For now, it's still possible to crack consoles and extract the games from disk. However, we are probably approaching an era where encryption / trusted computing is so good that future systems will never be cracked.
However, the flip side is that so many games are built using common game engines, and receive multi-platform releases. So there's a broader surface area for potential preservation. Maybe the PS6 version is permanently dead, but the PC version lives on.
Sony in particular is doubling down on platform exclusives again. I was waiting for Ghost of Yōtei to come out on PC, but Sony cancelled the port. We're well and truly fucked without physical media for exclusives like this.
Except Sony is notoriously bad at actually securing their consoles.
It shouldn't be the case that this is relied upon. There needs to be a cultural shift in the industry back to physical - or at least, preservable - media.
The PS5 has been pretty secure (though, not perfect). They learned their lesson from the PS4 and took some pages out of the Microsoft playbook - brought back the hypervisor and implemented e-fuses.
Byepervisor did crack the hypervisor, but it requires an old version of the firmware and the console has to be kept offline to avoid being upgraded. There's no mechanism to downgrade the firmware like there was with the PS4, which limits the blast radius of potential jailbreaks.
Of course, even offline consoles can be updated, since games can ship with firmware updates required need to play the game.
> encryption / trusted computing is so good that future systems will never be cracked.
I highly doubt this. The platforms that didn't have any jailbreaking scenes weren't because the devices were so secure; it was because there was not enough demand for it. If given enough time, there will always be hacks and bypasses just like Denuvo or hypervisor bypass like the recent hack.
I disagree. Demand for pirated games is still huge, so I don’t think the lack of hacks is just down to lack of interest. Everything points to these protections getting stronger over time. Denuvo, hypervisor-based security, and the recent Xbox hacks all suggest the same thing: bypasses still happen, but they’re becoming harder, slower, and more specialised. I’m not saying future systems will be impossible to crack, but the trend seems to be that beating them is getting harder, not easier.
You can doubt this. But the fact is, the Xbox One was secure for it's entire operational life without a crack. And the Series X/S has held up as well.
It's completely possible that future consoles are secure enough that the components fail long before the security does.
>However, we are probably approaching an era where encryption / trusted computing is so good that future systems will never be cracked.
If AI lives up to its promise then in 5-10 years it should be possible (and affordable) to just point an AI at the screen and let it clone all the graphics, then have it implement the engine.
If the game doesn't run in 5-10 years because of some licensing, DRM, physical, or other SNAFU, then there will be no game for the bot to observe.