Live data from Hacker News

The rise and fall of the PlayStation supercomputers

theverge.com

11–20 of 172 posts

Re: The rise and fall of the PlayStation supercomputers

#11
post #8

This was the moment that Sony could have made something useful out of themselves here for allowing Linux to be used on a popular games console at the time, as in improving the accessibility of installing Linux on a computing machine. (Or even basing GameOS on Linux). Instead they cowardly remove it due to a 'hack' by Geohot and locked it down for 'security purposes' and potential researchers, scientists and those wit…

To play the devil's advocate, Sony is in the business of selling games, their cosnoles were just a means to that and since they were selling the hardware at a loss, selling more of it to people who will never buy games was bad for their business model.

Re: The rise and fall of the PlayStation supercomputers

#12
post #8

This was the moment that Sony could have made something useful out of themselves here for allowing Linux to be used on a popular games console at the time, as in improving the accessibility of installing Linux on a computing machine. (Or even basing GameOS on Linux). Instead they cowardly remove it due to a 'hack' by Geohot and locked it down for 'security purposes' and potential researchers, scientists and those wit…

Plus they eventually got dinged for this because they had inexplicably advertised the Linux support, so removing it turned that into false advertising. Owners of the classic PS3 got a chunk of $ from a class action settlement.

Re: The rise and fall of the PlayStation supercomputers

#13
post #8

This was the moment that Sony could have made something useful out of themselves here for allowing Linux to be used on a popular games console at the time, as in improving the accessibility of installing Linux on a computing machine. (Or even basing GameOS on Linux). Instead they cowardly remove it due to a 'hack' by Geohot and locked it down for 'security purposes' and potential researchers, scientists and those wit…

To play the devil's advocate, Sony is in the business of selling games, their cosnoles were just a means to that and since they were selling the hardware at a loss, selling more of it to people who will never buy games was bad for their business model.

There was no reason they couldn’t have sold a slightly less locked-down system to researchers at a higher price point —- Microsoft did exactly that with unsold X360 Kinect units (and bundled in a USB adapter) for medical research.

Re: The rise and fall of the PlayStation supercomputers

#14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To play the devil's advocate, Sony is in the business of selling games, their cosnoles were just a means to that and since they were selling the hardware at a loss, selling more of it to people who will never buy games was bad for their business model.

There was no reason they couldn’t have sold a slightly less locked-down system to researchers at a higher price point —- Microsoft did exactly that with unsold X360 Kinect units (and bundled in a USB adapter) for medical research.

The reason was cost. Have fun convincing management to allocate resources to develop and support another SKU tailored for researchers.

Re: The rise and fall of the PlayStation supercomputers

#15
post #8

This was the moment that Sony could have made something useful out of themselves here for allowing Linux to be used on a popular games console at the time, as in improving the accessibility of installing Linux on a computing machine. (Or even basing GameOS on Linux). Instead they cowardly remove it due to a 'hack' by Geohot and locked it down for 'security purposes' and potential researchers, scientists and those wit…

I'll never buy another Sony console again after they removed the ability to run Linux on the PS3. It's one of the reasons I bought one and I used it a lot.

Re: The rise and fall of the PlayStation supercomputers

#16

It would be awesome if you could install Linux on modern Xbox or PS4 consoles and use them as PCs...

I’m not sure how much of a benefit that’d be at this point — the PS3 was some custom hardware that was unique to its era, while the current consoles are 5-year-old x86 chips running custom OSes. Putting Linux into that mix only gets you a stable, but outdated, hardware platform.

Re: The rise and fall of the PlayStation supercomputers

#17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was no reason they couldn’t have sold a slightly less locked-down system to researchers at a higher price point —- Microsoft did exactly that with unsold X360 Kinect units (and bundled in a USB adapter) for medical research.

The reason was cost. Have fun convincing management to allocate resources to develop and support another SKU tailored for researchers.

So what? Don't need much difference in hardware, it was only a firmware change.

Re: The rise and fall of the PlayStation supercomputers

#18
post #8

This was the moment that Sony could have made something useful out of themselves here for allowing Linux to be used on a popular games console at the time, as in improving the accessibility of installing Linux on a computing machine. (Or even basing GameOS on Linux). Instead they cowardly remove it due to a 'hack' by Geohot and locked it down for 'security purposes' and potential researchers, scientists and those wit…

(I'm sure I'll lose karma for explaining Sonys side, since some people just want to be mad)

Linux support was not removed due to Geohot. It was a driver and business priority issue. Geohot just sealed the deal.

Having worked there during the kerfuffle, I can confirm their reason was valid for not supporting Linux going forward. It was a non trivial effort and they wanted those engineers to make it support the new hardware turns. It was a company wide goal to hit break even at retail pricing at that time (Sony was amazing at running hardware coat forecasting internally and iirc hit their 7 year Target by a week). This required the new hardware. So they dropped Linux. That part is real.

Then they effed up by not messaging it well and by dropping promised back support.

And then a bunch of the community responded as petulant children and attacked sonys main business and released products that allowed others to infringe Sony and other game studios property with impunity. These actions killed any chance Sony would engage with this community for the next decade or so.

Sony was also backed into a corner technically as I recall as the thing hot hacked (by realizing it was a null crypto key on the one processor), and thus allowed Linux was also the thing that did the drm. Sony had to choose between another year or so of drm or Linux support.

As in many cases not parties are at fault. Contracts can and are broken. Sony paid multiple prices for it. So did the Linux/hacker community.

Re: The rise and fall of the PlayStation supercomputers

#19

It would be awesome if you could install Linux on modern Xbox or PS4 consoles and use them as PCs...

I’m not sure how much of a benefit that’d be at this point — the PS3 was some custom hardware that was unique to its era, while the current consoles are 5-year-old x86 chips running custom OSes. Putting Linux into that mix only gets you a stable, but outdated, hardware platform.

I was really thinking more about the upcoming PS5 and Xbox Scarlett, which both should have Zen 2 CPUs and Navi GPUs, along with a generous helping of GDDR6 memory and SSDs.

Re: The rise and fall of the PlayStation supercomputers

#20
post #8

This was the moment that Sony could have made something useful out of themselves here for allowing Linux to be used on a popular games console at the time, as in improving the accessibility of installing Linux on a computing machine. (Or even basing GameOS on Linux). Instead they cowardly remove it due to a 'hack' by Geohot and locked it down for 'security purposes' and potential researchers, scientists and those wit…

I'll never buy another Sony console again after they removed the ability to run Linux on the PS3. It's one of the reasons I bought one and I used it a lot.

Do you buy Microsoft or Nintendo consoles?

If so why?

Post reply on HN