An unnamed company claims to have successfully hacked the PS3 via something they call PSJailbreak by using a combination of software and USB dongle that seemingly allows all makes and model of retail PlayStation 3 to copy and run any kind of game code, even with the latest firmware updates in place.

Is the PS3 really compromised?  It’s hard to tell since we’ve only seen videos of the hack but the company behind PSJailbreak did send copies of their purported hack to several modchip resellers like Australia-based OzModChips who then posted the some what convincing videos you see below:

Judging from the video, the dongle appears to be activated when the system is booted by holding down the power followed by the eject button. If true, this is the equivalent of the Pandora Battery on the PS3. If true, this is a crushing blow for Sony, especially as potential pirates won’t even need to buy a Blu-ray burner to acquire copied games: the hack works by streaming game data either from the internal HDD or alternatively via USB flash drives or hard disks.

But is it the real deal? Hacker websites are saying it is, while the publicly available game-dumping tool from the “Jailbreak” site installs without the USB dongle on debug PS3s, and does indeed rip retail games, although they do not boot. There have been many fakes in the past – PSJailbreak looks disturbingly authentic.

However, before you go off celebrating, let’s try to do the math in pirating PS3 games.

What you’ll need:

• A huge hard drive.. say 1TB  = $99, approximately P4,500
• A speedy connection.  You’ll be downloading roughly files of 25GB – 40GB in size = $80, approximately P2,000 for a 2Mbps connection (in the Phil.)
• A blu-Ray burner (optional) = $199, approximately P10,000
• Blank BluRay discs (optional) = $10, approximately P500.00

Let’s say you plan to acquire all that, the total expenses would already buy you a second PS3.  So ok, let’s say you can muster the expense.  How long will you have to download those PS3 rips off the net?  This will add electricity cost and of course to your internet bill.    By rough estimates, you can download upto 3-4 games in a month using the specs mentioned above but you’ll have to shell out a lot more dough compared to buying them legit, brand new or second hand.

Is pirating the PS3 worth it?  Certainly not in the Philippines or any other third world country for that matter but hey, you draw your own conclusion 🙂