The next system software update for the PlayStation 3 (PS3) system will be released on April 1, 2010 (JST), and will disable the “Install Other OS” feature that was available on the PS3 systems prior to the current slimmer models, launched in September 2009. This feature enabled users to install an operating system, but due to security concerns, Sony Computer Entertainment will remove the functionality through the 3.21 system software update.
In addition, disabling the “Other OS” feature will help ensure that PS3 owners will continue to have access to the broad range of gaming and entertainment content from SCE and its content partners on a more secure system.
Consumers and organizations that currently use the “Other OS” feature can choose not to upgrade their PS3 systems, although the following features will no longer be available;
- Ability to sign in to PlayStation Network and use network features that require signing in to PlayStation Network, such as online features of PS3 games and chat
- Playback of PS3 software titles or Blu-ray Disc videos that require PS3 system software version 3.21 or later
- Playback of copyright-protected videos that are stored on a media server (when DTCP-IP is enabled under Settings)
- Use of new features and improvements that are available on PS3 system software 3.21 or later
For those PS3 users who are currently using the “Other OS” feature but choose to install the system software update, to avoid data loss they first need to back-up any data stored within the hard drive partition used by the “Other OS,” as they will not be able to access that data following the update.
Additional information about PS3 firmware updates, including v3.21 (once it becomes available), can be found here:
http://us.playstation.com/support/systemupdates/ps3/index.htm
PS3 owners who have further questions should contact Consumer Services:
http://us.playstation.com/support/ask/
800-345-7669 (800-345-SONY)
@1272
How about a lawsuit
I installed Linux on my old fatty, but it was stolen and I just got a slim so I don’t even have the option. I never really used it and Im a software engineer, it was a cool novelty to have but in the end it just took space in my HD which I otherwise would use for games and movies.
What I’m saying is that I feel indifferent. It really sucks for those that really use the feature (which I do believe is a very small minority), but that is how the game is played. Sony needs to protect it’s developers (first, second and third party) and this is how its done. It’s quite possible that an alternative method of securing the system would’ve left the OtherOS feature even more crippled than it currently is and that woul’ve pissed people off even more than just taking it out.
On another note, this could all be a preparation to a big April fools stunt. The current firmware is at 3.15, how did they get to 3.21? Maybe it is legitimate and they may be adding something to sweeten the deal (like adding a feature many have been asking for, or a different method for users to run homebrew <–"wishful, I know")
YOU CAN’T SUE THEM Read the TOS, they have a legal right
At one point in my life with my ps3 I wanted to use this functionality, but to feel safer I dont mind it being removed. You bought a PS3 for its Games right, i would hope so, yes everyone has a right to use what they bought it for, but do you want a bad apple to take control of PSN and ban every single one of us. I dont. To add, they cant take away PS2 from the older PS3’s because its hardware based (20, 60GB) units. Im not sure about them taking it away from the 80GB, I dont see it a problem though. However whoever reads this
off topic: My ps3 would start up and freeze and say “correct hard disk could not be found, cant start” I put in a 500GB Seagate 5400rpm 2.5 SATA HDD, and started getting this error a couple weeks ago ive done a safe mode twice to redo the file system. Anyone know of this do i need to replace my HDD or what thanks.
It is not a joke it clearly states that on the UK PS Blog
@1271 so you have 8 pcs and you need your Ps3 to stream content?
sounds dumb
Wow… this is unbelievable. I honestly can say I’m never going to buy a piece of Sony equipment ever again.
If it is an April Fool’s day stunt the nearly tearful phone rep I just spoke to didn’t think it was. 1-800345-7669
Call in, get to the PS3 Q then hit 0 for operator.
Rip those poor agents a new one. Enough walk out and it will send a message.
Will I be able to get reimbursed for the removal of a feature that I use? I’ve invested a considerable amount of time in Linux on my PS3 and you are just trashing it all. This is the worst idea I’ve ever heard. I was just getting excited about the PS3 and now you do this? I am very VERY disappointed.
I’m guessing this is an anti-hacker update? I wish there was another route rather than removing stuff that was promised in the original version. I mean, this won’t affect me directly right now, but maybe in the future.
2010 is not shaping up to be a great year hardware-wise. First the leap year thing, now this. What’s going to make up for it? The Playstation Move? No thank you.
and also,piracy has only hurt the psp. but thats because sony screwed that up i the beginning, i see mario galaxy has been in the top 10 sales nearly this whole gen, the 360 still beats the ps3 in user base averaged games. piracy has really hurt them a bunch now has it?
psp go is garbage, the prices for psn psp games is more then the umd prices. sony, piracy this late in the game would actually help the ps3 alot more then screwing us consumers over like you probably have planned.
whats next?
the internet browser (which is fuct?
custom themes (because geohotz already hacked them)?
copying saves to a usb mem card?
copying music cd’s to the hdd?
copying photos to the hdd?
an always free psn?
backwards compadibility for all versions that support it?
the mem card readers?
ds3 and sixaxis support so you can support you wii rip-off?
taking away voice and video chat (like you did with home)?
are we gonna have to sign in to the crap psn to watch movies and play games because you want to show support to ubisoft and their fail drm schemes?
and where’s the update to fix that bug that reared its ugly head earlier this month? it will come back, sometime in the future.
Yes interesting turns, as many here point out to the XBOX360 new features and amenities are added, expanded, and vice versa all Sony cuts))), if you will XBOX360 arcade for 99 $, I think that Sony will sit in a puddle!
call 1-800-345-7669 presses 1 for PS3, then 0 for operator, then RIPS them a new one for pushing a firmware update that does nothing but REMOVE advertised functionality. (Go on….do it)
shame on you.
You gave us linux to have a good reputation and make the difference with microsoft.
Now you laugh of your customers because you remove the feature.
There isn’t hack on PS3
I bought 600€ your PS3.
Your reaction is unaccepatble.
I hate you.
I’ll buy xbox360 with Natal. they create and not remove feature
Your playstation move is a copy of Wiimote. you are hacker.
Shame on you
Of course you can sue them. In the US our States Attorney General do this all the time on behalf of customers. They sued Microsoft® when they supposedly ‘couldn’t be sued’. ANY EULA can be deemed arbitrary and capricious if a federal circuit judge finds it to be.
So in place of the OS do we get our full backward compatibilty???
How is this hardly even fair, 1.) keep Linux and have no acess to PSN (features, etc.) or 2.) Lose something that set you apart and get nothing in return but being able to play games and acess PSN. (Which we could do with the other OS option now)
Please reconsider……..I personally don’t currently use this option but regardless i did buy a console based on the fact i could use any and all of its functions.
Yeah, its quite retarded if you ask me why Sony banishing the whole Linux OS function support when they first implemented and now want to kill it off. Why don’t they let PS3 start as no Linux OS or other OS support in the first place, rather pulling some cheap stunt like this to upset the users. I think Sony is smoking some bad weed before realize they made the decision. Poor judgment and poor execution with this firmware update… **sigh**
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
lol@everyone who thinks the hack did anything
All the hack did was allow people who used the Other OS option to actually make full use of the PS3.
It did not enable piracy or anything of the sort. It simply allowed full access to the console for development.
Essentially, Sony said “our system can do homebrew via linux,” then gave little to no actual use to this system. Then a hacker finally opens the rest of it up so homebrew could be possible, and Sony takes it away.
This seriously better be a joke….this is the stupidest thing I’ve seen Sony do, and their going to lose a LOT of customers because of this.
Over the past five or six years since the PSP came out, I’ve been defending Sony against all comers. I joined the GAP and have participated in half a dozen betas. Everyone else I know has ditched the Playstation platform to get an Xbox 360 because of it’s vastly superior online presence.
This, however, is the final straw. I use Linux on my PS3 all the time and I refuse to give it up because of some phantom security problems. I also refuse to give up a complete gaming experience. As a result, if this update comes to pass, I’m selling my PS3 (and everything related to it) and I will gladly join the inevitable class action lawsuit that is going to result from this.
@ DonCalzone21
Terms of Service are rarely held up in court. Sony owes us for this BS.
Im not mad at the removal of other os. Im just mad that there are not any other features
Jack Tretton should find a new job!..I should take there butts to court for this and in the past I bought Wipe out HD when it already was $29.00 and ever since the update 2.51 Wipe out HD will not work I’ve filed a complaint with Sony and they never gave my money back for that game!..What a Blip Blip Ripoff from S.C.E.A there name should be spelled Sony Costs Entertainment An Arm!..Sony now is becoming a buy scheme company!..FAILURE IS NOT AN OPTION SONY! BUT YOU WILL FAIL WITH THE WAY YOUR GOING!
This had better be an April Fool’s joke! >:(
Oh, and btw, what happened to the marketing like “It only does everything”?
Way to spoil all the good will you’ve been building with customers Sony.
I don’t know if a lawsuit would be the best use of everyone’s time, but it will let them know they can’t do whatever the f’ they want. If we invest $400-$600 in a system, we want what we pay for.
Call SONY DEMAND A REFUND FOR THIS FEATURE!
Sony – it only creates whiney babys supporting a useless feature.
i will be issuing a class action lawsuit the second this comes out. i just got off the phone with my (great) lawyer and even he says this against the law and is what they call bait and switch.
so, who’s with me. i’m gonna call sony right now and give em a piece of whats to come.
I just put a blog.share posting up, not to remove this feature. Let’s see if it sees the light of day. Sony what is wrong with you? I use this feature all the time and it is great!! Everyone you don’t have to not play your PS3 anymore. Just buy all your things used!
I’m wary of anything said to happen on April 1st… I’ll believe it when I see it.
That guy should’ve never started promoting hacking the PS3 in the first place, it’s to prevent widespread piracy. He should’ve kept it a secret project or something if so, now everyone has to suffer.
Thanks for letting me partition my hard drive for linux and then make it useless. Now I have to backup my stuff and reformat to regain hd space….Wait I can’t backup because I have copywritten content and I can’t friggin copy it without a new ps3.
FU Sony worst update ever. And just when people were thinking that something good was gonna come from you…..
Thank you for trying to keep the PS3 piracy free. It just disgusts me too see how bad piracy got on PSP. Something like that can never happen again. :( If I have to lose a minor feature to keep the health of the platform alive I’m all for it.
You guys want to know the real reason Sony included the ability to install Linux with the original PS3 in the first place?
There was an interesting slide in a presentation at 25c3 a few years ago done by Team Twiizers (the authors of the original Twilight Hack for the Wii, plus many subsequent Wii homebrew applications) that showed multiple devices and the “motivation” behind hacking each one of them, as well as additional ramifications of the hacks themselves.
Turns out very few devices have been hacked purely to pirate games or content. Most were hacked in order to run homebrew and install things like Linux (if the hardware is powerful enough). Piracy tools came only after they were hacked (in the chart, “piracy” was a very common additional consequence).
…ctd…
Other O/S was far from a useless feature to those who knew how to use it.
Let’s hope the “serious hacker threat (lol)” finds a way to downgrade back to a previous revision and install a custom firmware that allows the new features as well as Other O/S.
Most of the “smart” hackers, the hackers that write the exploits, the hackers that crack open the hardware and dump the memory, the hackers that actually have the knowledge to find a method to execute arbitrary code on a closed platform, simply don’t care about piracy. They just want to run their own software on a closed platform and share their method with the world. Once a method to execute arbitrary code is found, however, it usually becomes much easier to enable piracy on a particular platform – and less experienced coders who are motivated by piracy jump in. I won’t go into specific examples, but I’ll just say that the Wii softmodding scene was a great example of this.
You know what Sony did when they enabled OtherOS support? They closed the “smart hacker” hole. There was not enough motivation to do hardcore hardware hacking on the level that Team Twiizers went to to exploit the Wii. You could already run Linux. You could already execute your own code. Sure, you didn’t have access to the GPU, but that wasn’t a tremendously huge deal anyway. This, combined with a strong security architecture, helped the PS3 remain unexploited for over three years.
…ctd…
The Wii fell, and the 360 fell, but to this day it is still impossible to run a pirated game on the PS3. I believe that this is, at least in part, because of the PS3’s OtherOS support.
Finally, however, someone is trying. Geohot (google him) is a genius when it comes to hardware exploits, and he went to great extents to find the exploit that finally broke the PS3 (to a certain extent). I don’t know if anyone that experienced has “tried” to break the PS3 with that much effort before. His motivation wasn’t piracy, he simply wanted more access to the hardware than what Sony provided with OtherOS and their hypervisor. You can’t run pirated games or install a custom firmware yet, but it’s only a matter of time, and Sony knows it’s only a matter of time.
So they closed it.
Good for Sony. Sorry to the under 0.1% of users who use this feature.
Ya know, I was considering picking up a “fat” PS3 specifically for the Other OS option, and giving my wife my Slim so that she and I could play on-line games together. So, thanks for saving me the money for the 2nd PS3 and the additional copies of games, Sony!
also… seems people think that piracy was even happening on the PS3.
There was no “hack” or anything of the sort to run backups on the ps3. and the “hack” for the custom o/s did not allow backups either. It simply gave read/write access to the whole system
also 360 didnt fall. It still has games
SONY PS3®, It only does EVERYTHING*
(*except for one or two things that we said it would do when we sold it to you.)
If this is true, then you (sony) will have bigger concerns. I will NEVER buy a single new game for my ps3 again. It’s all going to be used games from now on, and if they come up with a hack in the future to pirate games, then you can bet your @sses that I’m never going to pay for another game again.
You are going to create a terrible reputation for your company as the only company to REMOVE features in their console. I paid 600 dollars for your overpriced ps3 at launch g*d d*mnit, and if you remove a feature from my ps3, then what you are doing is just plain theft, and if you steal from me, then I will never buy another product made by you again.
This better be an April fools joke. If it’s not, then you better can the whole idea of removing it and pass it off as an April fools joke, or you can kiss my money (and my friends money) goodbye, as well as many other gamers out there. It doesn’t matter that not very many people use it, it’s WHAT WE PAID FOR, and if you are removing a feature that I paid out the @ss just to get, then expect a boycott.
This is suppose to be supported on PlayStation 3 soon & hope they don’t change their minds about it or take away the web browser because that would really suck big time.
http://unity3d.com/company/news/unity-unveils-3rd-generation-platform-press.html
P.S..I was also hoping they would improve the web browsing experience on PlayStation 3 & other current features too & maybe adds some more great features well they were at it.
Giving something just to take it away later is pretty stupid…
well, those of us that use the feature. it appears Geohot is going to work on a bypass. So hold out until thats done.
I’ve been a proud owner of a playstation, PS2, PSone, 2 PSP’s, and a PS3, but I think it’ll all be for sale soon. I sold my PC because I no longer needed it, since I had Linux in the PS3, but I guess I need one once again.
Great move SCE, keep up the good work, cause I think too many ppl will be moving to a console that doesn’t remove features … … WII… XBOX…
I’ve wrote a comment 200 posts ago showing important information about this feature removal and it was censured by the moderator without explanation.
On my comment there was no kind of virus, no offenses, no hate, no mass destruction weapons and no terrorism at all. Just a little comment with information that shows Sony incoherence on this event.
Freedom Made in China.
I’ll try again once more.
Thanks for increasing the value of my ps3 with the old firmware. Now I can sell it with the old firmware, and get more money from it.
Also, I won’t be buying any new games, as I don’t want to be forced to update it.
Last, I am almost certain that at some point, there will be meathods around this firmware patch, and and you wasted resources patching this feature as well as anger your most loyal customers, the ones who use to brag about what the ps3 could do and the xbox couldn’t.