Over Skype one evening, Hector Martin tells me a story of the Playstation 2.

A group of hackers discovered a serious exploit that allowed unofficial — or, homebrew — software, to be run on the console. Unlike previous hacks, a memory unit and some software trickery was all that was required to make it happen. It wasn’t long before the pirates could do the same as well.

Sony, of course, was not amused. Due to the system’s design, the problem remained for months, unresolved until a new hardware revision could be pushed out the door.

But that was then.

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NVIDIA had their CES keynote earlier today. Fitting in with this year’s theme, it had both 3D and a tablet to satisfy the masses. But what today’s keynote lacked was Fermi, and I wasn’t the only one who noticed.

Fermi is NVIDIA’s next generation of desktop and notebook GPUs, which the company hopes will finally give them a leg up on the competition. If you’ve been hiding in a cave, you may not know that ATI has been wiping the floor clean with NVIDIA’s abysmal GPUs for the past year, and it hasn’t been pretty. Compounded by delays, and supposed production difficulties, NVIDIA’s current journey has not been an easy one. Fermi is supposed to change all that.

The problem is, nobody knows how. Today’s keynote was dominated by Tegra 2, the company’s next generation mobile and portable graphics chipset, in addition to a curious partnership with vehicle manufacturers. The GF100 – the first Fermi card announced – was given but a brief mention towards the end of the show, much to the dismay of gamers and hardware enthusiasts. NVIDIA said the card would be shown on the show floor, but information has been scarce thus far. However, one CES attendee overhear the following:

“Performance numbers are hard to come by on the GeForce GF100, but we overheard someone saying that it is around 36% faster than ATI’s Radeon HD 5870. When asked to confirm the number, NVIDIA could not comment. We also heard a rumored launch date of March 2nd, 2010 from various people at the show, so it looks like the graphics card is close to coming out.”

Of course, with none of this yet to be confirmed by NVIDIA, and no benchmarks to show for it, this can only be taken with a grain of salt. NVIDIA’s lack of comment is concerning, especially with ATI so far ahead. However, like others, the graphics giant may simply be waiting for GDC in March to drop the full Fermi experience – logical, considering the rumoured launch date is that same month. While it may be hard to say for sure, the fact remains clear that NVIDIA needs to do something, and do it fast.

I bought myself a fancy Playstation Triple just before Christmas, and I couldn’t be happier. It means I’m part of this so-called next-generation of gaming, despite being nearly three years into the system’s life cycle. More importantly, it means I can stop looking at the floor when telling people I own a Wii. Bliss.

Now, Sony is a company known for being rather…proprietary. Examples include ATRAC, UMD, and everyone’s favourite, the MemoryStick. These were all technologies that, for the most part, didn’t do so well with the North American crowd. They were restrictive, tough to reverse engineer, and near useless outside of Sony’s product ecosystem.

With the Playstation 3, as far as I can tell, there’s none of that. Blu-ray notwithstanding, I can charge the controllers via USB, play certain games with a keyboard and mouse, and even use my wired Logitech USB headset in online games. There’s no proprietary cables, and no restrictive first-party accessories. If this is the future, I like it.

I’m writing an article that involves piracy right now. And boy, do gaming companies not like piracy.

After all, games are the magic dust that powers this billion dollar gaming machine; it’s not that hardware that makes money, but the software and accesories. So naturally, it’s in the best interests of developers to protect that investment. Which brings me back to my original point…

Gaming companies do not like piracy. And by extension, they sure as hell don’t like talking about it either.

Things get fuzzy when you try to account for homebrew development. For the uninitiated, it’s generally the sort of console development that relies on hacks and exploits to get unsigned or third-party code on to a console. Most gaming companies are wary to issue any sort of official stance on this activity — welcoming homebrew is out of the question, and condemning it is an unspoken rule of the industry. The reasoning behind this is that most companies seem to equate homebrew with piracy. And if you haven’t gotten it already, the gaming industry certainly isn’t a fan of those who pirate their magic smoke.

The gaming industry’s attitude toward piracy ultimately puts those who attempt to hack and exploit and reverse engineer a console or portable in an awkward situation. Exploits aren’t always intended to encourage piracy or the illegal copying of games, but they can certainly be used to do so. In some cases, like the custom firmware for the PSP, it’s hard not to inadvertently support piracy when the mechanism for loading custom software happens to be the same mechanism for loading illegal games.

To be clear, I’m not looking for some grand sanction on homebrew activities. The point of all this is, it seems like it’s become increasingly hard for companies to take the idea of homebrew seriously when it is so deeply entangled with pirate culture. People are doing some amazing things with consoles — XBMC for the original Xbox — comes to mind; and yet, I get the impression some companies can’t be bothered to separate the pirates from the programmers.

The state of gaming hardware on the PC nowadays is a bit of a mystery to me. I remember a time long ago, when Bill Gates was praising the wonders of Plug-and-Play; it was a magical world where devices would just work, with little-to-no user intervention. And for a while, they did just that. Scanners, printers, cameras, and practically any other obscure device I could find were immediately usable via the wonders of PnP. The distinction between Mac, PC, and even linux, was practically nonexistent – drivers were everywhere.

Now, I might sound like a bit of a nut, because all of this is still largely possible today; that is, until you enter the wonderful world of computer gaming.

The one thing console’s have always had going for them is their relative status as gaming’s walled garden. Console hardware has, historically, been strictly controlled, with but a few official and third-party licensees churning out a steady stream of peripherals for the end-user. This is great for console manufacturers like Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony, because the ability to strictly control and ensure a good user experience is always present. More so, it ensures that companies can maintain this walled garden approach, which ultimately separates the Sony from the Microsoft, and so on. It’s an atmosphere where intermingling is sacrilege – something that any console fanboy can attest to.

And so we arrive at PC gaming. Moving away from this walled garden ideal, it’s probably already obvious that such an approach is near impossible in the world of PC gaming. The likes of Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo are obviously the only ones to make their respective consoles, and as such, control the flow of peripherals as well. But PC’s are manufactured on a far more fragmented scale, split between innumerable companies worldwide. The big three gaming companies have little to no hold over the PC gaming world – and that’s where things get weird.

Games For Windows Live is Microsoft’s pet project to bring the world of Xbox Live-like connectivity to the Windows Platform. Therefore, it’s only natural that Microsoft provide superb support for their Xbox 360 controllers within PC games like Street Fighter, or Arkham Asylum. The problem arises when this controller is the only controller allowed – as is the case with Arkham asylum. I’ve discovered first hand that Sony’s Sixaxis just doesn’t play nice. I don’t want to infer that this is some particularly devious act on Microsoft’s behalf, but there’s no denying it’s a clear annoyance.

Other Games for Windows titles, like Street Fighter IV, however, are perfectly  content allowing third party devices. But even that is marred with issues – me and a friend were incredulous to discover that Mad Catz’ official Xbox 360 SFIV fight stick, doesn’t even work on AMD or nVidia-based platforms. Say what?

The PS3 controller, meanwhile, is easily recognizable by Windows 7 platforms; the only caveat is that the buttons don’t work. Third party support has been hacked in, but it’s often less than desirable, leaving end-users with a madenning set-up experience. There aren’t even third party drivers from Sony. Meanwhile, the Xbox 360 controller, while official drivers are available, often doesn’t work as planned, with some users even flocking to third party solutions in response to the poor remapping and functionality of Microsoft’s software solution.

In each case, what worked flawlessly in the strict constructs of a console world is struck down by the unforgiving nature of the PC environment – a world where manufacturers need to remember that us PC gamers like choice.

To me, it seems as if many of the big developers are forgetting the very simple notion that computers are not consoles. Consistency between machines and manufacturers is only an illusion, and are there are no guarantees of functionality from one to the next. But as the console and PC gaming worlds continue to collide, it only seems as if we’ll be seeing more and more of issues like these. Gaming hardware that, while may appear to use similar PC standards on the surface, is found to be near-unusable on it’s PC brethren. Or there may be other cases, where devices are simply not as Plug-and-Play as we might like.