Comments on: Sony "Other OS" lawsuit dismissed

By: Brad H.

Brad H. — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 01:10:00 +0000

Who said I didn’t? I like to practice frugality and minimalism, saving space and power.

And your latter statement, what a cop-out. Try telling that to the guy with a space-saver tyre in his boot compared to last year’s model that had a regular one. Or the woman who purchased the shoes that were recommended to her are now suddenly made in a foreign sweatshop and not as good as her friend’s pair. Product tangibility doesn’t have to be owned to be noticed and felt.

The fact is the Wii up until now has had backwards-compatibility with Gamecube games (Japanese unit remains unchanged, but older SKU is being sold alongside Family Edition for now). There was criticism about the XBox 360 but at least it has software emulation with now a large game compatibility list. But with the PS3 they removed two emerging attributes of the PlayStation brand, homebrew development and last-gen ties. Both features were spun-down quietly, and in the case of OtherOS, still advertised which led to the lawsuit.

“Backwards compatibility, as you know from PlayStation One and PlayStation 2, is a core value of what we believe we should offer. And access to the library of content people have created, bought for themselves, and accumulated over the years is necessary to create a format. PlayStation is a format meaning that it transcends many devices — PSOne, PS2 and now PS3.” – Phil Harrison / SCEI 2006

By: 3William56

3William56 — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 01:04:00 +0000

Or you could use any old second hand laptop with a free Linux distro and get a whole better result all round.

By: 3William56

3William56 — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 01:03:00 +0000

True. Except the Sony EULA has an opt out mechanism. Whereas the Microsoft Xbox 360 one issued last week has no opt out. You forgot to mention that.

By: p96

p96 — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 00:48:00 +0000

I had OtherOS installed: the Yellow Dog Linux distribution. They didn’t make it easy to get to (you had to boot the PS3 OS and restart into OtherOS), and it had too little RAM to run modern applications. As a basic webmail / remote desktop client, YDL on PS3 was acceptable.

By: adonai

adonai — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 22:07:00 +0000

That was a reply to Brad H, not sure why Disqus made it standalone…but there you go.

By: adonai

adonai — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 22:03:00 +0000

Or you could have kept your PS2 – no reason to give it up just because you bought a PS3.
As well, those features weren’t removed from PS3s that had them already – you can’t really lose what you never had.

By: relawson

relawson — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 16:41:00 +0000

yeah, I mean, not even FAX? I’m surprised they didn’t specify that it had to be the Pony Express!

By: Jeffrey Carter

Jeffrey Carter — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 16:33:00 +0000

5 out of 5 friends who own PS3s had no idea what I was talking about when I forwarded this.

By: Brad H.

Brad H. — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 16:16:00 +0000

This, and the fact they removed both the ‘Emotion Engine’ CPU and ‘Graphics Synthesiser’ GPU so we had to re-buy PS2 games (nations of PAL never had the chance to have both) has kinda kept me away from Sony stuff. My ownership of a PSP hasn’t helped either.

I may bite the bullet and get a 360 or buy a new TV in 2012 (Sony usually throws in a Ps3 to sell more units before major sports events).

By: Teirhan

Teirhan — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 16:10:00 +0000

The good news is that you can specifically opt out of that clause when you sign the EULA. The bad news is, you have to do it by actually physically sending a letter to their legal department. What is this, the 19th century?

By: Rob Beschizza

Rob Beschizza — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 15:51:00 +0000

Sony has moved on! Its new EULA now simply removes consumers' rights to file class-action lawsuits entirely.