Lets have a serious debate on chips and piracy!

Lets keep this above board and not break forums rules and discuss chips and piracy. Afterall it does play a big part in gaming industry.

Incase any of you don\'t know, ill just quickly update you on what is happening on the PS2.

- These aren\'t my opinions these are just what is true -

The PS2 is a computer which has many of its featured locked. The first and prehaps most important features that are locked is the fact that you have to pay Sony to develop for this machine. Unlike a PC you can\'t simply write your own programs as the PS2 will only boot licensed discs. The PS2 is a computer (contains the various archecture which classes it as a computer) and therefore it shouldn\'t be locked, infact the laws are quite sketchy in that you could argue that Sony is being a monopoly by not allowing people to develop for their machine.

The second thing is that the PS2 drive does support CDr and DVDr media - the dreaded backup. However Sony has disabled the booting of this media. Ok so why have they done this ? Well they feel that if they allow backups to run on their machine people won\'t make their one legal backup and instead backup illegally and run software which they don\'t own. Fair enough Sony that sounds like it could be true but the law does state that you are allowed one legal backup of your software and Sony are deneying you this, because as a whole they don\'t trust the consumer. So if you have kids which could mark your game, or lend the game and it gets scractched then what do you do...

... Sony\'s argument is that they provide a one year warrentee on discs. However a replacement disc due to user error is £20, meaning a game and a backup for the game costs £65. Also Sony won\'t provide backups for forign games so if like some members of this board you own a PS2 from a forign country and want to take Sony up on their warrentee you can forget it.

Next is that the PS2 will only play games from its region. This is NOT LAW and is simply what Sony wants their machine to do. Fair enough its their machine. However look at the likes of Nintendo\'s Gameboy Advance, it can play games from any region. After all these are games which the consumer buys. However Sony still feel the need to lock their machine out. Same with DVDs. However it isn\'t illegally to use software such a DVD Region X to play any region DVD.

So the m0dchip will change all this but as I type a developer of a popular m0dchip is being taken to court by Sony so they can stop the production of this product. Sony claims it will hurt their revenue but in reality the m0dchip only allows law breaking citizens to break the law it doesn\'t actually break the law itself. This same theory can be said about Sony\'s own CD writers which are legal to sale in all highstreet stores. With these devices you can create illegally backups of software yet Sony are still allowed to sell them, so why can\'t this m0dchip developer sell their m0dchip which has a legal use just like Sony\'s CD writers?

The above information isn\'t MY opinion. I simply stating the facts which sound harsh on Sony simply because anyone can say m0dchips are bad but its harder to say they are good.

So lets discuss, what do you lot think ?

[Living-In-Clip]

No offense, but there is no clear cut win / lose answer on the m0dchip situation or even the emulation. With that said, I\'d like to add one more comment.

R.I.P
Bleem!

Um it\'s a tough question I\'m not totally against it becasue its good for people who can\'t afford games * cough * * cheep ass * * cough * but there is the point of if everyone buys m0dchips and pirates games then no one will be the real game and therefore the game companys won\'t get the money they need and then they won\'t make any more games. So buy the games if you can so the companys can carry on making games like THPS3 and GTA 3

well i think you should be able to play dvd through a scart, a chip does this, i think you should be able to watch multi region dvd, i know you aint meant to, but if you can buy a dvd region x for £15, why dont sony make something that you can save on your memory card, therefore making money.


i would like to import games, as i hate waiting ages for them,
but i still think chips are bad, im not gonna chance blowing up my ps2.

Im going to buy a chip very soon..... not for piracy, but for the regions. I want Tekken 4 Japenese...... and I want all my games NTSC. Why ? Because the European PS2 have the same problems as the European PS1... the games are sloooooooooooooooooooooooow.

i live in a small country and the average monthly payment is $75. i work all week, and in friday afternoon , saturday and sunday i work at second place. having 2 jobs, i have almost $180 monthly payment. i have collected money and i bought a ps2 conzole 2 weeks ago. now about piracy... the original games cost $55-60 each. do i work less then anyone of you? but i can\'t afford to buy a legal game. am i, as i\'m living in a poor country, denied to play games? isn\'t it piracy to sell 1 game for almost as much as an average montly payment? the pirate games cost is $12 each, and this is not cheap, too!!! so i\'ll put a chip and i\'ll play games and i will not think about me as a \'pirate\' even for a second.

In responce to Sony making developers pay to develop, it\'s really just a more specific term of the company paying royalities for developing software for their product. Even if Sony never made developers pay for discs, the company would have to pay Sony a percentage of whatever profit they make.

That issue also relates to good old M$, making us call their little "hotline" to activate their product we purchased.

But for the select bunch, we did NOT get the Dell OEM copy which lets us NOT bypass activation and not letting M$ invading our privacy.

It\'s the same argument with MP3s; the real thing costs too damn much.  Make games at ~$30 a pop and people wouldn\'t get m0dchips, except the young\'ns who don\'t have jobs and couldn\'t buy a $30-$50 game anyway.

As for me, I think they are wrong and have never put one into any of my consoles.  However, I use Morpheus everyday.

Sorry Upass, I wouldn\'t buy a Ferrari if I couldn\'t afford the insurance.  

The only legitimate use for a chip, IMO, is for imported games.  As for multi-region DVDs, better luck buying an actual DVD player, as my PS2 struggles playing its own region DVDs.

actually, i have said nothing about ferrari... or other cars. i didn\'t said i\'ll steal cars because i don\'t have one. i said i\'ll buy pirate games because legal are totaly unaffordable in my poor country. dear sara,if you lived in a poor coountry, what would you do? eat sleep, eat, sleep, eat sleep and so on? i want to read books, watch movies, and play games. if a legal game was priced a 500 dollars, could you buy one? if 1 book costs 200 dolars, what would you do? i don\'t wan\'t a ferrari, i want a normal life. paying $12 i pay as much as any of you, compared to the monthly payment. try to imagine what i\'ve told you, then be sarcastic

I\'m not really talking about cars, man.  It\'s an analogy.  I just don\'t understand why someone would buy a piece of hardware if they couldn\'t afford the software (legitimately).  

If I were in your situation, I would have purchased a Dreamcast and a bunch of games.

I do agree with everyone who thinks $50 a pop is too much for a game, though.  I\'d be happy with $40 for a new release.  But, c\'est la vie.

Try buying games online, for example Devil May Cry costs £45 in the shops and I would pay £30 from the site I buy from ( and I will at the end of Feb ). Buying games online rules I also buy all my DVD\'s of the site aswell.

Why don´t they do a chip that makes my PS2 play import games/DVD:s?
That chip would sell lots.
Chips that can play backups are really bad. The console developers puts million of dollars into their games.
None of us wants too see more users online in QIII than copies sold.
I want the developers to get their money so I can play multimilliondollar games.

Sony was rumoured to be making an offical PAL / NTSC converter for us lot in PALSVILLE where you could LEAGLY UPGRADE your PAL PS2 to play US and JAPANESE PS2 games.

But sadly it seams like it was a rumor asno more information was reveled about this.

WOULD be nice if it was so though

Well, seein as how I never mod my machines this topic dosen\'t really apply to me. I got the same stance with *******s as I do with Abortion.. not my choice. However, once you buy the PS2 you have complete ownership over the console. Sony has no rights to it aside from "Intellectual Property" which only means that you cannot make and sell your own PS2\'s from your house. Sony can no more sue the manufacturers of the Mod Chips, than MS or Nintnedo can sue the creators of the "Joy Box" or whatever that is that allows you to play the Xbox or NGC with the PS2 controller. Programs are comming out everyday for the DC such as Linux, Doom/Quake1 DC, VCD players, Boot disks.. ect. Sega cannot sue them either. Why should Sony be able to sue for a variation of the same loose "Copyright" infringment.

IMO, You payed the cash, you should be able to do whatever you damn well please with it. Even, unfortunately, if that means pirating. If that\'s your choice to pirate, then go for it. Just don\'t expect to post your thieving BS methods here. They\'re not welcome or allowed.