When Sony executives decided to remove the OtherOS feature from Phat Playstation 3, I'm sure they expected some backlash. The blog post that originally announced the change has now received over 6400 comments. To compare the average post on that site gets around 50 comments. It's also clear that many comments have also been removed due to foul language. Maybe you should voice your opinion there too! Look here.

But what about the rest of the Internet, surely there's some positive comments for the bar chart wielding Sony executives...

Tom's hardware has a good write up which echo's some of my earlier points on the topic. "In the post-Kutaragi, post-Harrison PlayStation world it seems as if there are fewer opportunities for the visionaries at Sony. The worldwide economic crisis has led companies to trim costs wherever possible." Read more here.

The EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) are also not impressed, leading with "Sony Steals Feature From Your Playstation 3". As they say, "After April 1, it's an inferior product." Read more here.

Slashdot also ran a story. The update includes, "This comes as something of a surprise. Particularly because only a month ago Sony Computer Entertainment management seemed committed to the continued support of the Other OS option on the PS3." I can't find any positive comments in the ~700 responses, can you? See more here.

Lwn.net also provides good details in their article, "The demise of PlayStation Linux". In it they point out that the so called "security concerns" for doing this "is not for the faint-of-heart???it involves pulsing a particular solder point on the PS3 board "low for ~40ns". This is not something a casual user will have any way to do, if they were even willing to try it. It certainly isn't a vector for malware attacks either." Read more here.

Maybe Sony Insider has got it right with their story, "Removing 'Install Other OS' Will Hurt The Sony Playstation 3". Their point about publicity worth repeating, "Linux access to the Cell, although very restricted and controlled was a powerful option. It gave that core group something that they were more than happy to generate free publicity." Read more here.

Performing a simple search on Google news results in around 300 articles relating to the removal of the feature that many people have paid for. Congrats on the publicity April Fools!

On April Fools day, Sony chose to remove the OtherOS feature from the Playstation 3 firmeware. The "upgrade" totally removes a feature that many people have paid for who had the reasonable expectation that it would not be removed.

This feature was already not available in the PS3 slim models. When the PS3 Slim was released in August 2009, The Register provided a quote from Sony which was taken from their Playstation 2 linux forums:

"The reasons are simple: The PS3 Slim is a major cost reduction involving many changes to hardware components in the PS3 design. In order to offer the OtherOS install, SCE would need to continue to maintain the OtherOS hypervisor drivers for any significant hardware changes - this costs SCE. One of our key objectives with the new model is to pass on cost savings to the consumer with a lower retail price. Unfortunately in this case the cost of OtherOS install did not fit with the wider objective to offer a lower cost PS3."

Interestingly, the message that this quote was taken from has been deleted from the forums. Maybe it also echoed the sentiment of Geoff Levand who's job it was to provide PS3 Linux support. He wrote the following last August in relation to the PS3 Slim's removal of Other OS:

"The feature of "Install Other OS" was removed from the new "Slim" PS3 model to focus on delivering games and other entertainment content.

Please be assured that SCE is committed to continue the support for previously sold models that have the "Install Other OS" feature and that this feature will not be disabled in future firmware releases."

More recently Geoff has said that his job in Sony will no longer include providing support for PS3 Linux. He has also chosen to head away on holiday to let this whole problem blow over. Good move Sony!

Obviously a single person was too much operating cost when Sony are reporting earnings of $861 million. As a trading web site states in February this year:

"The company recorded earnings of "79.2 billion ($861 million), which was sharply higher compared to "10.4 billion in the year-ago quarter. The growth was primarily driven by strong Financial Services revenue, robust sales of Vaio PCs and PlayStation 3 gaming consoles as well as stringent management efforts to control costs."

Obviously the Other OS features and costs associated are an easy target for controlling costs. It would be nice if Sony could tell the truth about this, but like many of these large corporations it's their belief that "we can't handle the truth".

Interestingly a Reuters article also provides something interesting:

"Oneda (Cheief Financial Officer) said Sony aims to launch new products that will vie with Apple Inc's closely watched iPad, designed to bridge the gap between smartphones and laptops."

Goodluck with that Sony. To do anything that even comes close would require a the ability to recruit developers to your platform and provide an API that is available and open. You've just pissed off a large number of developers who will have little interest in developing for your platform now. Goodluck with winning them back.

The sad thing is that the PS3 interface could be the basis for a great platform. They could have launched a Playstation App store before the iPhone and had a growing developer community building thousands of apps already. The PS3 interface could have spread not only to the PSP, but to a phone interface and pad style device. The API is there, but so locked up with NDAs, and other legal bullshit that Sony will have no hope in vieing with Apple.

Sony, it looks like your MBA educated marketing execs who love their bar charts and pie graphs don't understand how to build developer communities. It's an art that Microsoft and Apple have taken years to perfect. It won't be something you can turn on overnight, but it is something you can destroy overnight. Looks like you just did it; it must still be April, Fools.

Got any other thoughts on the April Fools? Discuss it here.

Today Sony will release a new version of the Playstation 3 firmware(v3.21). This release has the single purpose of removing the OtherOS feature from all PS3 consoles (both earlier fat models and latest slim versions). This type of announcement might normally be considered an April Fools day joke. However, in this case it is real and Sony are being the fools.

It would seem that this is knee jerk reaction to the recent progress announced by George Hots (geohot) at breaking the Hypervisor security. However, Sony executives are not that stupid and would realize that this will do little to stop these advancements. Developers such as Geohot won't upgrade their console and are likely to continue to make progress. This decision is more likely a planned obsolescence to remove a feature that Sony MBA educated marketing executives see as a useless feature that reduces the value of the Playstation brand.

It is obvious from these maneuvers that the Sony gaming and console division is struggling to survive the current onset from companies Nintendo, Apple and Microsoft. The 'hey day' of the Playstation 2 platform five years ago is lost and Sony executives missing out on bonuses and pay rises are attempting to do anything they can to resurrect their once dominant gaming platform. Sony continue to miss out of excellent opportunities that the architecture of the Playstation 3 provide.

Many believe that the root cause of this is the retirement of Ken Kutragi, the persion who originally steered the Playstation group. Following his retirement Sony brought in executives with little understanding of the brand and eco-system that revolves around the Playstation division. What is worse, is that these "MBA educated marketing executives" who make decisions based on graphs, projections and the results of surveys conducted by external marketing companies are failing at delivering innovates products to the market.

Nintendo have blown Sony out of the water with their Wii console that is cheap to manufacture and first introduced the Wii wand. Apple have blown Sony out of the water with their App store and casual gaming. Microsoft have equalled Sony in the current console wars and continue to steal exclusive titles from Sony. The sad part of this is that the Playstation 3 provides the ground work for exciting and innovative products.

To 99% of Playstation owners, the removal of the OtherOS feature is a non event. It won't be missed and will not have been used. It is a blip on any usage graph. To 1% of Playstation owners it is a platform for developers to cut their teeth on the Playstation hardware. It provides an avenue for young developers to write software for the Cell CPU. It provides the gateway that these young developers who will eventually be paid to write the AAA titles by large gaming companies. Sony will effectively starve out the next wave of developers for their platform and the quality and number of games will continue to drop. These 1% of developers are a large part of what brings the best out of the Playstation platform.

However, Sony have already done that. The landscape has changed from the Playstation 2 days. Why would a developer want to cut their teeth on the Playstation hardware. A young developer can easily pickup an Apple iphone development kit and release their own mini-game and start making money. Apple are already extending that platform to the iPad. Apple understand the simple rule of creating a great developer eco-system around their products. Sony continue to fail in this area, living in the closed systems of the Playstation 2 days.

The OtherOS feature is built on a Hypervisor which provides a secure sand box that could be used to create a huge developer community of the likes of the Apple iphone. The Hypervisor could have been the basis for an App Store and a free developer tool kit. The Hypervisor could have been the basis for a simple developer programming language such as Squeak. Sony took the first step in providing the OtherOS feature, but failed to take the subsequent steps to make this feature the basis for something great.

When Sony bring out their App store or iPad competitor where will the developers be? The developers might be with Apple learning their API and building the next wave of new titles on the iphone. The developers might even be with Google learning the Android APIs. They might be with Microsoft learning their APIs and building new and innovative titles for them. The next round of developers won't be with you Sony because you don't have any API's to learn. Soon your platform will only get the sequels, or the AAA titles that are easy to port to the Playstation 3 so that large companies can extract a few more dollars out of your gaming community. You won't be getting the best developers because they won't know your hardware or your APIs.

The Sony MBA educated marketing executives who seem to currently control the Playstation brand are fools. Have a happy April, Fools!

As members of the video game homebrew/development/reverse-engineering scene, we admittedly spend a considerable amount of time re-inventing the wheel. This is sometimes necessarily so, but much of the time it can be avoided by cohesion and the application of standards.

Parasyte and, to varying degrees, other scene members from GSHI, KodeWerx, RHDN, and abroad, are working on a new protocol, known as SRDP - Scalable Remote Debugger Protocol, as the title has already alerted you.

Straight from the source's mouth, SRDP is "a remote debugging protocol, applicable to emulators and video game hardware, among other uses.", which "will allow the same debugger user interfaces to be used on any emulator of your choosing, or even on the real deal." This standardization means that any debugger UI upgrade would be a universal one, across any system physically capable of supporting the new features implemented. This would be a huge leap forward in debugger technology and methodology, and would save a lot of time and effort that usually goes to waste with every new debugger for every new system.

Whether you're a developer, a regular user of debuggers, or just an interested member of the community, you can help, merely by showing interest and making a post on one of the SRDP threads. Ask questions that spark discussion, contribute example code, and feel free to spread the word to anyone you think might be interested.

For a spec sheet in progress, drop by HERE, and for a synopsis of SRDP by Parasyte, check out the threads HERE and HERE.

Things have moved quite slowly on the home page of ps2dev.org over the last year. It was only two posts that I saying happy 7th birthday! However, everyone knows that all the action is in the forums. The forums continue to be a great place for anyone developing for the Ps2, psp, or ps3. Thankfully the community continues to thrive despite the lack of attention I give the site. Oh well.. another year down. Looking forward to the 9th birthday.

For the observant of you, yes this is a day late! And yes, no April fools joke this year. I am slack!

For the lucky folks in and around London, there's a "AV Social" event on friday 26th September 2008. I've received the following details from Kouky via the forums:

8bit artists Steve and Pikilipita will perform a unique Audio+Video set exclusively from games consoles. Music will be generated from Game Boy while the visuals wil be mixed using PS24VJ: a homebrew ps2 software. This set will be the first of the night so be there a 9pm or you might miss it!

AV Social
9pm-2am
British Film Institute
Belvedere Road
South Bank
London, UK

More details available at:
http://www.pikilipita.com
http://www.myspace.com/stevenosurname
http://www.ne1co.info/avsocial

The PS2 portion of the site has been updated to reflect the current toolchain, amended to include references to source that compiles (while leaving all old source for posterity, with a note that it no longer compiles), fixed so that all links point to existent files, and increased to allow new users a greater variety of tutorials, guides, and compilable source. I hope these updates help make PS2Dev.org a better place :)

I'll continue making updates to the PS2 portion of the site as I recall things that should be added/updated. I'll also probably make some basic grammatical/typographical/etc corrections to the other sections, and ensure there aren't any broken links, but as I don't have any experience or knowledge concerning PSP or PS3 development, I'll probably leave them alone for the most part.

A big thanks to Oobles for allowing me to help out. Until next time...

Edit: A bigger thanks goes back to LBGSHI! If anyone is interested in helping to remove the bit-rot in the PSP and PS3 sections, please PM me (Oobles) in the forums.

Every year this time comes around I'm always amazed that the site is still here. And more amazed that the site keeps growing. I do little more than make sure the server keeps running and scan the forums for bad content. It shows what a great community that the site has become. The site receives around 50,000 unique visitors every month. Alexa even ranks us in the top 100,000 web sites, ranking 67,353.

Its also nice to see that through all the years we've managed to keep the forums a great place for developers. Sure its a bit of an exclusive club, but at least the site isn't covered with questions about warez, game cheats or other such subjects. I've got thank all the moderators that do such a great job at keeping the place full or great information. The forums now have over 65,000 posts which is a great resource.

Of course as far as Sony is concerned this site doesn't exist. They see what's going on here but have yet to recognise its existence. I would have liked to co-operate with Sony with the PS3, as its a great combination of keeping games copyrighted while allowing homebrew development. I'd even go as far as splitting the site in two to keep the PS3 area separate from the PSP & PS2 areas, if it meant that there was some communications between Sony and "otheros" developers. I doubt that will happen anytime soon.

Anyway.. seven years! A lot has changed over that time. PS2 development is now the old man. PSP development is where its at.. and the PS3 is the baby.

Happy birthday ps2dev.org! If you're new or old to the site, come say hello at this thread here.