The release of Medal of Honor on the PlayStation 3 has a free on-disc bonus – it’s called ‘Firmware 3.50’. Your PS3 must have the latest firmware upgrade, if it does not then the game will not play.
It’s a clever move by Sony and the games companies: if someone wished to play a game online in the past there was no way to escape the current firmware as you must have your PS3’s system software up to date to play via the PlayStation Network.
In addition, though, ensuring the game doesn’t run at all without 3.50 means that anyone who wishes to play offline will also have to upgrade so all those naughty jailbreaking pirates are locked out.
If 3.50 on disk becomes commonplace then, as expected, jailbroken PS3s will not be able to play any future titles. Sony have the upper hand once more and the only thing pirates can do now is to start disassembling the code for PS3 games and hacking out the requirements for 3.50.
You can read our full review of Medal of Honor here.
Source : MCV / Digital Foundry
H3O
Putting the firmware on the disc and requiring it for play didn’t work for the PSP and it won’t work for the PS3. Simple as that.
cc_star
No, because once a game is installed on an internal or external HDD, it’s file structure can be examined and altered to work
gazzagb
Great idea by the Sony guys, although it means we’ll probably never see homebrew on PS3 (unless you buy another PS3 just for it).
bigdon23
im sure it wont be long before the pirates find away round this then it all starts again.
Galgomite
The last console to be truly interesting in its hacked form was the original Xbox– and that’s because it was just a PC. Some people continue to talk about all the cool things they’ll do on their hacked PS3. Like what?? Play cracked PS3 games? Snore.
cc_star
No, there’s loads of stuff, but of course that is the main reason
Grey_Ghost13
How come MOH hasn’t been delayed like GT5 has by making it launch with 3.5?
cc_star
Because something else must be wrong/part of the plan/whatever