I find it quite sad that the first thought on the minds of many gamers on hearing that someone has cracked the PS3 is pirate games,

My first thought was maybe with a cracked machine you can finally run Linux with the graphics chip enabled.

Imagine the quality of a PS3 acting as a fully functioning media centre with a fully enabled Web browser.

That means you don't stop at iPlayer on PS3, you have 4oD, ITV Player and Demand Five and also video and music playback of almost any format.

How about homebrew?

Not only would Flash and Java games work on a Web browser but there are already a world of Linux programs that do all manner of weird and wonderful things, not least something like ScummVM.

There has been a fuss made about getting Facebook and Twitter working on both the 360 and the PS3.

But why settle for these limited versions when you could have access to the whole site and features?

It is naive to think that people's motives for wanting the PS3 cracked are innocent and wholesome and the act of cracking the PS3 is potentially in itself illegal.

However, doing all of this opens up no more issues of piracy than buying a PC from any High Street store... and none of this even includes PS3 games.

From what I've read there is an issue with pirated games on the PS3 in that pirates would have to crack the Blu-ray drive as well as the system.

Add to that the high capacity of the Blu-ray format and I think Sony's protection against pirates is twofold.

Firstly Blu-ray burners and discs are still expensive and secondly Internet downloads would take days to download at current average speeds.

This is only a short term problem for pirates as cost will come down and Internet speeds will increase.

Hopefully though, like Microsoft, Sony will be able to hand out PlayStation Network bans for pirates if copied games ever do raise their heads.

Personally I don't care if the PS3 is ever able to play copy games.

In fact I would prefer to see a cracked system without the problem of pirated games as this would limit Sony's interest in the issue.

Some people look at this news with disdain. But I think finally realising the potential of the PS3 running Linux, as it was announced at E3 back in 2005, is something to get excited about.