it works very well for us – and I enjoy it.  Maybe it’s not the multi-player experience that I dislike; maybe it’s just the bad apples that I seem to get into games with.  Maybe it’s the gamers that have changed.

I guess for the most part that it’s the obnoxious gamers that have lead me to be monogamous when it comes to gaming – just me and the game – with the exception of racing games and Diablo III when it is released.

So pondering my lack of passion for online multi-player games in contrast to the high value put on the multi-player experience by game reviewers led me to ask the Platform Nation writers if they were single player gamers or multi-player gamers.

Continue to see what the Platform Nation writers had to say.

I, Chris Forbis, do resolve that I will not WASTE money on video games in the year 2011.

On the surface, that sounds fairly harsh – so let me explain.

I have always been somewhat fascinated by a single feature of the Xbox 360 interface.  It’s the panel that shows the total Gamerscore available in all the games I have played in relation to the Gamerscore I have earned.  Here are my current numbers.

Gamerscore Earned: 23,720
Total Gamerscore Available: 104,505
Percentage of Gamerscore Earned: 22.7%

Some quick math shows this is less than 25% of the possible Gamerscore I could have earned.  Since Gamerscore is awarded for achievements, and achievements are directly linked (usually) to in game experiences – this means I have played less than 25% of the entertainment experiences I have paid for.

Now let’s let the OCD sweep over us like a warm bath in the wintertime.  What does a single Gamerscore point cost?

Retail games are around $50 on average is purchased new and near the release date.  I’d guess that 10% or less of my games are purchased at full retail since I usually try to grab them on sale or with future game purchase incentives ($10 off your next game purchase or such).  Averaging in the discounts let’s just say these titles cost me $40 each.  These games have 1,000 GS each thus one GS costs $.04 US

DLC and Xbox Live Arcade game prices range from $5 to $15 – also depending on sales or promotions – so let’s just settle on $10 average.  These titles commonly bring 200 GS to the table making these GS point only $.02 US each.

Without doing a complete and detailed inventory of my games I have played, I don’t know the split of retail vs. downloaded games, or how many were rentals or promotional copies for review purposes – but I think it’s fair to just say a single Gamerscore point costs three cents US on average.

Now let’s run the numbers on my Gamerscore using the “MensaDad Three Cent Rule”.  I’ve earned a little more than $711 worth of GS – but the number that really bothers me is that I have nearly $2,500 in unearned GS setting on my game shelf.  This is entertainment I have already purchased but have not experienced fully.

Continue reading at Platform Nation

I’m changing things up a little bit this week for Stir.  Instead of asking the Platform Nation writers to comment on a topic, I sent my crack team of researchers into the news archives to find gaming headlines from 2010.  Not just any headlines, but ones that stand out as being fine examples of human stupidity.  Some are funny.  Some are tragic.  Some will just make you wonder WTF.

As more and more negativity gets piled onto video games, it never ceases to entertain me how absolutely ridiculous some of them are.  While not all of the headlines I chose to include are specific to video games, they are all ones that I thought that Platform Nation readers might enjoy as they reflect on the passing year.  Goodbye 2010.

SEE WHAT 2010 HAD TO SAY

Continue reading on Platform Nation