Piracy on consoles

[Awor Szurkrarz]

50€ is a lot for a game in any case, because you can buy a lot of better things for that money, but that's just my opinion.

Mainly, it's because a person earning an average wage has to work for 11 hours to earn enough to buy a game, while also having to pay for rent, food, transport, etc.
Other things become less important when one doesn't have to spend so much work on a game.

In what shithole country is $5 an hour considered an "average wage"?

Whole central and eastern Europe? Also, it's hardly a shithole. I have food, water, electricity, internet, libraries, free education and a roof over head and it can be said about majority of people here. There are countries where majority of people are much much worse off, reserve your insults for them.

Jesus Christ Shit man. Pirating entertainment is probably necessary to your survival.

It's not necessary to survival, but makes survival bearable and doesn't do anything to anyone, so there's no reason to not do it.
Not that I pirate games besides "abandonware". I'm one of these Codexers that actually play/mod games that they like instead of playing the new shit.

 

[Forest Dweller]

I've been away for a few days so I'm a bit late to the party here - but lots of half-truths and misinformation in this thread.

I have modded all current gen consoles (including PSP and DS) - most recently the PS3, as it's finally been 'jailbroken' (jailbraked?) and it's a piece of piss to do yourself on all of them.

Xbox 360 - you simply plug the 360's DVD drive into a PC's sata port and use an windows program (jungleflasher) to flash a hacked firmware to it. My first attempt at this did eventually lead to a ban on xbox live, but I've since picked up a cheap 360 on ebay and re-flashed it. The new iXtreme LT firmware is completely safe (undetectable - so far), but you need to check all downloaded ISO's for proper stealth (with another windows program - abgx360). You can also rip rented/borrowed games with a specific DVD rom drive from windows (which I also have). There's also Jtaging - but that's a bit more involved so I won't go into that right now.

PS3 - This has only become possible in the last few weeks and I completed my 'jailbreak' just last week. You need a programmable USB flash drive like the Maximus AVR and some windows software to flash a program to it, which when pluged into the PS3, makes the PS3 think it's a development machine. From that point on - all unsigned code can run, so you can install 'homebrew' apps that show up in the PS3's xbar (dashboard). One of these is a backup manager which rips games to either the PS3's internal drive or an attached usb drive. Another app you can install to the PS3 is an FTP server which allows you to copy downloaded games to the PS3 or simply copy them directly to an external hard drive and play them from there.

Wii - this one's the easiest of all, no tools or hardware required. A couple of sofware exploits are copied to an SD card which when activated, allow the 'Homebrew Channel' to be installed. After that, the whole process is similar to what's described above for the PS3.

I could go into more detail, but this is already becoming a 'wall of text' and there's pleanty of tutorials for this stuff online anyhow. If you have any questions - just ask....

EDIT - Actually, this generation of consoles are a lot easier to mod than the previous ones as there's no chipping/soldering involved - it's all just software/firmware hacks.

That all sounds very complicated.

 

[PorkaMorka]

Is that true? I remember some people claiming a while ago that the DS is some sort of old-school gaming heaven. They were so adamant about it that I started thinking about getting one, but now I'm confuse.

It has ~5 Blob Dungeon Crawlers with strong old school influence, many of which are highly regarded.

I don't like grinding or blobbing though, I bought it for the strategy RPGs and that was a poor decision as there is like one good one on the system (and tons and tons of mediocre/not worth playing ones).

 

[Achilles]

Oh, I think I'll pass then, thanks for the info.

 

[Raghar]

Is that true? I remember some people claiming a while ago that the DS is some sort of old-school gaming heaven. They were so adamant about it that I started thinking about getting one, but now I'm confuse.

Use emulator. As long as you don't like to play Pokemon in the bus you could use superior computer screen. Also you might like that auto nose generation for games like ace attorney.

 

[Luzur]

who plays pokemon on the bus anyway?

thats like bending over in a prison shower.

 

[Ancient]

who plays pokemon on the bus anyway?

thats like bending over in a prison shower.

Children

 

[AlaCarcuss]

I've been away for a few days so I'm a bit late to the party here - but lots of half-truths and misinformation in this thread.

I have modded all current gen consoles (including PSP and DS) - most recently the PS3, as it's finally been 'jailbroken' (jailbraked?) and it's a piece of piss to do yourself on all of them.

Xbox 360 - you simply plug the 360's DVD drive into a PC's sata port and use an windows program (jungleflasher) to flash a hacked firmware to it. My first attempt at this did eventually lead to a ban on xbox live, but I've since picked up a cheap 360 on ebay and re-flashed it. The new iXtreme LT firmware is completely safe (undetectable - so far), but you need to check all downloaded ISO's for proper stealth (with another windows program - abgx360). You can also rip rented/borrowed games with a specific DVD rom drive from windows (which I also have). There's also Jtaging - but that's a bit more involved so I won't go into that right now.

PS3 - This has only become possible in the last few weeks and I completed my 'jailbreak' just last week. You need a programmable USB flash drive like the Maximus AVR and some windows software to flash a program to it, which when pluged into the PS3, makes the PS3 think it's a development machine. From that point on - all unsigned code can run, so you can install 'homebrew' apps that show up in the PS3's xbar (dashboard). One of these is a backup manager which rips games to either the PS3's internal drive or an attached usb drive. Another app you can install to the PS3 is an FTP server which allows you to copy downloaded games to the PS3 or simply copy them directly to an external hard drive and play them from there.

Wii - this one's the easiest of all, no tools or hardware required. A couple of sofware exploits are copied to an SD card which when activated, allow the 'Homebrew Channel' to be installed. After that, the whole process is similar to what's described above for the PS3.

I could go into more detail, but this is already becoming a 'wall of text' and there's pleanty of tutorials for this stuff online anyhow. If you have any questions - just ask....

EDIT - Actually, this generation of consoles are a lot easier to mod than the previous ones as there's no chipping/soldering involved - it's all just software/firmware hacks.

That all sounds very complicated.

You think? It's really not - especially if you like tinkering with stuff like this. Actually, I'd buy consoles and mod them just for the hell of it - even if I never played any of the games... Even with all these modded consoles - I still spend about 85% of my gaming time on the PC ...

Also, with the price of 360's as dirt cheap as they are now, to solve the XBL banning problem - I just bought another arcade model and left it virgin for connecting to XBL and just swap the hard drives between the two...

 

[fizzelopeguss]

I've not turned on my flashed 360 for nearly 2 years i don't think. Can you rip games to a USB stick or HDD to bypass burning (and spending) on DVD9's these days?

 

[DalekFlay]

I actually know more people "in real life" who pirate 360 or DS games than I do PC game pirates. That's likely because the 360 is more popular though, not because it's easier. It's a problem on pretty much every machine other than the PS3, but the thing is that piracy stats only matter if sales stats are low. Sales is what matters, the 360 piracy rate could be 50% but if the sales are still high no one is going to throw a hissy-fit about it. PC sales are low, not just because of piracy but also because of accessibility, marketing hype and three generations of gamers and gaming media types raised exclusively on Nintendo. Piracy is a huge issue on PC because the sales aren't there to make it less relevant.

As for me I crack games I bought to have DRM-free backup copies, and sometimes I will "pirate" a really old game you can't buy anywhere to try it out or have a nostalgia trip. I never pirate newer games though, even to try them... that is just a line I personally don't cross. As long as people support the PC as a platform by buying the games they like though I don't hop all over their shit.