Bleem's Gravestone Online

An Anonymous Coward writes: "I just went over to Blue's and saw that Bleem is dead. What happened? Have the lawyers finally gotten to them?" Maybe they just got tired.

Comments

Shot themselves in the foot?

[mattbee]

Slashdot didn't cover the last few months of Bleem's existence when their web site detailed the news that Sony were trying to shaft them by threatening stores stocking their products with withholding of PS2 stocks (this was last Christmas). This was after they had successfully defended an attempted injunction by Sony to stop them selling Bleem! for PCs; so after failing to stop Bleem by legal means, they semi-successfully hurt them by traditional strongarm tactics.

However I don't think they made the most of their martyr situation with regard to the Dreamcast Bleem port they had. Firstly, I think the whole idea of selling it as 'Bleempaks' rather than a warts-and-all 'complete' emulator was flawed; if you don't know, they decided that they wanted to sell the emulator on several separate CDs costing a few dollars, each of which would pay 20-odd Playstation games that were guaranteed to work perfectly. Their line was that customers would know exactly what they were getting and wouldn't be disappointed when a game they hadn't tested didn't work. What it looked like was a short-sighted attempt to boost sales by potentially splitting somebody's PSX library across all these Bleempaks, and making them pay more for it. I sent them an email to this effect at the end of last year, and had no response.

But I've since been convinced otherwise; from what I've heard, despite the fact that it was impressive at what it did, PC Bleem was never particularly reliable or compatible, even with the latest update which they stated would be the last. And this might explain why Sega weren't more supportive at the time when the Dreamcast was in its death-throes; sure a Playstation compatibility CD would give the console a shot in the arm, and if Bleem could successfully take on Sony's lawyers, surely Sega could, and then some? It seems likely that the same quality control problems which the PC Bleem! owners have witnessed would explain why they've only been able to release two single-game compatibility products for the Dreamcast so far, let alone a complete emulator or even a single 20-game Bleempak that they had planned.

Obviously this is total speculation, as nobody ever saw any other games working under Bleem!cast. Even if it were true, I wouldn't blame the single Bleem programmer for not being able to get the whole product done & tested, start-to-finish, while simultaneously fending off Sony's lawyers, working (apparently) from home and still trying to have a life. I'd even heard it was written in 100% assembler which makes the job even more fearsome.

Ah well, I guess that means the PS2 stays on my Christmas wishlist :-)