Speaker A
Yes, Sony is not having the best of times today. Massive internet hate over their move away from physical media.
PlayStation 5 jailbreak enables running PS3, PS2, Nintendo, and Xbox games, exposing Sony's commercial restrictions and sparking debate on piracy and ownership.
Key Takeaways
- PS5 jailbreak breaks firmware barriers and enables multi-generational game compatibility.
- Sony's restrictions on backward compatibility are commercially motivated, not technical.
- The ease of hacking lowers barriers but risks console bans when going online.
- Piracy is condemned, but digital ownership policies by Sony are questioned.
- Community-driven hacks highlight demand for open, user-friendly gaming ecosystems.
What the video covers
- Sony faces backlash over moving away from physical media and a costly exclusive game.
- The PlayStation 5 jailbreak covers firmware versions 7.0 to 13.60, affecting most consoles including Pro models.
- The jailbreak is easy to install with YouTube guides, leading to many users getting banned for going online.
- A pseudo-emulator 'Any PS5' and VPN service Hedgehog VPN enhance the hacking ecosystem.
- Hackers achieved backward compatibility with PS3 games, which Sony claimed was impossible.
- The jailbreak allows running games from multiple generations including PS2 discs and even Nintendo Switch emulation.
- The limitations on backward compatibility are commercial decisions, not hardware-based.
- The video condemns piracy but criticizes Sony's digital ownership policies and closed ecosystem.
- Users can upscale PS2 games to 4K and increase FPS, surpassing official Sony support.
- The hacking scene reflects user demand for more freedom and better service from platform holders.
Chapters
- 00:00Sony's current challenges and PS5 jailbreak introduction
- 01:21Hedgehog VPN service and its uses
- 02:48Firmware versions and market impact of jailbreak
- 04:11Backward compatibility with PS3 and Sony's motives
- 05:36Nintendo Switch emulation and piracy stance
- 07:15PS2 game support and commercial limitations
- 08:43User experience and digital ownership debate
- 11:27Community demand and future of gaming platforms
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
Speaker A
Massive review-bombing of their latest 300-million-dollar exclusive. A ton of criticism for shifting focus toward their direct competitor. And, one might think, what could possibly be worse?
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The PlayStation 5 jailbreak. That’s what could be worse. This is a PlayStation 5. The first revision, with a disc drive; remember the technology of our ancestors. It's happened, it's been hacked, covering a very wide range of firmware from version 7.0 up to
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13.60, which is the July update of this year. Meaning, the majority of consoles worldwide are affected by this hack, including even the Pro models. And what makes this jailbreak different from previous ones is that any [ __ ] can
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install it with a YouTube guide. The barrier to entry for the jailbreak has become so low that people who did it didn't even know they shouldn't go online with those consoles. They went online, and naturally, Sony banned them.
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And they're still surprised, asking, "Why? What did I do?" But what’s even scarier for Sony is that practically the same day the PlayStation 5 jailbreak came out, the pseudo-emulator "Any PS5" was released. Pseudo, because it works better than classic emulators,
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and you know what works even better than that? Hedgehog VPN. It installs in a couple of steps via a Telegram bot.
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The service works on any platform, from iPhone to routers and even the Steam Deck. By the way, it has almost half a million users. You can also use it to top up your Apple ID, buy games, top up
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Steam, purchase Telegram Premium, and even buy in-game donations. Use the promo code ITPedia to get four free days. Hedgehog is also giving away 10 prizes. A MacBook Pro 16 M5, four iPhone 18 Pro or Pro Max models, an
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Apple Watch Ultra 4, AirPods Max 2, and something else. Invite a friend using your link to get a ticket for the giveaway. They need to register and top up their balance by any amount; one friend, one ticket. The more tickets
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you have, the higher your chance of winning. Link is in the description. I must state right away: "Of course, I am against hacking; piracy is one of the deadly sins." It is a violation of the user agreement. It is, actually,
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stealing money from Sony. How can you sleep at night after that? Just fine. On the other hand, if, in Sony's view, buying a digital game is not a purchase but a rental, then why is piracy considered theft? Because theft is the
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appropriation of property, and according to Sony, games cannot be property. Isn't that right? Right, that’s all just philosophy. And the fact that you'll get banned if you go online isn't philosophy, it's the truth. And you'll cry harder than you cried
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to your mother to buy you this console at today's retail prices. In my city, the only PS5 Pro available is used, and it's selling for 1,400 euros. You see, previously, hacks were limited to old console firmware that hadn't been
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turned on for years. Some news pops up: "Hey, they hacked the PlayStation 5," then you check the firmware, and it's already a year and a half old. That's supposed to be fresh. That’s why PlayStations with that firmware are
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being sold at an overpriced rate on eBay today. Although, in principle, any PlayStation is being sold at an overpriced rate right now. This is literally the first generation of gaming consoles—not just PlayStation —that has actually gone up in price
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over time. You’ve probably forgotten, but old tech used to have a habit of getting cheaper, including graphics cards. They used to get cheaper, yes.
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Next. The current jailbreak launches in a matter of seconds, whereas before, a jailbreak could take up to 50 minutes, which is unusable for the average gamer. This isn't a classic hack anymore.
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Beyond obviously installing PlayStation 5 games, you can now install PS3 games, which Sony claimed for years was impossible. You see, the Cell processor architecture on the PlayStation 3 was very difficult, so backward compatibility was extremely challenging. "It's all impossible." And somehow,
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hackers, in a week or so, without Sony's internal documentation and in their spare time, managed to do what Sony couldn't do in over 10 years: force this beast to run PlayStation 3 games. Naturally, it's not that they couldn't, but that they didn't want to,
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because that way you wouldn't need to buy a PS Plus subscription to get access to PlayStation 3 games.
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Obviously, in that case, players would be less willing to buy remakes and remasters. It's actually surprising how they allowed backward compatibility with PS4 games, following that same logic. I admit it was difficult to do back then, but now, with current
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technologies and neural networks, they could have done it, but they chose not to. In the end, hackers did it: "Here you go, take it." And enthusiasts—for free, I emphasize, in their spare time —managed to run Red Dead Redemption 2
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here at 60 FPS. Something Rockstar didn't want to do all those years. It turns out that poor service from publishers or platform holders is the best advertisement for a jailbreak. By the way, strictly closed systems also fuel interest in various kinds of hacks.
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Enthusiasts simply get curious: "What if I run Mario Kart on this?" Now you can natively run game emulation and even Xbox games on the PlayStation 5.
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And the craziest thing is Prospero Eden. It is a Nintendo Switch emulator, naturally, not an official one. Using it, people are running Mario, Zelda, and other Nintendo exclusives on their PlayStation 5. I was in shock when I
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saw this on a PlayStation 5. Fine, you see all sorts of things on PC. But on PlayStation, one closed platform has crossed with another closed platform.
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There is already plenty of gameplay on YouTube. Right here, where there's Zelda and Mario Kart, I would have shown it. But in life, you should fear two things. They are God and Nintendo's legal department. I don't want to risk
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it; Google it and see for yourselves. And let me remind you, I strictly condemn any hint of piracy. I have never in my life downloaded a single pirated game. Everything I have is licensed, even WinRAR. Yes, one commenter on Reddit noted quite
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accurately: "PlayStation has the slogan 'No Limits'." "And considering that Mario Kart is now here, it is truly limitless gaming." The slogan is now definitely justified. Did you think Zelda on PS5 was everything? This is only the beginning. An enthusiast made
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the PlayStation 5 work with PlayStation 2 discs. He literally inserts an old disc in the video, and the game launches. It turns out this was possible the whole time. Sony simply didn't have the desire. I'm quoting him. "Finally, PlayStation has become what
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it should be." "Sony gave us five generations of PlayStation, and we fit it all into one." One person empirically proved that it was easy to do. He proved that all those tall tales about complex processor architecture were just that—tales. Amateur
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developer SW used Grok to create PS5-X2 and gave gamers what they had wanted from Sony for years: playing their own games on PS5. Yes, in this era of rapidly evolving neural networks, platform holders should better consider their customers' requests because it
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seems that in the future, users will be able to create alternatives with their own hands. Critics of this whole hacking scene have only one argument today. It works clunkily, and it's difficult to install, but we have already moved from the "impossible"
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stage to the "difficult" stage. What is also interesting, besides playing PS2 games, this emulator allows upscaling them to 4K and increasing their FPS.
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This means all the limitations that the PS5 had were purely commercial, not hardware-based. The only hardware limitation is that the PS5 won't play the very oldest PS2 discs because they were CD-ROMs. But later on, they started releasing PS2 games on DVD, and
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it turns out the PS5 can read them. This developer announced that next, he plans to work on physical game support.
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like this. Someone might say: "Who even needs this old junk?" Games from the PS1 and PS2. Don't you have anything else to play? Oh, you are underestimating the scale of the market for nostalgic millennials and boomers.
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Nintendo, for example, sells a paid subscription today that gives access to games from the nineties. Nostalgia is a huge and profitable market, which is why access to old PS1 and PS2 games can be sold via a PS Plus subscription. To
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be fair, there are a lot of cool old games here, but unfortunately, not a single one that I personally would really want to play. For example, Warhawk; it’s really cool, basically the Dark Souls of my childhood. Back then, consoles still had disc drives,
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and there are tons of used games on the market, so if I really want to, I can play it. With a digital-only PS6, there's a chance the platform will die sometime after the PS7 comes out. Sony shuts down the servers, and that's it,
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the platform is dead. To give you an idea, it was only because of PS2 disc drives that the community was able to revive the online mode in SOCOM 2.
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That's a shooter from 2002. When you get older and aren't playing this crap anymore, you'll try to launch Fortnite, but you won't be able to because it’s digital. That is the kind of freedom discs provide. And that is why people
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fight for it—so that a game's lifespan doesn't depend solely on the platform holder or publisher. Let’s be honest, the PlayStation 5's game library falls short compared to previous generations of PlayStations.
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But if the PS5 had backwards compatibility with previous generations , we could forgive it for everything.
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And while I used to think that was science fiction—that it was technically impossible—now I realize that everything is possible. Today's neural networks have become a real nightmare for closed platform holders and companies that sell software.
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Software that can now, in essence, be copied. This recently happened with Adobe, which has pissed off the whole world with its draconian subscription model. One developer and enthusiast, Brandon Thomas, used the Claude 3.5 neural network to completely copy the
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interface and functionality of the Adobe suite. And most importantly, what he did is not legally considered piracy . He didn't hack the original code. It was clean development. He wrote the code in Rust from scratch using a neural network. If Adobe comes to him
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with a lawsuit, he can just tell them to screw off. But he could have copied some tool that Adobe holds a patent for . And that's when Adobe could cause him some real pain. This story shows that in the future, it will be much harder
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to stick to a closed ecosystem, especially with poor service. If I could buy Adobe once and get modern updates, I wouldn't even look elsewhere . I still haven't watched it, naturally , because, of course, I am against it.
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In short, the corporation is facing some troubled times. Now they will have to come up with better reasons for why a user should pay them money. And while Sony has something to offer the user, Adobe can only appeal to their
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conscience, which would be highly ironic coming from them. In September, almost simultaneously with the release of a jailbreak called Relaps, the Any PS5 emulator was released. Everyone is talking about it right now. Yes, it is very raw and in the early stages, but
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it has already been used to run Bloodborne at over 100 FPS, which Sony hasn't managed to do in all these years . Moreover, they even ran Bloodborne in VR mode, which probably shouldn't have been done at all. Although I would
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probably try it, it seems like it would be cool, but it would probably be terrifying. Things are constantly jumping out at you unexpectedly there.
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All those endless attempts. No, it's exhausting, I don't think so. But I would give it a try. Any PS5 is not a classic emulator. It does not recreate a virtual PlayStation 5. It turns the game itself into a native program for
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Windows and Linux. This became possible because the PlayStation 5 uses the same X86 architecture as a PC. A whole zoo of these pseudo-emulators is appearing online, for example, Kitty PS5. There were reports of people running Demon's Souls and Astro Bot on PC, and in good
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resolution with high FPS, too. All of this is thanks to Kitty PS5. This so-called emulator works on a different principle than Any PS5. To put it simply, it tricks the game into thinking that it is running in a
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PlayStation operating environment. Because the console uses X86 architecture, there is no need to fully emulate the CPU architecture, which has made developing such emulators much easier. Many are speculating that because of these emulators, GTA 6 might come to PC much sooner, but no. Current
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PS5 emulators support a super limited library of games. And not all of them are playable. Even games that work well , like Demon's Souls, run with heavy artifacts, may not launch at all, or run with errors. As for Astro Bot, for
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those who are already trying it, the frame rate constantly drops to 4-5 FPS. Many of those who use the Kitty PS5 emulator find that, for example, Demon's Souls might not launch at all.
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These are old and, relative to GTA, very simple games. Yes, this whole movement looks very promising, and it's interesting to watch, but hoping that GTA 6 will run on an emulator for you —well, that's not serious. I will
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apologize if that happens. Many bloggers have started saying that Sony deserved this. This means it’s the community’s reaction to their anti-consumer behavior. It sounds convincing and nice, of course, but that’s not the case, because PlayStation jailbreaks have literally
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always existed, even when Sony was the most beloved company among gamers worldwide. And their games were being hacked back then, too. But something really has changed. It’s the mass attitude toward this hacking. If in the past, when a console was hacked, it was
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something, well, something marginal. Who even needs that? Now people are rejoicing. They feel that this company, which makes such unpopular decisions, has finally been hit with a club. This is not just my opinion. Open the PlayStation subreddit. People there are
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cheering. Moreover, these are people who have always bought licensed discs and have absolutely nothing to do with piracy. They are happy that Sony is having a hard time because, lately, Sony has been doing poorly by its players. I don’t want to say that
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Sony has completely gone down the drain . That it’s a completely unusable platform. That’s not the case. It is currently one of the best and most attractive gaming platforms out there.
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But the trends emerging are truly disgusting, and it is better to nip them in the bud right now. And all the noise that we, I, you, we all raised together on the internet, Sony didn’t ignore it. They are already sending out
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anonymous surveys to their studios and third-party developers, asking, for example, how do you feel about certain decisions, like moving away from physical media? Meaning they realize that, wow, something is wrong, we need to listen. Like, maybe we shouldn't
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shut down Destiny 2. Like, let’s continue this support. That’s why it’s important to keep making noise.
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Moving on. The main surrealism is that people who jailbreak or, god forbid, pirate a game, get more control over the console and the game than people who paid money for it. Part of this argument is echoed by other analysts.
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Like, a pirated game gives you ownership rights, while a purchased one doesn’t. It will never truly be your property, because you won’t be able to resell it, give it to a friend, and so on, but you will definitely have
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more control over it than someone who buys it through a store, meaning a digital store. It turns out that honest gaming, firstly, requires more money, which is obvious, and secondly, gives you less control over the product you paid for. Look, Sony cannot take a game
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away from someone who has pirated it. They cannot cut off their access to it.
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Their account cannot be hacked and stolen, as often happens with PlayStation, and then it’s not even a fact that Sony will give it back to you . With a jailbroken PS5, they don't need a constant network connection for
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DRM checks. They don't need a PS + subscription just to launch the game. And most importantly, a pirate is guaranteed to have access to that game years later. A game that Sony might want to remove from the store. To be
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fair, this argument is used often, but how often has Sony actually taken a game away? Honestly, I can't remember anything other than five titles. Well, maybe Marathon, but people just stopped playing it. That is, when they stop supporting an online game, it stops
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working for everyone. Let's be honest, the real problem with a digital future is unfair pricing. And that's basically it, gentlemen, let's be objective.
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After all, legal, honest gaming still offers a lot of advantages today. First of all, it's technically simpler.
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Secondly, well, cloud saves are very important to me. It’s important for me to have access to online play. In some games, it is absolutely critical.
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I like achievements, even if I don't chase them; it's just nice sometimes. Plus, call me a freak, but I want to financially support the developer of a cool game. I don't buy that many games, but the ones I do buy, I'm confident
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they’ll be really cool, great games. Yes, 30%of that amount will go to Sony or Valve. By the way, Valve also has a terrible commission, just so you know.
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It's not just Sony that has it, but the remaining 70 will go where they need to . If anything, I understand if you want to punish Sony, but unfortunately, you're not just punishing them, and to a lesser extent at that. Many years ago
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, Gabe Newell said a phrase that everyone quotes today. If you look at the fact that these people have, you know, $ 2,000 computers. And you know, they spend $ 50 a month or more on an internet connection. It's obvious that
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they are willing to spend money. Therefore, from our point of view, we increasingly see that piracy is a result of poor service from game companies. And yes, people started using Steam not because games became free, and not because torrent trackers
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disappeared; they are still here. Even despite Denuvo, games continue to be cracked, but digital sales on PC keep growing because Steam is just convenient. Steam is cozy. Steam means cloud game saves. I change devices, and I have the same game right where I need
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it. Who needs a pirated copy when I've been playing The Witcher for eight years now, from millions of different PCs and sometimes even handheld consoles, always continuing from exactly where I left off? And this is exactly the service we are talking
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about. Yes, the main wave of hate towards Sony today is because of their move away from physical media. Discs were physically owned property. You can buy them, resell them, give them to a friend, or just buy them in a store on
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sale. I bought all these Nintendo Switch games in stores at prices lower than in the Nintendo eShop. And Nintendo didn't get any poorer from that. But I, as a gamer, became much happier and more loyal to this company.
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I’ll have plenty of time to bring them money. I bought The Witcher digitally. You don’t have to chase every single cent from your user; they will bring it to you themselves. Let's get back to it. Sony falsely justified
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their decision by claiming that only 20 %of the market buys physical discs. First of all, that’s [ __ ], because, as I already said, they counted DLC and even games that never even came out on discs. Two days ago,
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it became known that while Sony was convincing the whole world that the disc format is dead and no one needs them, their stinking Wolverine sold 51% more on physical media in Europe. I don’t feel bad for this game. This "
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N-game" is complete crap, damn it. The disc fell out. Damn. Okay, I need to find a sucker to resell this box to. No , it didn't even get scratched. I’m a fan of the original. But this game, it
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is very bad. Europe is a huge, affluent market that loves physical copies. It’s a specific cultural trait of this region. We like to touch things.
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After all, Sony relied partly on the American market, where people really do prefer digital. But there are still many disc fans there, too. Sony took the practices of one market and applied them to the rest of the world. That’s
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nonsense. In dozens of countries around the world, there isn't even PSN today. But still, even if it is 20%of the market. So what? Former Sony CEO Shawn Layden shared a very smart thought in a recent interview. 13%of McDonald's
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customers buy a Happy Meal. But McDonald's doesn't stop selling Happy Meals. Yes, there is a narrow group of Happy Meal buyers who later grow up to become adult customers. They get kids hooked. Obviously, physical disc fans were the core audience of PlayStation,
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who stockpiled these games on their shelves. Maybe 80%of people download games and 20%don't. Or however those numbers are distributed, those 20%are super important. I mean, these are mostly the most loyal of the loyal fans. These are often the people who buy two copies of
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every game. Right? One never gets taken out of the factory shrink wrap, right? And you play the second one. It’s just like with comic book collectors.
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You always buy two comics. You know, we must remember that one of the main drivers for a gamer is the desire to collect. We are a curious, collector-inclined people, and we like to show off our stuff. Look at my loot.
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So I think it’s precisely for these reasons that I disagree with this decision. But at the same time, and I think this is probably a more insidious aspect, it changes the nature of the conversation from whether you own a
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game to whether you have access to a digital asset. Because he said outright that Sony’s decision is total crap.
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This is a former CEO under whom Sony was in its prime. He is the man under whom Sony released the very games we fell in love with them for. I’ll also add that discs are an essential attribute of the console vibe.
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There’s no way to convey that emotion when you stare at a store shelf, grab that very disc, all wrapped in plastic that rustles, bring it home, unpack it, and slide it into the drive to hear it spin up. It’s a pleasant sound.
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It’s so cozy. And they want to deprive us of this coziness. I’m a dreamer, but the best thing Sony could do now is just come out and start communicating with their players.
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Gentlemen, we screwed up. Our decisions didn’t take your interests into account. We’re backtracking, we’re bringing back discs. Here’s a discount on PS Plus for you. And also Bloodborne in 60 FPS. And here is a Bloodborne sequel too. And we would
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forgive everything. That’s a joke, of course, but it’s no joke that they have zero communication with their users. They sit in a vacuum and pretend they hear nothing, because their financial figures are good. Of course, you spent decades building this
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brand’s image, it can’t collapse in just a couple of years. It will generate a ton of money by inertia, naturally. In parallel with this, there are a lot of discussions. Saying, " That’s it, consoles are definitely going to die now," because there are
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these cool emulators, gentlemen. Well, there was a Nintendo Switch emulator. And what? Did Nintendo die, or earn less money? Most often, emulators attract that group of people who weren't customers to begin with, who weren't willing to pay in principle.
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Only a small fraction of those who finished this game on PC would have been ready to buy a Nintendo Switch and the game itself for 80 bucks for its sake. Can you count as a loss money that you were never going to be paid
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anyway? Probably not. After all, artificial intelligence, "vibecoding," and other modern tools have truly influenced the hacking culture, but in such a way that they simply shortened the period between a game’s release and its hack, between a console’s reveal and its hack. So, while
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emulators used to appear at the tail end of a generation, today they emerge right in the middle of a console's lifespan. Indeed, the timelines have shifted. I’m no economist or analyst, so it’s hard for me to say if such
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rapid hacks will significantly impact the console economy itself. Will these artificial intelligences of yours be able to undermine the very concept of closed console exclusivity? As practice shows, in today’s world, everything you predict never comes true, and instead, something third happens that
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nobody predicted at all.
Topics:PlayStation 5PS5 jailbreakSonygame emulationbackward compatibilityPS3 gamesPS2 gamesNintendo Switch emulatorgaming piracydigital ownership
