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Comments: 101 +-   PlayStation 3 'Hacker's Paradise', Sales Up on Wednesday November 28 2007, @10:53AM

Posted by Zonk on Wednesday November 28 2007, @10:53AM
from the probably-unrelated dept.
security
playstation
Via Game|Life, a story on The Age site suggests that password crackers are really enjoying their PlayStation 3s ... and not because Ratchet is a great game. An NZ-based security researcher stated at a local security conference that the supercomputing power of the PS3 is being put to more nefarious uses than Folding@home. "Speed is important to "brute force" password cracking, which relies on guessing all possible combinations of the characters that make up the password. The accelerated technique means passwords protecting Office, PDF, ZIP and Lotus Notes ID files can be cracked with breathtaking speed. However, many other password types are handled more securely in software and remain unaffected by Breese's claimed speed increase." Sony does have some good news this week, though. Either the holiday season or a price drop here in the states has led to a massive sales increase.
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  • Ratchet and Clank really is an amazing game (Score:5, Informative)

    by Serge_Tomiko (1178965) on Wednesday November 28 2007, @10:56AM (#21505317)
    I just got it yesterday, and I was blown away. It really does look like a Pixar movie. The background detail is just incredible. Hopefully, future PS3 games will show the system's potential as well as Ratchet and Clank.

    • Re:Ratchet and Clank really is an amazing game (Score:5, Insightful)

      by RogueyWon (735973) * on Wednesday November 28 2007, @11:34AM (#21505881) Journal
      Why was parent modded off-topic? The game is mentioned in the summary and is probably one of the factors behind the big increase in PS3 sales. I've not picked up my copy yet (too many other things to finish off first - Persona 3, Mass Effect and Crysis at the top of the list), but it does look astoundingly good.

      I think, more than anything else, the factor behind the PS3's sales increase will be the fact that it is finally getting some games worth playing. For almost a year, Resistance: Fall of Man has been the only really top-notch title on the system, but this is definitely starting to change now.

      Last time around, the PS2 won the sales war by on overwhelming margin despite being both the most expensive system and the least impressive technically. Why? The games. First of all, it had the key, core exclusive franchises that move systems like no other; Final Fantasy, Metal Gear Solid and Gran Turismo. However, this alone wouldn't have been enough. More important was the fact that the PS2 was effectively guaranteed to pick up any game that wasn't a 1-platform exclusive. Plenty of games didn't get an Xbox or a Cube release, despite appearing elsewhere, but despite the pain involved in the development, the PS2 got basically everything. If your family only plans to own one console and doesn't intend to change it for a good few years, this is a huge factor.

      So far in this generation, no system has managed to establish a similar position on games. The PS3 is notoriously short of titles and most PS3s, my own included, are still mostly used as shiny and expensive PS2s. None of the franchises that helped Sony out so much last time have hit the machine yet. The Wii is an absolute desert for quality titles outside of a tiny number of Nintendo's own franchise games. In Japan, at least, its monthly sales lead has evaporated as the PS3 makes a fightback. The 360 is probably the best placed on games, due to its greater age, but it hardly has what I would call a commanding lead. MS have done a good job of attracting a more balanced line-up and, in Forza 2, have almost neutralised the advantage held by Sony with one of their "big" games (Gran Turismo), but they've still got a long way to go in some markets and in throwing off their image as the "fps" console.

      • Why was parent modded off-topic? The game is mentioned in the summary and is probably one of the factors behind the big increase in PS3 sales. I've not picked up my copy yet (too many other things to finish off first - Persona 3, Mass Effect and Crysis at the top of the list), but it does look astoundingly good.

        Consoles like text editors, OS's, and flavors of linux are very very very contentious. People enjoy self organizing into little tribes and tossing mods around. The GP was sort of raving without much significant content. Thus people modded him down. It wasn't that off topic and it was un-deserved.

        So far in this generation, no system has managed to establish a similar position on games. The PS3 is notoriously short of titles and most PS3s, my own included, are still mostly used as shiny and expensive PS2s. None of the franchises that helped Sony out so much last time have hit the machine yet. The Wii is an absolute desert for quality titles outside of a tiny number of Nintendo's own franchise games. In Japan, at least, its monthly sales lead has evaporated as the PS3 makes a fightback. The 360 is probably the best placed on games, due to its greater age, but it hardly has what I would call a commanding lead. MS have done a good job of attracting a more balanced line-up and, in Forza 2, have almost neutralised the advantage held by Sony with one of their "big" games (Gran Turismo), but they've still got a long way to go in some markets and in throwing off their image as the "fps" console.

        I'm about 50/50. Half the time I'm playing R&T, COD 4, or even Dynasty warriors: Gundam. The other half of the time I'm working my way through the backlog of ps2 games I bought and didn't play. There were just

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by vux984 (928602)

        In Japan, at least, its monthly sales lead has evaporated as the PS3 makes a fightback.

        You had me nodding until you got here.

        Yeah, technically that's true. They went from ~65k+ per week, to ~35k+ per week. And the PS3 recently spiked up (from ~15k to ~55k) But its a very small myopic view of a much bigger picture.

        To start, vgchartz.com (which you have to take with giant grain of salt mind you), is showing that the Wii sold some 640,000 units last week world wide. That, if true, is more than it acheived in

      • Because it is offtopic. Ratchet and Clank being a good game has nothing to do with the PlayStation being a "Hacker's Paradise", even if Ratchet and Clank were mentioned in the article.
      • Yes, you can reverse the camera controls (both axis) in the full release, much like any other sane game. Reversing the camera is usually the first thing I do (unless the game got it right the first time which is rare)
      • Without having played the demo and without any specific insight into how you expect a camera to behave, I can say that I had little if any issues with the camera in the retail version of Ratchet and Clank. I didn't see any options for adjusting the camera while I was playing but I admit that I didn't really look that hard.

        R&C is actually one of the better platformers I have played in years, I would recommend it to any PS3 owner but I wouldn't necessarily recommend that someone buy a PS3 with just this g
        • Ratchet is the only thing that saddens me about my decision not to buy a PS3. All of my other favorite series (FF, MGS, and LoK, primarily) either jumped the shark or ended in the PS2 days, but Ratchet and Clank never disappointed...
            • Neither one interests me. Both series "Jumped the shark (FF X-2, MGS3)." Legacy of Kain ended with Defiance. R&C isn't compelling enough to buy a system for.
              • Metal Gear (Solid or not) is a professional shark-jumping series. I'll be surprised if we don't see an actual, physical shark to jump before the series ends.

  • Useless (Score:4, Insightful)

    by seebs (15766) on Wednesday November 28 2007, @11:08AM (#21505475) Homepage
    Tripling as opposed to last year's supply-constraints is hardly informative.

    Note that Nintendo gave concrete numbers, not ratios as compared to unknowns...
    • Agreed, Sony's statement is incredibly vague. I don't know how much stock to put in vgchartz.com's numbers (they're mostly estimations, after all), but they're showing an 84% week-to-week increase in PS3 sales in North America for the week end 24 Nov. 07. PS3 sales in Europe increased only slightly compared to the previous week (~25%), because there's no Turkey Day-related shopping bonanza on that side of the pond. Japanese data for the same week isn't up yet, but I'd guess that if sales there are increa
      • They're doing well in Japan, finally, but I think the only reason they're outselling the Wii is that the latter is supply-constrained; next spring, when the US shopping rush is over, Nintendo will finally be able to saturate the Japanese market.

        Then, presumably, they'll ramp up production again, and lower the price. :)
        • That's what they said last year, but you still have to stand in line at 8 in the morning if you want a new Wii. I got a used one from Gamestop. It worked great, and they forgot to wipe the system. Bonus games.
        • I'm not sure I buy that argument. The PS3 parts are a lot rarer and more difficult to fab than the Wii parts. If the PS3 is actually numerically outselling the Wii because of supply constraints, then Nintendo has some real problems.

          My theory had been that the PS3 would really take off as it got below $300, and that its PS2 compatibility (considering the huge volume of PS2's that are STILL being sold) would allow it to slingshot past the other consoles. Now that the geniuses at Sony are removing PS2 compa
    • They gave numbers. Though its meaningless to compare the month of october to the month of november when it comes to product sales. People xmas shop in november, hell ps 2 sales tripled [betanews.com] this month.
      • Percentages aren't the same as numbers. Without a specific count of units sold somewhere in the picture, "tripling" tells us nothing. We don't know whether that's ten thousand units more than the 5k they sold before, or four hundred thousand more than the 200k they sold before.
        • Its in the article. :P They sold ~300k PS3 compared to ~100k in october.
          • You didn't read carefully enough.

            Sony didn't give numbers; Sony gave percentages. The article guessed at what the numbers would probably be based on indirect sources like NPD.
    • I'm paraphrasing, but:
      Murray: That show was great for us! Fan club membership has tripled.
      Bret: So that makes...[stops, thinks]...three?
    • The article is not about videogame sales.

      It is about using videogames for other things than playing games.

      BTW, since you mention the Wii, I will feel free to point out it would never be used for anything other than playing games because it simply doesn't have the processing power to do anything else. It's still a lot of fun, but that's not the point.

      The point is there is a readily available supply of supercomputing-class machines in stores all over the place. Now may be the right time to beef up your crypto

  • Massive increase (Score:5, Insightful)

    by hibiki_r (649814) on Wednesday November 28 2007, @11:19AM (#21505669)
    The massive increase they talk about is just in relative terms. Nintendo claims they sold 350k wiis last week:more than Gamespot claims the PS3 did all month, and that's because the Wii is still supply constrained. The 360 sold over 200k the same week too.

    Even with the price drop, they are still third in the US week to week. The fact that Uncharted, the PS3s best reviewed exclusive this year, is doing poorly just makes it more painful: It seems that people aren't even buying the good games. Not even 300k so far in the US for Ratchet & Clank?

    I wish the best to Sony, but I don't think they have a prayer until their biggest names come out. Maybe Final Fantasy, Metal Gear and Gran Turismo can stop the bleeding.
    • Out of curiosity, why do you wish the best to Sony?
      • Because:

        - The PS3 is a real nice console
        - The PS3 runs Linux
        - The Cell processor inside the PS3 is way cool
        - We prefer to see Sony hurting Microsoft than the other way around
        • > The Cell processor inside the PS3 is way cool

          Arguably, so is the Xenon. The Cell is perhaps better in some ways, but I don't think anything on the 360 has really yet taken advantage of all 6 cores either.

          I really really really don't want to see anyone "win", because if they do, we lose. But Sony does need to do better. Given the media companies they own, not having movie download services from day 1 was just inexcusable. Do they even have it now?

          I'll get a PS3 for the linux system when the framebuf

  • Bah, "Hacker" meaning "cracker" (Score:3, Insightful)

    by TeknoHog (164938) on Wednesday November 28 2007, @11:24AM (#21505739) Homepage Journal
    I was expecting something about Linux/OSS development on the PS3 :-P~
    • Especially in this case where the idea seems to be to crack the encryption by bruteforce methods.

  • "Sony does have some good news this week" (Score:4, Funny)

    by RHSC (1019802) on Wednesday November 28 2007, @11:30AM (#21505833)
    they just saved money by switching to geico?
    • they just saved money by switching to geico?

      No.... and while they may not be marketing geniuses either they did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night.
  • This is certainly interesting, but I wonder if there are already botnets out there cracking passwords. Things would become really interesting if there were a way to get compromised software on the PS3 network that could then be used to harness thousands of PS3s in the way that folding@home does. Still, using PCs in a botnet would probably be easier, just make up for lower average CPU capability with greater numbers.
    • However, the PS3 does allow you to install linux (in a hypervisor of course) and program a few of the SPUs individually, which means for $600 bucks you get a nice multi-core machine that you can program. IBM's distributed framework for CELL also works with the PS3 as well.

      Of course, those who have botnets usually don't pay for their CPU resources...

    • Re:Botnets for Cracking Maybe? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by tmasky (862064) on Wednesday November 28 2007, @04:06PM (#21509779)
      Heya, Nick B here..

      The above author made a very valid point =)

      However, in the initial "grand scheme of things", Sony wanted Cell processors in every piece of consumer electronics to create a sort-of distributed computing model within your home. More processors and more potential entry points. Who knows if that'll still happen.

      In any case, the point I've been trying to make is that vector processors can do crypto very well. The Cell's SPUs are just a very good example of that. Who knows what other vector processors could be used..

      I want to apologise for the lack of technical detail available. I absolutely hate it when I read a news piece and can't find further info. The media piece came out of a pre-release talk I did at the Kiwicon security conference.

      The full presentation will (hopefully) be done at some international security conference. All technical information and source code will be made available then. No software patents are involved ;)

  • Nick Breese's Presentation (Score:3, Interesting)

    by this great guy (922511) on Wednesday November 28 2007, @11:44AM (#21506027)
    I haven't been able to find the presentation that Nick Breese gave at Kiwicon. It's not on kiwicon.org, it's not on the websites with which he is associated. However I found a 10 min of audio recording excerpt of his presentation on this podcast [itradio.com.au] (between 9:38 and 21:06).
  • From TFA:
    Sony asserts that the surge in sales is largely due to the price cut...

    Price cut? But that's why I got my second job!
  • I think the new set of commercials for the PS3 really kick ass, and I think it may be convincing impulsive people to buy it. I'm just speculating, but I think the commercials could be significant reason why PS3 is seeing increased sales. The CGI of the PS3 morphing into guns, spaceships, etc was really well done. I have no idea what good exclusive games are out yet for the PS3 (if there is any), but the commercial made me want to buy a PS3 anyways (even though I won't, because I know better).

    • Re:New PS3 Commericials (Score:4, Funny)

      by scot4875 (542869) on Wednesday November 28 2007, @03:57PM (#21509675) Homepage
      I disagree with this statement 100%. The commercials are stupid -- but then, I like to be informed by commercials, not entertained or given "warm fuzzy" feelings about the advertised product.

      I have no idea what good exclusive games are out yet for the PS3 (if there is any)

      And this is exactly why the commercials were stupid. I think I saw a couple flashes of Ratchet & Clank in the spots, but honestly I have no clue what games they were even trying to advertise to me. Basically the ad said to me, as a gamer who loosely follows the releases on platforms I don't own, "We don't have any specific games worth showing to you, but the PS3 sure is awesome. You should get one." To which I say, "Screw that."

      --Jeremy

      • "We don't have any specific games worth showing to you, but the PS3 sure is awesome."

        I would argue that's why the commercials are good. They make the system seem really cool even though there aren't really any interesting games out for it yet. I think you confuse me for a PS3 shill or something. I'm obviously not interested in the console, but you have to admit it was really cool-looking commercial. The special effects, the choice of music, and the transitions between game footage and the PS3 CGI was really well done. Maybe it's just because I'm a graphics programmer and I'm really in

        • I agree with you that the PS3 commercials were well done ("slick" I thought the first time I saw one) and for their target markets probably effective. They're certainly vastly better than the launch commercials, which did little more than give me the impression that the PS3 was vaguely supernatural and possibly evil. What the GP failed to realize is that people like him who "like to be informed" aren't the target of these ads. Sony expects people like him to read gaming mags or websites to form opinions,
      • Btw, the aim of a commercial is to sell a product and get name recognition. Some do it by entertaining, some do it by informing. Which method is better at selling stuff, I don't know. But just because it doesn't inform doesn't make it a bad commercial.

    • Re:Most Powerful and Open Console yet? (Score:5, Funny)

      by pembo13 (770295) on Wednesday November 28 2007, @11:44AM (#21506031) Homepage
      Sucks for you. I have been logging several hours with mine. Luckily, you not enjoying it has no effect on the rest of us.

    • Okay, so basically this article says that the PS3 is the most powerful and open console of this generation and people keep digging at Sony?
      Sony fanboys claim this is simple anti-sony persecution.

      The more rational, logical conclusion is that, contrary to the marketing drivel, "most powerful" means fuckall in terms of actual gaming enjoyment.
      • "The more rational, logical conclusion is that, contrary to the marketing drivel, "most powerful" means fuckall in terms of actual gaming enjoyment."

        Yes, but as the article points out, processing power is everything for cracking passwords.
    • My problem with the Wii is simply that it looks bad on HD sets. I'm one of these people who never bought a regular TV, simply because I couldn't take the blurry resolution and lack of definition, so I suppose I'm in a minority.

      • My problem with the Wii is simply that it looks bad on HD sets.

        I have my Wii set to 480p and it looks great on my 42" plasma. Are you using the standard composite cables or did you buy the neccessary component cables?

        The TV also makes a big difference. My friend and I both have a PS3 and we both have 42" plasmas, he bought an LG for $1500 and I bought a Pioneer for $3000, and the difference in picture quality is night and day.

        • My friend has a nice 42" LCD. Movies are great and the clarity, sharpness and color from his Wii are all top notch. But many of his games look as if they took a Hannah-Barbara cartoon and adapted it for the movie theater without redrawing any of the animation. In other words, it looks like crap because the developers were lazy about making a polished product.

          You would absolutely not accept this level of animation on an Xbox or PS3 title, not because they're so much more powerful, but because your expecta
          • You would absolutely not accept this level of animation on an Xbox or PS3 title, not because they're so much more powerful, but because your expectations are much higher.

            The thing is, developers (especially 3rd-party developers) will find ways to turn out crap no matter what the "expectations". This applies even to graphics -- the PS3 is powerful, but certainly not powerful enough to deliver jaw-dropping results without a lot of work from the developers.

            From what I've seen of the demo games on the PS3, thi
            • I've experienced frame rate issues, then after a reboot they go away. It's not ideal, but it isn't the developer's fault either and it's definately not a persistent problem. I've yet to see an accusation of 5fps or "slide show" frame rates with any kind of widespread reports of the issue or an instructions on how to duplicate it. Yes, there can be frame rate issues due to lazy development or a bogged down system, but no, it really isn't as bad as all that.

    • I think most people expected that Sony was going to release a game console, not a platform for Bluray movies that doubles as a Linux box.

      Sony made some critical mistakes when they rushed the PS3 to market. It looks like they tried to jam too much stuff into it and couldn't work out all the issues before release.

    • I totally agree about the power of the PS3. Thanks to Sony's use of open standards, I now have a ps3 in my room running neural networks far faster than any of my desktop boxes. They built an impressive machine (except for the fact that I can't expand the RAM). It makes me happy and I will love them for it while it sits in my bedroom crunching numbers.

      That said, when I'm stumped while coding and want to take a break, I'll be in the living room with the Wii.
      • Man, they are selling it at a loss... The price is not high because they are arrogant greedy bastards, it's high because it's a fucking expensive machine to build.
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