Sony Decides To "Go Apple"

Sony has a rap sheet that goes way beyond even my own expectations. Their constant unprosecuted criminal acts should have been enough of a shocker to those whom vote politicians in for the promise they'll be "tough on crime." Still, the electronics powerhouse has decided to do what Apple has done.

If you're anything like me, you like handheld video gaming/multimedia. Let's go back through a bit of history before we catch up to the last sentence and then we'll move forward.

One blogger pointed out a few years back that Sony/BMG had been installing root kits in their CDs without telling you. If you have any of the CDs from their artists, no doubt you've either played them on your computer or you've ripped them to your computer. If either of those is the case, consider this for a moment.

Imagine ordering a pizza. The Pizza guy delivers it, comes in, makes himself at home and opens your back door for the Pizza joint to investigate whenever they like. You don't like it and you ask him to leave...he refuses. You decide to forceably remove him and he proceeds to destroy parts of your home, kick the door off the hinges and then leave.

Not really appealing? Should be prosecuted, yeah? Well, not according to Sony. Their stance is that they should be able to resort to illegal behavior in order to protect their bottom line. Guess what? they got called on it and they got away with it. Now, they let you know that the crap's still there and they refuse to remove it. The illegal activity even inflamed their artists who decided that they wanted those illegal hacker tools OFF of their CDs. Nothin' doin', folks.

The next phase of criminal activity came when they decided to interrupt the free enterprise market with proprietary software in their PSPs. The same also goes for the PS2 and the PS3. Mess with it and screw up and your machines are as good as overpriced paperweights.

Let's move on to PSP's format, the Universal Media Disc or UMD. It didn't catch on in anything except gaming. They did make movies for PSP in the UMD format. While even I can see that as a novel approach, I just don't want to spend the money on PSP formatted movie discs when I can take my own DVDs and literally rip them to the memory sticks. I carry around far less and I can watch movies that Sony HASN'T bothered reformatting.

When it comes to laser-readable discs, what happens? File Sharing!

Now, I must admit that Sony's PSP was an awesome bit of kit but they had to expect that problems would present themselves.

Sony wanted ultimate control of what was done with their device even AFTER YOU made the purchase. Hackers being hackers, none of them decided to lay down on the tracks to await the train. They went to hacking. Some bricked their devices further proving that Sony brazenly told customers "You'll play with it our way or no way at all." Others, hacked with success only to have to re-hack every time a firmware update came.

Okay, look, Sony...it goes like this. When I pay my hard-earned dollars down for something...I become the owner. If you want to share ownership, then share responsibility and put it in writing or shut the fuck up.

Now, the PSP Go is the rage on the commercials. Pardon me while I laugh heartily at Sony's continued stupidity.

I know there's the old saying, "If you can't beat them, join them" but it seems as though Sony is going with the old Carlin idiom, "If you can't beat them, arrange to have them beaten." and doing it badly.

PSP Go boasts better features than the PSP or PSP Slim. One problem, it's download only and nothing is reverse compatible. So let's say that you're a bit old-school like me. When you buy something, you expect physical and tangible product in your hands. You expect to be able to take that product down to the local Game Shop to trade it in and get some credit towards a new game. Well, guess what? Nope, not today.

With the PSP Go, you have to snag the console, new memory sticks, new everything and guess what....you're buying your games all over again. Hope you weren't too invested in your previous one because, if you were, the trade-in value is not worth it.

What Sony is hoping to do is ride Apple's iPhone wave of downloadable apps. Yeah, okay, Sony, that's cool but you're forgetting something....most of the apps and games for iPhone are less expensive than most of your games...some of them are even free.

If they thought they had problems with piracy then, just wait, guys...this ship is going to sink like the Titanic comprised of a lead hull.

I must admit that the PSP Go does look awesome but what would have been better?

Well, let's have a look at a company making one hell of a knock-down, drag-'em-out return to gaming greatness...Nintendo. Nintendo's DS, DSi, and DS Lite don't seem to have many piracy issues. Could it be because the games are cartridges? I think so. Granted, the DS Lite doesn't have many of the features that the DS and DSi have but the DS also has something that the PSP doesn't...longevity without criminal behavior.

Then again, we are talking about Japan here...the land that spawned The Yakuza, The Ninja and Plumbers strung out on mushrooms.