You've seen the articles, the buzz around the PS3 jailbreak being released. At first it was priced at 170$USD, and the distributor was located in Australia known for their rigorous anti-gaming laws and banning of any game rated over T for TEEN.
Well, then you've also most likely seen the reports of the developers being in a huge legal battle, and the actual product being outlawed. They developers of the PS3 jailbreak didn't really think on a marketing standpoint that bypassing someone's copyprotection might somehow be considered illegal.
Now what does this mean to you, the gamer? As of right now, there are atleast 20 different chinese and german electronic companies battling it out for who will reign supreme in the HUGE market for what would be required hardware and possibly software app to play jailbroken (read: illegal/free) copies of games.
Why does this differ from 360 or WII? The ps3 security bypass requires hardware to trick the PS3 into thinking it is running in development mode, for a developer. It must always have this appliance plugged in, until the game is launched. There are variations that will allow you to remove the hardware after launching the game (read: PS3Break).
What does this mean, overall?
It means competition. Much like competition between R4, Acekard, or other DS chipsets.
How much money is in this market right now?
As of right now, the hardware costs anywhere from 28 dollars to 50 dollars. Almost every site has been sold out, or in a huge demand. Thousands of these things are sold a day. You cannot buy yourself an ATMEL development chip now, they are sold out worldwide, even the developers of these jailbreaking apps cannot find this chipset. They launch with several hundred ATMEL chipset apps, then replace the newer models with PIC, because they cannot find any more ATMEL chips to make their product with. This is how in demand the product is.
As of right now, there are around 10-15 chinese brands developing their own "ps3 jailbreak clone"(this is what most people call it) for the ps3.
I could go and google it, go down the list etc etc, but there are only several worth mentioning for specific reasons. Many clones are half-ass cheap rip offs, knock offs, and basically a scam. Some are known to heat up, burn, and melt just from several minutes of use. So be very careful when purchasing one, because it might be a fire hazard, or cause damage to your ps3.
The main important ps3 jailbreak clones are these:
:PS3key
(sorry linking was bugging out)
Ps3Key is a german owned company, originally they displayed a fraudulant picture of what they claimed was their PS3 Jailbreak clone, and they said they were "working on it". They launched preorders, and eventually posted what would be their real ps3 jailbreak clone app, it looked nothing like the original.
This sounds shady yet? Wait til i get to the best part.
They actually own another jailbreak clone site/company and set it up so it would appear there is actual competition, and their own original site would appear to be the cheaper of the two.
Eventually this clone launched, and sold out within a day. Hundreds if not thousands sold out in less than 2 days.
What did this prompt the distributor to do? Start producing budget mock versions of their own hardware, and flooding the market with faux clone apps. So much that a reviewer received a fake version of the chipset, when he went to review it
PS3Yes
As of right now, they seem to be the "white knights" of the battle for control in the market. They answer all questions IMPORTANT questions (read: Is this ATMEL or PIC?) They provide their own source of bios and hex, are guaranteed ATMEL chipset, and come with automatic updates for their chipset. Basically the convenient, easy to use, user friendly, chipset that might be the popular one once the dust settles.
So far all I can see is not a lot of shady things coming from this company either, the only people actually marketting this product outside of the US are the distributors (read: resellers), and they are making various youtube videos and blog post articles copypasting the details of it , praising it etc etc. You can clearly see who is doing it, because they always refer back to their store , where you can buy it for the low loe price of...
PS3Break
Ps3 break... oh wow, Well First, it was legit. It was pretty awesome. It was something that looked like it would become the best in the market. Then it got popular, then they got greedy. I will explain the details and show comparison pics after, but to sum it up, these guys launched with one unit, and then shipped another. Anywhere outside of the shady market world of China, and there would be a lawsuit involved. They launched with the product being ATMEL chips, with reliable hardware, specific fancy case holder packaging, nice tutorial videos on how to use, etc etc. Then it was replaced with a "new and improved" version , which was worse than the original. Cheaper to make, easier to produce, and more "cost effective" than the original. Essentially they are charging 40 to 50 dollars for something that takes them 5 dollars to make.
ATMEL vs. PIC
I referenced this earlier, what does it mean? Well first, i will show a comparison shot which has been posted and reposted all over the internet.
The PIC on the right is almost identical to a USB harddrive. A storage device, not a development chip.
Now, look at the left side. Notice it is more complex, more parts, and looks like someone actually spent more than 5 seconds making it. That is the more expensive, harder to find, and way better chipset. It is called ATMEL. Why is it better?
The comparison is really simple, a PIC is basically a reworked USB storage drive, it is designed to upload the set of code, and then thats it. Its useless, you will use it to boot up your PS3 everytime, but if anything needs to be changed then you are screwed.
The ATMEL on the other hand features BIOS flash support, which basically means you can change the Operating system of the chipset easily. It is like if you wanted to change your PC from windows vista to windows 7, it isn't that hard right? Now think of the PIC as trying to change a MAC's OS to Windows 7. Thats a lot more challenging , and sometimes downright impossible.
Why does this matter? Why should you care about the difference? Well besides the part where you just read, essentially hardware will remain the same, the same like how you bought an R4 for your DS and all you needed to do was change the firmware every couple months. You cannot do that with PIC. You would need to essentially buy an entirely new chipset to get a new firmware update. The PIC hardware is a cheap and quick solution with no lasting appeal.
Why does it matter? Because distributors like PS3Break advertise a product of ATMEL , and then send you a PIC version. Its useless. You will be able to jailbreak your ps3 now, but down the line, you are screwed. Almost all cheap clones that are being distributed are PIC. As of right now, short of going out and buying an AMTEL development chipset and manually making your own ps3 jailbreak clone, PS3Yes seems to be the only legitimate and honest retailer.
Before you say i'm viral, or getting paid to say something like this, I am not. I have spent all day today researching this subject because I myself and looking into getting my PS3 jailbroken, for educational purposes.. yeah right....
I was very dead set on buying myself a PS3Break, until i read up on what was actually going on. They are sold out of AMTEL chipsets and selling their product as PIC but still advertising it as AMTEL. So if i went and bought one, i would have had a 99% chance of getting PIC chipset, which would have been a rip off.
I then thought about buying a PS3Key, it looked sleek, simply, easy to use. But THEN i read about how they are shipping out knock offs in place of the legitimate hardware, and charging you full price for it. The site is not even a month old, the product is not even 3 days old and already it is flooded with counterfeit versions, and these versions are being distributed in place of legit ones? Not to mention some sort of convenience issue where there are some files not supported on their hardware, and you must manually find this special HEX code and put it on your chip, apparently this is all for "legal purposes". But no other chipset requires you to do this.
And next was PS3Yes, the only actual legitimate confirmed ATMEL chipset still in existence and guaranteed to be shipping ATMEL. It is very new, and the chipset is actually special because it does not require you to do anything, it has self autoupdating software, when you put your chipset into your PC it will autoupdate the firmware. Imagine if you had that for your R4 chip. I will post a followup article when all this is finally shipped to me. What? Did you honestly think there was much of a decision after thoroughly looking at the facts?
The Bottom Line:
This was a very long article but overall i think it was worth it. It is very informative on the situation at hand, and possibly will lend to people's interest in the subject, as for me, it took me a long time finding out this stuff because out of like a hundred google searches and scouring forums for legitimate comparisons, there were only really 2 threads. These two threads didn't so much compare the product as they showed the flaws or illegal matters like distributing PIC chipsets instead of advertised ATMEL. Every single person that asked this question some smug jackass would reply "why don't you use search?" , and then the search result would yield absolutely nothing, because nobody took the time and effort to sit down and compare the products for what they are, at face value and in their company's situation.
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