Consolidation Strategies Emerge For The Big 3 In Gaming: Nintendo Looks Like It Doesn't Want To Play

from the the-inside-game dept

We've been talking a bit about industry consolidation through mergers and acquisitions (M&As) in the video game industry as of late. The impetus for that discussion has been a series of high-profile acquisitions for several notable companies, namely Microsoft and Sony. Microsoft acquired Zenimax for $7 billion and Activision Blizzard King for a bonkers $69 billion recently, while Sony jumped into the game by acquiring Bungie for $3.6 billion. Of interest for these pages is the different approaches these companies have taken with these acquisitions. Microsoft hemmed and hawed about whether it would start building Microsoft exclusivity for products from its acquisitions, eventually landing on very much embracing exclusivity, while Sony took a much more hands-off approach and stated plainly that Bungie games would still be cross-platform. For those of us interested in digital and technology economies and business models, this is interesting stuff.

But there is a name missing here. The traditional "Big 3" in gaming has long been Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo. Well, if you like real-world experiments when it comes to business strategies, this looks like it's going to get even more fascinating, as Nintendo is making noises about going an entirely different route.

While Xbox and Sony are entering an acquisition arms race, Nintendo isn’t so eager to snap up a slew of game studios. In a recent investors’ meeting, Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa was asked about acquiring game companies—a timely question, that’s for sure.

“Our brand was built upon products crafted with dedication by our employees, and having a large number of people who don’t possess Nintendo DNA in our group would not be a plus,” Furukawa replied, as reported by Bloomberg and Reuters.

Now, this shouldn't exactly come as a shock to anyone who knows the industry and how Nintendo operates. Whatever I might want to say in my series of posts about how "Nintendo hates you", the company has also built a successful business in the space that relies on first-party game titles and franchises compared with Sony and Microsoft. Whatever success those others have had, for instance, Microsoft and Sony simply don't have a version of the Super Mario Bros. franchise. Nintendo has several of these: Super Mario Bros., Zelda/Link, Star Fox, etc. So Nintendo has always been less reliant on 3rd party titles compared with its competitors.

But the open question is whether this more insular focus will work in the post-pandemic period where industry consolidation is not just for the video game industry, but for many others. The Harvard Business Review had a study released in 2021 that predicted what many others have as well: the mid- and post-pandemic economic space will be one that heavily incentivizes mergers and acquisitions. Consolidation is the order of the day/year.

So now we have three distinct strategies from the Big 3 of the video game industry: Microsoft will do M&As and try the exclusivity route, Sony will do M&As and be more open and permissive or cross-platform releases, and Nintendo will simply choose largely to not play this game at all.

At its core, Nintendo is not an enterprise built on corporate consolidation. It’s a company that makes hardware and games for said hardware. That is etched in its DNA.

And now we get to sit back and see how that works in a post-pandemic world.

Filed Under: consolidation, video games
Companies: microsoft, nintendo, sony

Moar Consolidation: Sony Acquires Bungie, But Appears To Be More Hands Off Than Microsoft

from the moar!!! dept

A couple of weeks back we asked the question: is the video game industry experiencing an age of hyper-consolidation? The answer to that increasingly looks to be "yes". That post was built off of a pair of Microsoft acquisitions of Zenimax for $7 billion and then a bonkers acquisition of Activision Blizzard King for roughly $69 billion. Whereas consolidations in industries are a somewhat regular thing, what caused my eyes to narrow was all of the confused communications coming out of Microsoft as to how the company would handle these properties when it came to exclusivity on Microsoft platforms. It all went from vague suggestions that the status quo would be the path forward to, eventually, the announcement that some (many?) titles would in fact be Microsoft exclusives.

So, back to my saying that consolidation does seem to be the order of the day: Sony recently announced it had acquired game studio Bungie for $3.6 billion.

Sony Interactive Entertainment today announced a deal to acquire Bungie for $3.6 billion, the latest in a string of big-ticket consolidation deals in the games industry.

After the deal closes, Bungie will be "an independent subsidiary" of SIE run by a board of directors consisting of current CEO and chairman Pete Parsons and the rest of the studio's current management team.

This is starkly different than the Microsoft acquisitions in a couple of ways. Chief among them is that Bungie will continue to operate with much more independence than those acquired by Microsoft. While Sony obviously wants to recoup its investment in Bungie, the focus there appears to be on continuing to make great games using existing IP, building new IP, and creating content for that IP that expands far beyond just the video game publishing space.

What does not appear to be part of the plan are PlayStation exclusives, as explicitly stated in this interview with both Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO Jim Ryan and Bungies' CEO Pete Parsons.

In an interview with GamesIndustry.biz, Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO Jim Ryan says that Destiny 2 and future Bungie games will continue to be published on other platforms, including rival consoles. The advantages Bungie offers Sony is in its ability to make huge, multiplatform, live-service online games, which is something the wider organisation is eager to learn from.

"The first thing to say unequivocally is that Bungie will stay an independent, multiplatform studio and publisher. Pete [Parsons, CEO] and I have spoken about many things over recent months, and this was one of the first, and actually easiest and most straightforward, conclusions we reached together. Everybody wants the extremely large Destiny 2 community, whatever platform they're on, to be able to continue to enjoy their Destiny 2 experiences. And that approach will apply to future Bungie releases. That is unequivocal."

That's about as firm a stance as you're going to get in this industry. And it is a welcome sign in a few ways. Primarily, Bungie fans will be pleased to know the acquisition doesn't mean they'll lose out on game releases if they don't own a PlayStation. But perhaps just as important is that this demonstrates another route big gaming companies can go with these acquisitions.

As I stated in previous posts on the Microsoft acquisitions: consolidation doesn't have to be a bad thing, but when it results in less customer choice, that's not great. That Sony is doing this differently is a good sign.

Filed Under: consolidation, video games
Companies: bungie studios, microsoft, sony

Deja Vu All Over Again: Microsoft, Sony Making Vague Statements About Exclusivity In Activision Titles

from the ironic-surprised-face dept

And here we go again. When Microsoft acquired Zenimax/Bethesda last year, the first question that leapt to most people's minds was whether or not Microsoft would wall off long-running franchises from Bethesda with exclusivity to Xbox and/or PC platforms. Those looking for answers were surely initially confused by conflicting statements from both sides of the deal, which was then "clarified" later by Microsoft execs saying that titles would be "first/better on Microsoft platforms" but not exclusive. That was then clarified further by Microsoft's actual actions, which was to announce that the next Elder Scrolls game would indeed be a PC/Xbox exclusive.

Well, as we were just discussing, Microsoft is finalizing its biggest ever acquisition into the game publishing market with a purchase of Activision Blizzard and King Digital Entertainment, and all the same questions immediately leapt to everyone's mind. And, because past is prologue, the players in this deal and those impacted by it are churning out vague, unclear statements on what this means for exclusivity for franchises from those studios.

We'll start with what Sony said in comments to The Wall Street journal.

“We expect that Microsoft will abide by contractual agreements and continue to ensure Activision games are multiplatform,” a Sony spokesman told The Wall Street Journal today. Read one way, it seems like confirmation that the owner of PlayStation thinks nothing will change. Read another, it means that existing Activision games will remain multiplatform, but doesn’t provide any clarity on what might happen to future projects that haven’t even been announced yet.

Indeed. And, frankly, Sony can expect anything it likes, but Microsoft probably didn't spend $69 billion on these studios without its own plans in place. Whether that includes exclusivity... who knows? But the company has its plans and Sony's expectations probably don't factor into them all that much.

Then came the public comments by Xbox's Phil Spencer. Spencer was one of the Microsoft folks commenting publicly about the Zenimax acquisition, vaguely saying that Microsoft could recoup its $7.5 billion investment even by excluding non-Microsoft platforms from future games, but that, hey, maybe it wouldn't go that route. Here he is commenting on his talks with Sony.

Now the Twitter reaction to that was all sunshine and rainbows as everyone took it to mean there would be no exclusivity deals for CoD games. But go read that tweet again, because that isn't what it says at all. There are a million ways to read that tweet, including: we'll honor existing agreements for existing games by keeping them on PlayStation. Read that way, the tweet says virtually nothing about new or upcoming games. Nor anything about other Activision or Blizzard franchises. Also, there are a bunch of non-committal words sprinkled in there. Intent? I intended on losing weight after the new year. I very much did not. See how that works?

It's all very unclear, which is annoying. Microsoft knows what it wants to do and the fact that they aren't making definitive statements tells you this is probably going to follow the Bethesda track. Not everything will be exclusive, but some franchises certainly will.

According to Bloomberg’s report, “Microsoft plans to keep making some of Activision’s games for PlayStation consoles but will also keep some content exclusive to Xbox.” That could mean that Call of Duty, consistently the best-selling game every year, will remain multiplatform. Or it could mean that nearly every new Activision Blizzard game except for its free-to-play battle royale, Warzone, won’t be coming to PS5.

While industry consolidation doesn't always have to be a bad thing, this is and always has been the major concern in the gaming industry. When the makers of the platform also make the games you play on them, you're at the mercy of corporate interests as to whether you'll have access to them or not.

And whatever you think of any of this, that simply isn't how you continue to grow an exploding industry.

Filed Under: exclusivity, playstation, video games, xbox
Companies: activision blizzard, bethesda, microsoft, sony

PS4 Battery Time-Keeping Time-Bomb Silently Patched By Sony; PS3 Consoles Still Waiting

from the tick-tock dept

Over the past several months, there have been a couple of stories that certainly had owners of Sony PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 3 consoles completely wigging out. First came Sony's announcement that it was going to shut down support for the PlayStation Store and PlayStation Network on those two consoles. This briefly freaked everyone out, the thinking being that digitally purchased games would be disappeared. Sony confirmed that wouldn't be the case, but there was still the question of game and art preservation, given that no new purchases would be allowed and that in-game purchases and DLC wouldn't be spared for those who bought them. As a result of the outcry, Sony reversed course for both consoles specifically for access to the PlayStation Store, nullifying the debate. Except that immediately afterward came word of an issue with the PS3 and PS4 console batteries and the way they check in with the PlayStation Network (PSN) to allow users to play digital or physical game media. With the PSN still sunsetting on those consoles, the batteries wouldn't be able to check in, and would essentially render the console and all the games users had worthless and unplayable.

But now that too has been corrected by Sony, albeit in a completely unannounced fashion.

PlayStation owners wanting to preserve their PS4 libraries well into the future can breathe a sigh of relief, as the system's latest firmware update reportedly fixes a time bomb found inside every console.

While Sony's official patch notes for the 9.00 update strangely make no mention of the CMOS fix, that lack of mention may point to a change in its attitude about PlayStation's legacy platforms. With PS5's backward-compatibility limited (so far) to PS4 titles and in the absence of a major overhaul to its PS Now streaming library of games, taking the step to push an update that nixes the CMOS issue on PS3 as well would be a welcome shift.

So now PS4 owners are off the hook, though whether they know it or not appears to be a matter of whether they read the news about this on sites like this. PS3 owners, meanwhile, don't currently have a fix in place. And that really does highlight a continuing messaging and transparency problem when it comes to Sony and how it treats its PlayStation customers.

Sony has, far too often, had to either reverse course on its plans when its own fans go apeshit, such as when it finally enabled cross-console play for PlayStation games, or instead has had to weather tough public relations and legal storms when it kept to its plans, such as when it removed useful features from the PS3 via firmware update after the public had already bought the console.

It's great that the company fixed this problem for the PS4 owners, but what about everyone else? Why not let people know the fix has been made? Why can't this company communicate?

Filed Under: battery, battery bug, dlc, patching, ps3, ps4
Companies: sony

Sony Takes Down Leaked Unfinished Spider-Man Trailer, Releases Finished One Days Later

from the its-advertising-you-dolts dept

We've talked plenty of times in the past about instances in which publishers of content, typically movies, get copyright takedowns performed on trailers. These takedowns are, frankly, never a great idea, but they are particularly stupid when companies like Marvel, Disney, and Warner Bros. takedown trailers, otherwise known as advertisements, and then release an identical or nearly identical trailer days later. What in the actual hell is the point of that? Killing off your own word of mouth and free advertising for your film?

Now, Sony just went through this experience itself, having attempted to DMCA to death a leaked and, importantly, unfinished trailer for Spider-Man: No Way Home.

The way in which the trailer apparently leaked is obviously a concern. It surfaced via the video sharing app TikTok and immediately went viral, but it wasn’t long before Twitter, Reddit, and YouTube had nabbed it. The trailer footage was clearly cut before most of the VFX were added, and was presented in the kind of disastrous way that would give Christopher Nolan nightmares – with a phone filming another phone screen filming another screen – but that didn’t stop fans getting the gist of the trailer.

So, part of the desire to put the trailer genie back in the bottle was surely the unfinished nature of the trailer and some of the fan reactions to seeing it without special effects being added in. So, does that make Sony's decision to try and DMCA it out of existence the right move?

Hell no. And there are several reasons why. The first and most obvious is that, not surprisingly, it didn't freaking work. You can still today go out on several sites and find the leaked version of the trailer. There are YouTube videos and videos on other platforms of the trailer being shown and discussions being had about its contents. In fact, you could rightly suggest that Sony trying to kill the trailer generated even more buzz around it, leading even more people to watch than might have otherwise. The Streisand Effect at work, in other words. So, one strike against this move was how ineffectual and counterproductive it was.

But then note that Sony dropped the official and finished trailer days later. And the coverage of the official release was generally quite positive. The story incorporates the MCU's multiverse, perhaps most famously utilized in another Spider-Man related film, Into the Spiderverse, in which there are multiple realities in which different personalities are in control of different superheroes who make different decisions.

So imagine for a moment that we live in such a multiverse, something that is a studied possibility. What if there were another universe in which Sony's lawyers, instead of trying to ineffectually un-leak a widely shared trailer for a hot property, said instead something like this:

Hey, Spider-Man and Marvel fans! We know an unfinished version of 'Spider-Man: No Way Home' leaked yesterday. We didn't authorize the leak because the work on it wasn't completed. In fact, it looks a hell of a lot different than what we actually have prepared for you. But we also know how passionate you all are as fans, so we're guessing a great many of you went out and watched it. That's awesome! We love how much you love Spider-Man!

And that's why we definitely want you to see the finished version. Unlike the leaked version, the official trailer adds in the awesome effects you can expect when you actually go see the movie in theaters! In fact, we think you should definitely watch both trailers so that you get an idea of the insanely good work our effects studio does. See you in the theaters in December!

I wrote that in three minutes. How many billable hours did Sony's lawyers log instead failing to un-leak the previous trailer? And which move builds more good will in the community of Spider-Man fans? Which one had a greater positive effect?

The answer is obvious. And, yet, we still see studios trying to treat the internet as though it were a place where you can disappear content.

Filed Under: copyright, dmca, no way home, spiderman, takedowns, trailers
Companies: sony

Everyone Being Dumb About IP: McDonald's No Longer Offering Dope Custom PS5 Controllers In Australia

from the all-about-control dept

If you search for stories about McDonald's on Techdirt, you will come away with the impression that the company, like many large corporate entities, puts heavy emphasis on its intellectual property rights. Sony, the company responsible for the PlayStation consoles, exudes a similar reputation, despite some recent moves to loosen its IP grip as of late. So, just to be clear, everyone involved in this story tends to trend toward the more restrictive end of the IP spectrum.

Which makes it super-duper stupid that McDonald's Australia had a plan to offer up customized PlayStation 5 controllers, but never bothered to formalize any part of this plan with Sony. And, if you're like me, that's a shame because the cosmetics on the controllers are pretty dang fun.

Shortly after the announcement, McDonald's Australia had to issue a follow up cancelling the whole thing. It turns out that nobody at the company bothered to get in touch with Sony before the announcement and, well, you know what happened next.

As of last week McDonalds Australia had been planning on giving away a bunch of custom PS5 controllers, each plastered with a burgers + fries motif in celebration of the company’s 50th birthday (in Australia). Weirdly, the international dining behemoth forgot to ask Sony about this first.

You’d think that would be the first thing a company with an actual legal team would have thought to do if you were going to be mentioning “PlayStation 5" and using a controller image as part of your own marketing, but nope! McDonalds just got straight to it, announcing plans to give the controllers away as part of a competition, along with sending some out to local streamers as well.

So, Sony stepped in and put an end to the entire promotion. While that is absolutely Sony's right, it's also incredibly stupid. What, really, is the end result of this promotion? Sure, McDonald's is attempting to sell more of its fast food. But it also would have served as essentially free advertising for Sony's PS5, wouldn't it? The giveaway was part of McDonald's upcoming "Stream Week", an event that also had to be canceled. And the communication to the public by McDonald's puts the blame squarely on Sony for that.

Sony PlayStation has not authorised the use of its controller in promotional materials related to the proposed Stream Week event and we apologise for any inconvenience caused. McDonald’s stream week has been postponed and Sony PlayStation controllers will not be included in the giveaway.

Which is how Sony managed to turn an opportunity for the free promotion of its consoles in Australia into a PR negative, where the company is now blamed for the delay of McDonalds' Stream Week. It didn't have to be this way. Sony could have instead reached out to McDonald's and quickly worked something out, given that both sides in all of this would have benefited.

But, no, instead the company is apparently reinvigorated with the IP maximalist attitude of control over everything. That this concerns the control over video game controllers is at least partial evidence that the universe is not without a sense of irony.

Filed Under: marketing, playstation 5, playstation controllers, ps5
Companies: microsoft, sony

Sony Studio Acquisition Of Nixxes May Portend Company Opening Up The PlayStation's Walled Garden To PC Gaming

from the finally dept

Late last year, we discussed Sony's corporate report on where its income sources were detailed out and laid bare the fact that the biggest revenue generator for the company was in gaming. We noted at the time that what made all of this really interesting is that this revenue generation occurred under Sony's famous walled-garden policies, where the company went to great lengths to silo its own games into the PlayStation console while also trying to gobble up exclusives for the PlayStation. Coinciding with all of this, though, were some cracks starting to form in that policy. Sony finally opened up games on the PlayStation to cross-platform online play, allowed the PlayStation Now service to run on PCs, and even moved some of its first-party titles onto other platforms, such as having MLB: The Show appearing on the Xbox for the first time and Horizon: Zero Dawn getting a belated PC release.

But those are toe-in-the-water type things. It would be reasonable for anyone to wonder just how committed Sony was going to be in opening up the garden and exploring a wider program of getting first-party games on other platforms. Well, Sony just announced the acquisition of gaming studio Nixxes and it sure looks like it's the answer to those concerns, given what Nixxes does.

If the name Nixxes doesn't ring a bell for most gamers, that's because the studio hasn't developed any original projects in its over-20-year history. Instead, Nixxes has primarily specialized in creating a variety of PC and console ports for games from the likes of Eidos Montreal and Crystal Dynamics (both now Square Enix subsidiaries).

That makes Nixxes an especially intriguing acquisition for Sony, which has been slowly dipping an increasing number of toes into the PC gaming space in recent years. After Horizon: Zero Dawn hit the PC last year, Sony said in its annual report that it "will explore expanding our 1st party titles to the PC platform in order to promote further growth in our profitability." Then, in May, Sony listed Uncharted 4 under the "more PC releases planned" section of an investor report, alongside the recent PC port of former PlayStation exclusive Days Gone.

Save for some sort of mystery work nobody could see coming, it appears that there is exactly one reason why a company like Sony would acquire a studio like Nixxes: to bring PlayStation games to the PC. And, while there is a long history of console ports on PC being done quite poorly, Nixxes actually has a pretty good reputation when it comes to this sort of thing.

So what does this mean? Well, at the very least it portends that we're all going to see a real-time experiment performed by a company that has preferred to have an iron grip on its IP, and what it will do to revenue to slacken that grip. It will come as no surprise to readers here that it is my belief that this will be an absolute boon to revenues. The days of console exclusives are waning. The days of the public having little choice when it comes to options in the gaming space are gone. In its place is an industry where opening things up for fans to give them plenty of options and choice in how to spend their money with you is quickly becoming the norm.

While I'm happy to criticize Sony when the company deserves it, it's worth recognizing that these sorts of culture shifts cannot be easy to pull off. If Sony is actually going to go head first into a new way of operating, I'll be here cheering them on and hoping for its success.

Filed Under: cross platform, playstation, walled garden
Companies: nixxes, sony

Sony Hates You: EarthBound Let's Plays Flagged For Copyright Infringement Due To Soundtrack

from the six-degrees-of-infringement dept

It's no secret that I don't care for the way that Nintendo treats its biggest fans when it comes to allowing them to view and use its IP in order to express their fandom. I have been known, after all, to create entire genres of posts with "Nintendo Hates You" in the title. And, so, when I noticed headlines about how YouTube videos for let's-plays featuring the classic SNES game Earthbound were being demonitized or taken down over copyright claims, I was sure I would be writing yet another of those headlines.

But, nope. Instead, this is a story about how Sony has issued copyright claims, and apparently rebutted counterclaims, against let's-plays for Earthbound not because it published the game, which it very much did not, but because Nintendo licensed the soundtrack for the game to Sony for an album release.

Over the past couple of weeks, reports have come flooding in from YouTube users who say that their EarthBound-based videos are being flagged for copyright by Sony. In some cases, it's reported that Sony has claimed the ad revenue for the video in question; in others, the videos appear to have been removed entirely.

As is often the case with YouTube, the reasoning for this lies with the game's music. While Nintendo still owns the EarthBound/Mother brand in terms of its video games and the franchise as a whole, the game's soundtrack was released as a studio album back in 1989 under Sony's then-named CBS/Sony music label, essentially meaning that any piece of music featured on that record can be claimed by the company.

Okay, if you really needed a more perfect example of how broken copyright laws have become in the modern era, this must certainly be that case. Nintendo releases a game called Earthbound in 1994. Nintendo composers created the music for the game. In 1994, and again in 2004, Sony licenses the music to release a studio album soundtrack. Fast forward nearly twenty years and suddenly people releasing videos of them playing the game that was created by Nintendo nearly thirty years ago are having those videos demonitized or taken down... over the album release. If you can seriously get through that and think that any of this makes sense, you have capacities that I simply do not.

Plenty of YouTube users have taken to social media to express their upset at Sony's decision to remove their content, hoping to find a way to restore their work. The videos will no doubt be getting flagged automatically, what with the soundtrack being part of Sony's catalogue, so unless Sony decides to manually excuse the affected videos going forward, it may be unwise to include music from the game in any future content.

Notably, some of these YouTubers are also indicating that they disputed the notices only to have Sony dig its heels in. If that's the case, this isn't just our stupid automated copyright notice systems creating chaos again.

But here's what this really all boils down to: if even Nintendo is allowing this content to remain up, it should probably stay up. Nintendo has arguably been one of the most aggressive enforcers and protectors of its IP on the planet. Sony is obviously no slouch in that respect, but there is literally nobody watching let's-plays in order to listen to the game soundtrack in the same manner they would an album version of it. In fact, one would think that it might serve as free advertising of Sony's albums, if nothing else.

Filed Under: copyright, earthbound, fans, lets play
Companies: nintendo, sony

Sony Reverses Course On Shutting Down PlayStation Store For PS3, Vita Devices

from the about-face! dept

Well, well, this is certainly moving fast. Regular readers will recall that we've been having a conversation lately about how both customer purchases and video game as art are generally preserved in the face of platforms shutting down the hosting servers that keep all of this data. With a specific eye towards art preservation, this conversation has been largely propelled by Sony's recent announcement that it would be shutting down support for the PlayStation Store for the PlayStation 3, Vita, and PSP consoles. The consternation over all of this only got worse when it was noticed that Sony's batteries on the PS3 and PS4 consoles have a weird little time-sync check-in that has to occur with the PlayStation Network if they're replaced, or else those consoles will be unable to play many, in some cases all, games.

Phew. Anyhoo, while these revelations have been ongoing over the past few weeks, Sony suddenly announced that it was kicking the can down the road by reversing its decision to stop supporting the PS3 and Vita PlayStation Stores.

Today, Sony announced it will no longer shut down the PlayStation Store for PS3 and PS Vita users.

“Recently, we notified players that PlayStation Store for PS3 and PS Vita devices was planned to end this summer,” wrote Sony Interactive’s president and CEO Jim Ryan on the PlayStation blog. “Upon further reflection, however, it’s clear that we made the wrong decision here. So today I’m happy to say that we will be keeping the PlayStation Store operational for PS3 and PS Vita devices. PSP commerce functionality will retire on July 2, 2021 as planned.”

To be clear, the public backlash and angst over all of this is what drove this decision. That being said, it's still worth noting that Sony listened to the public critique of its plan and reversed course. But while that's ultimately a good thing, it's a temporary good thing. Unless someone is going to start suddenly paying attention to what happens when this issue comes up again in the future, this is just punting on the problem for now.

But there may be some reason for hope. Based on some of what's coming out of Sony's reversal, it looks like the company may actually be paying attention to the preservation issue.

The Gamer recently published interviews with several indie developers who would have lost their work and revenue if Sony continued with its plans. It seems this change of heart was in part motivated by the idea of digital conservation. In the blog, Ryan mentions being happy that Sony’s figured out how to “keep this piece of our history alive for gamers to enjoy.”

Again, alive for now. Sony's actions in the coming months are going to demonstrate better whether the company is now committing to a new focus on preservation or if this was all done as a temporary solution to a longer term problem.

Filed Under: playstation, ps3, store, video games, vita
Companies: sony

PlayStation Y2K-Like Battery Bug About To Become A Problem As Sony Shuts Down Check In Servers

from the tick-tock dept

We've had a couple of discussions now about video game preservation with the impetus being Sony's shutdown of support for the PlayStation Store for PSP, PS3, and Vita owners. The general idea there was questioning what happens to games for those systems in the very long term if suddenly nobody can get to them anymore and the developers and publishers are not always retaining the source code and assets for these games on their end. That sort of thing is probably primarily of interest to us folks who look at these games as a form of art and culture, very much worth preserving.

But Sony may well have a much bigger issue on its hands. As a result of a strange internal time-check issue that exists on PS3 and PS4 consoles, there is the very real possibility that those consoles will be unable to play any purchased game soon if the end user replaces the battery on the device. It's, well, it's a bit like Y2K, but for real.

The root of the coming issue has to do with the CMOS battery inside every PS3 and PS4, which the systems use to keep track of the current time (even when they're unplugged). If that battery dies or is removed for any reason, it raises an internal flag in the system's firmware indicating the clock may be out of sync with reality.

After that flag is raised, the system in question has to check in with PSN the next time it needs to confirm the correct time. On the PS3, this online check happens when you play a game downloaded from the PlayStation Store. On the PS4, this also happens when you try to play retail games installed from a disc. This check has to be performed at least once even if the CMOS battery is replaced with a fresh one so the system can reconfirm clock consistency.

But if support for PSN goes away on these systems, so does the system's ability to check in to reconfirm the correct time. And if that happens, well, then suddenly any PS4 game will no longer be playable, nor will any PS3 game bought as a digital download. Sony, in other words, can essentially render these consoles mostly or totally useless for playing games just by shutting down PSN support for these consoles.

Now, why did Sony create this problem for itself in the first place? Well, the answer is different for each console. On the PS3, it was used to enforce "time limits" on digital downloads. For the PS4, it appears to have been used more to keep gamers from messing with how trophies are shown, specifically for when they were earned. Either way, neither of those is so important at this point that Sony should risk bricking bought consoles as a result.

Interestingly, the fix for this should be a simple firmware update... except that Sony hasn't said a word about whether one is coming.

Sony could render the problem moot relatively easily with a firmware update that limits the system functions tied to this timing check. Thus far, though, Sony hasn't publicly indicated it has any such plans and hasn't responded to multiple requests for comment from Ars Technica. Until it does, complicated workarounds that make use of jailbroken firmware are the only option for ensuring that aging PlayStation hardware will remain fully usable well into the future.

I can't imagine a single reason why Sony would want this looming customer crises on its hands... unless it's part of a plan to push the public to buy more, new-generation consoles and get their games back from there. If that is indeed the plan, the PR fallout is going to be insane.

Filed Under: battery, cmos, playstation, ps3, ps4, psn
Companies: sony