Still, I think you need very expensive hardware to produce UMDs. They hacve to be the right shape, etc...
K, look pal optical media (CD/DVD/UMD) will always be easier and cheaper to make than semiconductor media (Flash/Cartridges/DS carts) and lets not talk about magnetical/mechanical media (HDD). With the upcoming PSP modchip and system price cut you can bet some dude in some 3rd world country is going to start making blank UMDs.
That depends. It would be much cheaper to make carts on a small scale, because setting up a disc duplication plant is a multi million dollar investment. It should be possible for you to build a ds flash cart in your home. There is no guarantee that umd-r's are possible, they may have to be pressed. I very much doubt some guy could knock some up. It took quite a while for unlicensed bootable playstation cd's to turn up. I imagine that psp umd's have similar protection hidden away. smf
Looks like the Chinese are following the Japanese model of forced technology transfer to gain market access. I'm assuming the Japanese won't have the luxury of offering military bases and other incentives to have the Chinese government roll over on it's own companies like the US did.
Pressed silvers of PlayStation, PlayStation 2, DreamCast and Xbox games, aswell as the DVD movies, are being produced on a massive scale in Russia. It's been like that for years, ever since the PlayStation bootleg market became profitable. So I guess they do have both the technology and the proper equipment to make PSP discs, if a universal fullproof boot method or modchip appears. I would never think they'd go for the DreamCast, and yet, they did. I even got a pressed bootleg of Quake III. If someone wants a photo, I'll gladly post one.
Man I saw the first PSX and Saturn modchips come up as early as mid 1996, not even a year since both consoles were released putside japan. Back in the day you were rockefeller if you had a CD recorder, now everyone and their dog has a DVD/CD recorder, and soon they will have BR and HDDVD too. and morden, I've seen games that looked legit and were actually high quality pirates. $50 is a lot in the 3rd world....
My point is that it really is a moral argument at the end of the day- and not about legalities at all. Do you let a large part of the world live in the dark, or do you let them see for themselves what the rest of the world is up to via films/games?
Well they arent getting anything good from hollywood films anyway... I think if we're going to talk about moral we should look at the international trade organization ratter than game companies.
Oh, the DS boots have been around for some time -- I tested one out in Kuala Lumpur I think late last year (but it could have been this year, in January). They were not on the DS-style carts, they were actually GBA carts with DS roms on them. When I tested a game on a DS it played just fine. Price was ridiculous -- something along the lines of close to $20 USD. I'm not really into pirates or know much about the DS hardware, so I don't know that I can offer more than that. On the subject of PSP boots -- now THOSE have been around for ages! I first saw UMDs for sale last summer in Bangkok. Very popular and cheap -- many of the hardware sellers offer packages if someone buys a PSP, they get several free pirated discs. It's the only thing that makes the PSP palatable to the locals in Thailand or Malaysia as the price for hardware is so high compared to local salaries. From what I saw of the PSP boots they didn't look professional at all (not like the quality repros for GBA games floating around) -- but apparently they worked well, for they sure sold well. Again, I have NO tech info on how it was done, but it appeared to be UMD media (pressed, burned, I have no idea, since I only shop for legit soft). My $.02.
Sorry... I honestly didn't think too much about it as the PSP boots were ubiquitous. The only game stores in Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur that don't sell them are the official Sony stores and the department stores. It never occured to me that they may be of interest. I can see if I can press one of my friends in Thailand to take a pic for me -- it'll be another 2 months before I am back there.
Well, someone wanted to see the pictures, so here they are. Pressed silver pirated DreamCast game [Quake III] made in Russia. To this date, this is the only DreamCast silver I've seen. The game is a simple self booting rip. This kind of piracy was, and still is quite popular in eastern Europe. Russians sell pressed CDs and DVDs and they're getting better at it. The whole pressed CDs business took off with music CDs and later on, PlayStation games. Back in the day when PlayStation scene and warez scene were dominant, russian piracy begun. These games often contain intros / cracktros / trainers made by groups souch as Paradox or Kalisto. To give you an idea on how the PlayStation games looked like: One interesting things is that russians often translated their games. If the copies were intended for polish market, they would get polish translations. Even though the russians lacked proper language skills and in case of voice actors, they didn't sound convincing at all, the hacking job was amazing. Translated games I've seen include Silent Hill, Nightmare Creatures and Syphon Filter 2. The last one was especially impressive. Menus, dialogs, both bitmap, and plain text translated, complete audio translation, including the voice overs of FMVs. This of course turned the game into one big joke and I played through it just for the laughs. Russians spiced things up a bit, giving Gabriel more attitude while writing his lines. "Don't fuck with me" could be heard on more than one ocasion. Common was also wrong spelling of the titles. "Lunar 2: External Blue" could be one example. I have also seen a remarkably good counterfits of Sega Saturn games. These were chinese though. It's been three times now I think, that I've seen pressed Radiant Silvergun with complete manual, spine and exact same print on the disc. The only way to spot the difference is to look for the SEGA ring on the CD. I've heard of souch versions of Taromaru, and it seems that pirates have targeted the collectors' community for higher profit.
Fascinating stuff (thanks for the pictures too, more professional looking than I'd imagined). I'm amazed they managed to do such complete translations, though, given they surely didn't have access to the relevant development hardware/source code.
Haha. Sorry about that. I can upload them again without the "watermark". I'm actually not used to watermarking my photos. If anything, I put a small logo in the lower left corner, but that can be edited out easily. As for how professional they look, among PlayStation bootlegs, the Legend of Mana CD print is the nicest I've seen so far. The CDs usually are just labeled with the title on some color background with a small logo maybe.
