Playstation Weblog

© Hicham Souilmi

Sony is suing a pair of hackers for figuring out how to jailbreak Sony PS3 Playstations, and this move has attracted the attention of the infamous hacker collective Anonymous, which has now declared web war on the company. The jailbreak was not about pirating games, but instead about running things that Sony didn't approve of.

The hackers figured out a way to allow people to run their own programs on their Playstations, and according to Anonymous the hackers involved never took their Playstations online, and thus never signed the DMCA. Sony got court approval to see the IP addresses on geohot's blog about the case, as they need to establish that California is the right jurisdiction so that they can apply the California Comprehensive Computer Data Access and Fraud Act. The central issue in the case if whether or not if you bought something you have the right to make it work the way you want it to.

© MattJP

Gaming systems like the PlayStation console have evolved greatly over the years. It's been nearly six years since the Xbox 360 first debuted in the fall of 2005, and the Nintendo Wii and PlayStation 3 were soon to follow in 2006. The typical life cycle of consoles is that new ones emerge no later than five years after the debut of the last iteration, but the newest generation seems to be an exception to this rule.

This could be due in part to the recession, but it's also likely that the Wii, PS3 and 360 are such hardy and versatile consoles that their self-life has been extended. Looking back at how far they've come, it's not hard to appreciate the current generation of gaming consoles for their HD graphics, online gaming, downloadable content and motion-controlled games which are all hallmarks of the current console age.

© William Hook

Smartphones based on the Google Android OS have the potential to become powerful gaming playstations. This potential is not limited to the Sony Ericsson Xperia Play gaming phone, but instead encompasses all of the phones and tablets on Tegra chip from NVIDIA. Using a special application called Tegra Zone, such devices will be able to support the Sony PlayStation Suite platform.

The platform allows the porting of games that were previously released for the PlayStation 2 console to smart phones and tablets. It is expected that Tegra Zone will be available in the second half of this year, along with games from the first PlayStation including Wild Arms, Cool Boarders 2, Syphon Filter, and more. There is no word yet on the timing of release of Android games for PlayStation 2, however.