The Shift - and Console Protections

So I've decided (with much coercion from the wifey) that I should begin to post again.  I like previous topics of God, Religion, and World Views, but I don't feel as much inspired to post about those things as I used to.  I still think about them, and express my views in my own way, I just want to use this blog for something other than that.  So my main hobby is Computer Games, so why not start commenting about different things like that?  Video Game politics are quite interesting to me, and I like watching where different countries and courts are pushing different laws that affects our freedoms, or lack thereof everyday.

A couple of big things have been in the news lately.  If you're not familiar with the current round of suits, Sony is suing an individual for hacking their PS3 console and breaking pretty much every security measure they put in.  This pretty much allows people who mod their PS3 to run any kind of programming code they want, which the latest uproar has been cheats for online games such as the Call of Duty games.

A lot of the issue started when Sony first announced that users would be able to install any OS on their PS3, the original PS3 firmware allowed 3rd party OSes installed onto it. and then magically one night Sony pushed through an update that completely locked out all of this functionality.  As you can imagine, a lot of people that specifically bought the PS3 for this (and not for gaming) were outraged.  One of the features they had been promised had been removed.

Fast forward to today, where you've got a guy who has completely Cracked all the protections allowing people to pretty much do anything they want with their hardware.  It's hard for me to understand why a company would want to do these things to their customers.  Then again it is Sony.  In fact one of the more recent updates by Sony Rootkits your console so they can see if you are using a modded machine or not.  The funny thing about it though, is because the console has been completely hacked it wont be long till that feature is completely useless.

After all of this it makes me wonder why console manufacturers put as much protection into the consoles as they did.  The dreamcast can play burned games straight out of the box,  the PSX was able to do it with disc swapping (if you did it right).  The DS and PSP were cracked fairly quickly and the DS really only requires a special flash cart that costs about the same as a game..

It seems like companies need to back off of the protection a little bit more, and do what PC gaming has been doing for the longest time.  If you don't want someone to be able to steal your game with a $30 piece of hardware, use cd-keys, and a simple CD-Check algorithm.  In my mind this is a no-brainer and it makes me wonder why manufacturers haven't just gone with this method.  Sure you can still crack the game on a modded console and play the game just like PC games today, but you wouldn't get the full game.  Consoles have become a very large gaming platform on par with computers, or maybe even moreso, but the way they try to protect their revenue seems ridiculous.  You don't see Dell complaining that people can run their own code on their machines, or that they can swap new parts into them...