Sony responds to 20th anniversary PS4 sales exploit

Sony is having trouble with the system being used to flog its retro PS4. Instead of selling in shop to everyone, Sony chose to allow only PlayStation's loyal fans to be in with a chance of buying the £399 package.

The firm set up a website that contains a huge image packed with video game characters. Then at certain times this week, a clue would be tweeted out from Sony's PlayStation UK Twitter account and GAME's Twitter account.

If you want to snap up the next-gen beauty, then you have to solve the clue, go back to Sony's website and click on the appropriate character. This would then make a secret form available. The first 100 people to fill out the form would then be able to buy the console from GAME.

However a simple exploit has messed up the entire system. Software engineer Dean Wild is behind the blog post titled "Hacking that PlayStation competition" that details how to get hold of the URL of Sony's supposedly secret application form before official clues go live.

Sony has now issued a statement confirming that anyone who gained access to the clues early will be disqualified from the process.

"Unfortunately we are now aware of some users attempting to run programmes to reveal the URL early and give themselves an unfair advantage," said the company in a statement to Eurogamer. 

Assassin’s Creed Unity locked to 900p @ 30 fps, due to Xbox One and PS4′s weak CPU

Ready for yet another Assassin’s Creed game? Too bad! Ubisoft is releasing Assassin’s Creed Unity$59.96 at Amazon on the Xbox One and PS4 later this year, but it might not be the next-gen experience you’ve been hoping for. A Ubisoft representative caused an internet uproar earlier this week when he explained that the game is currently limited to 900p at 30 fps on both consoles. Sub-1080p game releases are slightly disappointing in general, but the specific wording around this game lead many to believe that the PS4 edition is being intentionally hobbled for the sake of platform parity.

In an interview at Video Gamer, Ubisoft’s Vincent Pontbriand explains the large amount of AI computation required for Assassin’s Creed Unity is what’s impacting performance the most. The CPU — not the GPU — is the bottleneck here. If that’s true, that certainly explains why both versions of the game are running at a lower resolution and frame rate. While the PS4 does have a superior GPU, both consoles are using very similar AMD Jaguar CPUs.

The crux of the issue comes down to the way Pontbriand explained the limitations. Specifically, he said “We decided to lock [both versions] at the same specs to avoid all the debates and stuff.” To some, that was PR-speak for “The PS4 is being hobbled to make it look on par to the Xbox One version.” However, that doesn’t actually seem to be the case.

Read: Xbox One vs. PS4: How the final hardware specs compare

In a statement made to Kotaku, a Ubisoft representative unambiguously states “We did not lower the specs for Assassin’s Creed Unity to account for any one system over the other.” Considering that Pontbriand claims in the original article that the engine could run at 100 fps on the current hardware if the bottleneck around AI computation wasn’t in the mix, I believe Ubisoft’s denial. This seems like a legitimate limitation of the CPUs in the current crop of consoles — not a back-room business deal.

It is notable that it’s the relatively wimpy Jaguar CPU that’s being scrutinized, and not the usual my-GPU-is-bigger-than-yours argument that has dominated Xbox One/PS4 hardware spec debate so far. If developers are already running into issues with complex CPU-limited tasks, then it doesn’t bode overly well for the rest of the eighth generation.

Unfortunately, this seems to be a recurring issue for this generation of consoles. For many developers, there is a choice that has to be made between next-gen graphics or next-gen gameplay. Ubisoft is obviously willing to sacrifice frame rate and resolution in favor of drastically improved AI, but that seems to leave a bad taste in the mouths of many gamers and members of the enthusiast press. Frankly, it’s just disappointing to see so many games fail to hit 1080p60 in a world where 4K televisions and high frame rate video are proliferating so quickly.

Pretty soon you'll be able to rip video from the PlayStation 4

During the lead up to the PlayStation 4's launch, Sony promised that it would enable gamers to shut off HDCP (High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection) post-launch and allow unrestricted video capture over HDMI. That day is almost here, as the company's just announced its intention to release two new system updates mostly focused on the console's sharing functionality.

Though Sony hasn't set a time frame for either of these two planned updates, the first should arrive in the "upcoming weeks" and will add in that previously mentioned HDCP-off option, as well as video editing tools so gamers can chop up and tweak gameplay footage captured via the Share button. In addition to this, the PS4 will also gain an option to save recorded clips and screenshots to an external USB drive, thus clearing up your system's limited storage space and letting you preserve your gaming conquests. Sony apparently plans to bundle additional features and fixes into this update, but for now it's saying that specifics on just what that entails will come at a later date. Who knows, maybe it'll also usher in VR support for Project Morpheus. Though that's probably us wishing too hard and jumping the gun a bit.

But that's not all for tweaks to the PS4's popular Share feature set. When the second planned update hits, gamers will not only get a chance to archive broadcasted Twitch footage, they'll also get a chance to stream and view it in 720p resolution. Again, there's no concrete mention of when we can expect these updates to roll out, but at least you can take solace in knowing that Sony's making good on its word.