Creating new media format 'completely necessary', says Sony's Scott Rohde
The PS Vita was built to provide long-term protection from piracy, claims Sony exec.
Speaking to Gamasutra, Rohde said that Vita was specifically designed to prevent pirating of its games through its unique cartridge format.
"That was front and centre in the early specs of this machine," he said.
"We needed to have something that would combat piracy from day one, and that's why the cards that you can purchase for the games are in their own proprietary format."
He added that creating the new media format was completely necessary to make sure the system’s titles were not pirated to the extent of the PSP, which, despite its popularity in Japan, suffered from problems with piracy.
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"It's something that we felt was completely necessary to make sure that people could not pirate these games,” said Rohde.
“I mean, it's a custom security solution on each one of these cartridges. That is something that we are confident will protect us from piracy for the long term."
"Own proprietary format"...how is that different from the psp with their UMDs?
@guest305 - I think he's talking about the memory cards, not the game cards. PSP Memory Stick had zero protection and PSP firmware was easily hacked, so pirating a load of UMDs and dumping them on large capacity Memory Sticks was/is commonplace. I guess Sony needed to offer something to all those 3rd party publishers who didn't sell a bean on PSP due to piracy (and eventually stopped supporting the platform).
I love how people attribute piracy to the failure of the PSP. It sucked, that's why it failed.
Eg. How easy is it to pirate on the wii? All you need is an sd card, and you can do whatever you want. Wii sales are only now starting to decline, and only because the next gen wii is around the corner.
...before their precious secure & proprietary cards are worked around. It's always been a cat & mouse game, and the manufacturer inevitably loses.
The fact that the cards are extremely expensive, and only available from a single source (at the moment), are the primary reasons I'm not interested in Vita. Proprietary cables are yet another attempt at customer lock-in; third-party replacements and/or adapters will be available shortly.
Treating its customers (and potential customers) like idiots and/or thieves isn't going to help Sony sell Vita systems.
Who claims the PSP was a failure? It sold very well.
Also, why would the Wii *console* sales decline because games are easy to pirate? If anything, piracy probably helps to sell consoles. But it doesn't help to sell *games*, which is what the manufacturers make most money from.
How is this gonna stop somebody from making a memory card adapter for those memory cards that'll fit into a regular SD slot?
I will admit that the PS Vita is an awesome system and that Sony is in the right direction when it comes to fighting piracy. In my opinion piracy is a win/lose situation. What I mean is... It's a win for Sony cause the sales of the Vita would go up but it's a lose for game developers cause people are downloading games for free rather than paying for them. So in the end, the real losers are the consumers who actually WANT to pay the cash! However, Sony does need to do 1 of 2 things... either 1) lower the prices for the Vita games or 2) have free DLC for the games!
