If we can open PS3 to homebrew, we will - Harrison

By Tom Bramwell Published 23 April, 2007

But watch out, pirates.

Sony would like to open PlayStation 3 up to independent game developers in some ways, but is continually mindful of the damage that pirates and hackers with illegal intent can cause, according to Sony Worldwide Studios boss Phil Harrison.

"I fully support the notion of game development at home using powerful tools available to anyone," Harrison said in an interview with Slashdot. "We were one of the first companies to recognise this in 1996 with Net Yaroze on PS1. It's a vital, crucial aspect of the future growth of our industry and links well to the subtext of my earlier answers."

Harrison then explained that his involvement with games in the 1980s originally began as he tinkered with Commodore 64 games that appeared in magazines. "You'd spend hours typing in the code, line-by-line, and then countless hours debugging it to make it work and then you'd realise the game was rubbish after all that effort! The next step was to re-write aspects of the game to change the graphics, the sound, the control system or the speed of the gameplay until you'd created something completely new."

But he admits that these days the doors into the industry that might be opened by going through that process "are largely closed by the nature of the videogame systems themselves being closed".

"So, if we can make certain aspects of PS3 open to the independent game development community, we will do our industry a service by providing opportunities for the next generation of creative and technical talent," he added.

While Sony has encouraged legitimate independent development in some areas - notably with Net Yaroze with, in this generation, PlayStation Beyond - it has been accused of adopting a heavy-handed strategy in its dealings with PSP developers, with legitimate or at least non-threatening projects often struck down by firmware updates designed to lock out pirates and the hackers who facilitate piracy.

Sony's interest in allowing for homebrew development puts it on a similar path to Microsoft, which recently launched its XNA package of tools, offering the ability to develop games on both PC and Xbox 360, with a complementary educational focus that will plug game development modules into a number of university courses.

Picture of Tom.

About Tom Bramwell

Tom is Operations director of Eurogamer Network and Editor-at-Large of Eurogamer.net. He joined the company in February 2000.

Read more articles from Tom by visiting the Tom Bramwell archive page.

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Comments (33) Latest comment 5 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • NegativeZero #1 5 years ago

    He didn't actually answer the question, just skirted around it. Like he did with pretty much every other question.

  • lambtron #2 5 years ago

    Ah Politicians.

  • Raya #3 5 years ago

    I don't understand why all these console companies completely ignore the shockwave platform. It's way more complete than XNA. Freed from the constraints of running in a web browser it would enable complex 3D games to be built by tiny teams eg 1 or 2 people in a few months.

    It's a separate multiplatform system. If it was on PS3 it would enable game developement but not ANY type of system hack.

    I make my living creating 3D shockwave games and they are played by 10 times the users that play on xbox live.

    Snap of the Alpha game I'm working on: snap

    Not too shabby for a browser pluggin ;-)
    Edited by 3 at 23/04/07 @ 08:34

  • gamesport #4 5 years ago

    @raya
    When you say shockwave, are you talking about Macromedia's Shockwave? or is this a totally new system you are talking about?

  • Skeletor #5 5 years ago

    Don't worry Phil, pirates will find a way...they always do.

  • Artemis_Matsas #6 5 years ago

    Homebrew would be great, but i fear that there always will be an asshole that instead of writing a decent game, will program a virus - worm or something shitty like that :(

    I'd hate running antivirus software on my console!!!

  • Raya #7 5 years ago

    Adobe Director creates shockwave content. Tis the same as the old macromedia version at the moment though Adobe has pledged to push it as a games system and have console and PDA exporters in the future. THe new Adobe director should be out later this year but I don't expect the new exporters will. At the moment Shockwave can export to windows and mac os (only PPC though - Intel macs are emulated thus too slow for 3d till the new version arrives).

    Also of note is that shockwave has Havok support which as with the console version of Havok enables cool physics support. Tis much more basic than the current havok but enables most of the FX you see in Half life 2 - even the gravity gun.

  • sickpuppysoftware #8 5 years ago

    Also of note, director ain't cheap for a hobbyist. At least XNA is free for PC dev/To have a play with. It only costs to put stuff on the 360.

  • zuljin #9 5 years ago

    @NegativeZero
    "He didn't actually answer the question, just skirted around it. Like he did with pretty much every other question."

    Sorry, was there a question? I thought he was just talking about homebrew in general...

  • Raya #10 5 years ago

    I looked into XNA - no bone support - yet. That means only very basic animation. That's a huge drawback - it's free but very 'lite'. Any one serious about getting into game dev with which ever system needs to spend. Director is expensive but you also need a 3D app and some art/sound packages.

    If you just want to mess around on windows then XNA is great as it's free, free 3D software like blender (but does it export to XNA?) etc. If you want to actually make money then you have to spend. It cost me around 2k for Director, Lightwave, Fireworks, Xara and soundforge (soundforge came with director). With that I was able to build my first game. I got a comission within an hour of sending out a link to online games companies and paid my expenses with my first real game.

    I now create games from home and love it to death :-D

  • zuljin #11 5 years ago

    Whoops - missed the Slashdot reference. Cheers...

  • Raya #12 5 years ago

    >You do know that the Wii and the PS3 browser both can handle Flash right?<

    Shockwave is not Flash. COMPLETELY different. I'm not talking about flash. Look at the snap I posted. Thats full 3D at 40 fps. Flash can only dream of that ;-)

    Load this. In about 1 second you'll spot the difference between flash and shockwave!

    http://www.m iniclip.com/games/hunter/en/

  • zuljin #13 5 years ago

    @Raya
    "Any one serious about getting into game dev with which ever system needs to spend."

    I disagree. Anyone truly serious about game development needs:

    A pc - required for shockwave too
    A C++ compiler, available freely
    Possibly some graphics help (I used GLUT) - also free
    And if you're at uni, MS gave free copies of MS Visual Studio to computer science students.
    Edited by 1 at 23/04/07 @ 10:04

  • BabaBooey #14 5 years ago

    I want a PAL60 option, Philly boy.

  • TwistidChimp #15 5 years ago

    Hmm.. I guess I'll have to stick with TGF2 for now :)

    /points and clicks

  • miiiguel #16 5 years ago

    disc: that's a so cool idea, let's buy teh "super-computerz" the "TBA" machine to play... Flash games. Why didn't I think of that ?

  • chupachups #17 5 years ago

    Homebrew is the most over-hyped, sparsely used feature of consoles. Hardly anyone actually uses homebrew software on a regular basis, and most gamers have probably never heard of it.

    It's cool for those who are into it, but I doubt it has any commercial significance whatsoever for the PS3.

    C64s were sold at a massive profit but PS3s are sold at a massive loss, so the two can't really be compared. All C64 games were technically homebrew because they weren't approved by Commodore, there was no approval process. I doubt Sony is going to suddenly let unauthorised companies sell PS3 games without paying Sony the manufacturer's fee.

  • Raya #18 5 years ago

    >I disagree. Anyone truly serious about game development needs:

    >A pc - required for shockwave too
    >A C++ compiler, available freely
    >Possibly some graphics help (I used GLUT) - also free
    >And if you're at uni, MS gave free copies of MS Visual Studio to computer >science students.

    Ok try it! And tetris or sudoku don't count ;-) Yar you can use maths for fx but geometry wars style only gets you so far. I'm not saying you can't make games with just a free compliler I'm simply saying that a port of shockwave to consoles would kick ass and solve Sony's worries about hacking. And yes it's true you don't need to spend because a huge amount of people just use pirated software anyway!

    Tis easy to say you could make a game with just free software (pirate software doesn't count) - much harder to do it :-)

  • zuljin #19 5 years ago

    @Raya
    Go see Anthony Steed of UCL. I did my computer science dissertation on GPS games in 2/3 months, and I think they keep all writeups. I was serious about getting into the games industry.

  • spongebob #20 5 years ago

    They really should open it up for homebrew devs. That's basically the only way to get a XBMC style solution on the Linux system as well, because they've locked up all the truly valuable resources of the machine. And a decent media player with wide format support is something PS3 really needs. Before that the term home entertainment hub is just a joke.

  • Xerx3s #21 5 years ago

    C# > browser plugin on just about every field.

  • Xerx3s #22 5 years ago

    I have worked with stuff such as director but saying that it is on the same playing field as real code languages is utter bull. The director stuff is nice but it's not the real deal. If it was, why aren't all game companies using it?

  • pesser #23 5 years ago

    HACK THE PLANET

  • Raya #24 5 years ago

    Isn't it amazing how people add what they want. Did I say use Director to make commercial console games? Is this thread about Homebrew? DIY games? Of course Director isn't in the same league as the tools the big companies use. What I said was that it would be a cool way of making games for consoles and it doesn't allow you to hack the system it's running on.

    I got sidetracked with the free software issue. The point there was for graphically orientated games anyway.

    >I did my computer science dissertation on GPS games in 2/3 months
    Great :-) I was talking about XNA, bone animation and graphics apps, Director vs free software etc. Use any of that in your GPS game? No spending? Easy if you use Uni stuff or does GPS stuff grow on trees! Now we're into hardware expenses.

    >both Flash and Shockwave are well insecure loads of decompilers to rip through >your hard work

    Erm - try getting anything to rip through a shockwave dcr! As difficult as any other gamecode .

    Ho hum, I won't bother to say anything next time ;-)
    Edited by 1 at 23/04/07 @ 13:39

  • zuljin #25 5 years ago

    @Raya
    The point that I was trying to make is that:

    Homebrew is great, especially the light stuff. It does what people want, which is to create something quickly and easily. Thats what XNA allows you to do.

    If you need anything more complex, or if this is something that you wish to make a career out of, stay clear of any of that stuff.

    And as for hardware costs, I used emulation and realtime data. If no money was available I wouldv't just stuck to emulation. Since we did have a GPS device, we used that. The only additional cost during the project was a £10 USB dongle.
    Edited by 1 at 23/04/07 @ 14:04

  • Ranger101 #26 5 years ago

    Director is expensive, homebrewers prefer free dev tools. Sure, you could pay for it and it could pay for itself upon your commission, but at the same time, most homebrewers do not do homebrew for the money anyway.

    Another point is that a lot of homebrew don't tend to be games in the first place. XBMC [xbox media center] is probably an example of some of the best Homebrew ever - and it's a app. Director won't cut it for the logic and dev needed for some 'hardcore' homebrew.

    Good idea though, for a home made game perspective, but the logistics of it are a bit too hairy - as it also means Sony will essentially be endorsing Adobe, and you get all the ramifications with that.

  • Excors #27 5 years ago

    @Raya:
    "Thats full 3D at 40 fps. Flash can only dream of that ;-)"

    It may be worth watching out for the '3D Canvas' that a couple of web browsers are currently working on, as a standard non-plugin hardware-accelerated OpenGL ES interface that can be used from JavaScript. (See Opera, Firefox - still very experimental and not really released yet, but it mostly works.)

    There are already interesting things you can do with the 2D canvas (as implemented in FF1.5, Safari 2, Opera 9) - I have to point out my FPS engine, which is a totally unsuitable use of the 2D technology but it does actually work. And it actually works in Firefox, Safari (sort of) and Opera, including Opera on the Wii ("not unbearably slow[ly]" according to someone who tried it).

    If console makers are going to support homebrew games, I would be happier if they used this kind of open standard platform (HTML5 + JavaScript) rather than proprietary systems like Shockwave. There's definitely a srtong need for better tools and libraries, but it's pretty easy to get into (you just open a text editor and write an HTML file with half a dozen lines of code and you can draw a circle, rather than downloading (or buying) and installing and learning a large IDE) and it's fairly powerful (particularly if OpenGL ES is available), and it works across multiple browsers and OSes. It's no good for paying the bills today, but I think it's fun :-)

  • Cyclone #28 5 years ago

    I'd just like to point something out: Phil Harrison has made a statement that hasn't resulted in a 100+ post flame war. When was the last time that happened on Eurogamer?

  • Psychotext #29 5 years ago

    I think at this stage we've mostly learnt to ignore the guy.

  • smelly #30 5 years ago

    I dont see why they'd bother. Its not as if homebrew games end up being any good is it?

  • davisorle #31 5 years ago

    First of the web browser the PS3 is offering isnt compatible with all webpages plus there is nothing more to give than XNA. XNA is simple and useful for newbs, something that makes them happy trying it out. That doesnt happen with the PS3 since the programmers have to be way more expertised in that shit. Huge difference.

    And what about the 3D crap you said? what more about the PS3? I really dont understand what you're talking about. Do you?
    And why Shockwave games? What more do you get from that? Maybe they should be making a remake of Crysis on Shockwave so we could all laught.

  • Ranger101 #32 5 years ago

    @Excors

    Good stuff there mate, v. impressive. Didn't realise you could do a 'doom engine' using svg and get those speeds.

  • holy_bazooka #33 5 years ago

    @Excors

    thats pretty good.
    could you give more links for canvas 3d