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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.
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Working at Electronics Boutique, I can tell you that at least on Friday, we were still selling Bleem! products.
However, looking at how few Dreamcast systems we're selling (we have two new ones left, and the rest are preowned), and how few new PS games are coming out, it really doesn't make sense. The only way to make money for them now would be to find a way for something like XBox to play PS2, PS, Gamecube, and Dreamcast games. But that would invoke serious ire.
Bleem! was a great idea, and made great products, but perhaps the strategy just reached the end of its lifecycle. I wish the guys the best in whatever new ventures they pursue.
The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it. - G.B. Shaw
Then open-source it so somebody else can continue to develope the emulator for the x86.
--- No, english is not my mother tongue.
Bleem! was a great concept- PSX emulator on the PC for sale to the public. I saw those ugly yellow boxes in the local comptuer stores myself- it was enticing.
However, other emulators came up. VGStation took Bleem!'s place on the top of the line quickly as it was more compatable. Then Sony sued...
Bleem! stopped updating, and virtually abandoned the PC emulation market for something new- a commercial PSX emulator for the Dreamcast. It was a bright future, if it weren't for two things- one, only one game would work on it, and two, the DC was dying.
The PS2 would never need a PSX emulator.
The GC and X-Box were far away at that point. Bleem! had no choice but to slowly fade away. I guess they finally gave up.
There are better PSX emulators now (ePSXe is considered by me to be the best)... but it is still sad to see someone in the Emulation community go away.
Farewell Bleem!.
--- Ãther SPOON!
I was initially very excited about the PC version of Bleem!; I even pre-ordered it. Well, after getting my disc 6 weeks late because they screwed up the order (their fault) I finally got it and was disappointed. Even up to and including their final release, Bleem! on the PC was buggy as hell.
Out of all the games I tried, very very few of them actually worked toally okay. I wasn't expecting perfection, but most times the graphics glitches were so significant that I didn't really consider the game playable. When I say "graphics glitches", I'm talking about texture corruption, 99% of the time. I had bought Bleem specifically to get higher visual quality out of these games (bilinear filtering, higher res, etc) so I wasn't as tolerant of graphics glitches as I otherwise might have been.
Also, Bleem! for Dreamcast was just executed very poorly. For those who don't know, they originally planned to sell three or four "Bleempacks" that would each run 30-40 PSX games. I guess the idea was to get a limited number the games working *perfectly* on each disc, as well as to charge the customer numerous times. Alas, even that was unacheivable, and they had to create versions of Bleem! that ran only ONE GAME- they released Bleem! Metal Gear and Bleem! Gran Turismo.
Sorry, but it was WAY too expensive. I'm not paying $20 or whatever for a graphical upgrade for a single 3-year old game... especially considering that they don't look THAT much better than the originals and even the enhanced versions were far surpassed by other Dreamcast games.
Interestingly, Connectix's VGS emulator worked almost flawlessly with all the PSX games I tried, although it didn't run on NT/2K, and didn't support 3D hardware so the games weren't graphically enhanced at all. This is the emulator that Sony bought and then yanked from the market.
OtakuBooty.com: Smart, funny, sexy nerds.
Bleem! made three emulation packages for the Dreamcast. EB still has 'em (unlees an emergency recall was issued), and people still buy them. The emulator for Metal Gear Solid has to be the best one out there, and I know a LOT of people have come in to get both since MGS 2 was released.
The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it. - G.B. Shaw
But this, this my fellow emulaton fans, is a sombre occasion that even the most stoic and hard-bitten game journalist/aficionado would find a tear marching its slick trail down the side of his jaded, tightly-clenched jawline.
"But Steve," you say "Bleem was a hunk of ass, I mean, it capped out at resolutions of only 800x600. Teh Playstation was w33k d00d. My Pentium 4 2 gig 0wnz! J00 are a pussy for crying like a little, broken-hearted girl over a stupid emulator."
To which I reply emphaically "Shut your bleemhole, ass. Remember when Raine was buried in its cardboard casket? Not a dry eye in the goddamned house, you little prick."
But you, you're always quick to berate and tear me down and hate, and hate you do... "Raine is still around, f00l. J00're a dumbfuck."
Yeah, that's right. Raine was ressurrected via some strange, arcane voodoo ritual, slain again, raised from the eternal depths once again, then burned by superstitious and cowardly townsfolk, then thrown into a river.
And that, baby, is why I weep. Not because Bleem died, not because Sony (god bless the 4 pin iLink...) is a horrid, evil corporate demon, but because I've drank about twenty whisky sours tonight, and are somehow still ambulatory AND lucid.
Yes, we journalists lead a tough life, but its one that we've chosen, baby...
Why is it when I hit ^R that ZSH calls me a cocksucker?
The problem with VGS was that Sony and Connectix signed a deal to work on future emulation software. All that seems to have resulted from that is that Connectix have stopped VGS. Whether it was a case of "We want to work with you" or "OK so we lost in court but if we give you this big bag of cash will you stop selling VGS?" only Connectix and Sony really know.
In a final achievement they managed to make a webpage that simply loads one picture, that only works in internet explorer. iCab and Netscape just show a blank page. This is quite a metaphor for their past performance.
"Remember, there never were pineapple-almond cookies here."
For those who go to the site and get a black screen - it appears that the site only works on Internet Explorer. No big deal though, it has 100 lines of Javascript just to fade in a picture of a tombstone with Sonic the Hedgehog crying and placing flowers next to it. Semi-cute I guess.
didnt they just sell their sole to sony ?
sony pressed legal people on them and then smozed them and gave lots of money to help them on the agreement that they would not sell to silly consumers but help out developers
what would you do sell a product or take sony's money ?
regards
john jones
Bleem may be dead, but its spirit lives on in PCSX.
Fighting the War on the War on Drugs.
http://smokedot.org/
I agree with those that say it was Bleemcast that killed Bleem, kinda. Its was actually Sony that killed them, Bleemcast just provoked them. But it is really sad they way they went. Sony may have won, but they did it extremely unfairly. Sony tried to stop them in court, but when the courts ruled in favor of Bleem, and Sony was defeated, they then went on to win the battle unfairly. Last year (when PS2 was extremely popular but in such short demand) Sony went so far as to inform retailers that if they carried Bleemcast, they might just coincidentally find themselves on the wrong end of the PS2 shortage (if you know what they mean). So, first they drained them to the edge of bankruptcy, then they cut off their revenue.
...Randy always said he'd love to get another coder on the job, but it'd be more trouble than it was worth. Not quite a perfect candidate for OSS development.
(Sure, there *are* OSS projects that use ASM, but...)
People who design `IE-only` webpages should be put out of business!
...formerly PSXEmu.com, and still the best source I know of for PSX emulation news. (No, I don't work there.) They don't have the bleem! 1.6 update online yet - they were linking to bleem.com - but I expect they'll put it up soon.
It fades in the grave picture if you're using IE.
"A good conspiracy is an unprovable one." -Conspiracy Theory
The idea behind bleem was pretty cool. Instead of emulating the hardware, like Connectix Virtual Game Station (which incidentally required a hack of the ROM and gave Sony fodder for going after Connectix legally), Bleem took a look at the hard ware instructions as they were generated in the game and decided what instructions could best accomplish the same end on the PC. This allowed for much more streamlined code without the normal performance hit you typically see with emulated hardware.
Bleem provided no anti-piracy protection (again, unlike Connectix VGS). They argued that the actual Playstation hardware was nominally difficult to hack. That if people wanted to pirate games, they were going to do it regardless of the protection they could offer. This is true, of course: try typing 'modchip' in your favorite search engine and you'll come up with nearly as many hits as 'porn'.
I find it a little strange how Bleem did an about face in this regard when they shipped their Playstation emulator for Dreamcast. They have released Bleemcast packs that work with Gran Turismo 2 ($6), Metal Gear Solid ($10), and Tekken 3 ($9). None of these will work with a copied playstation disc. Moreover, their protection is good enough that the krackers that release a pirated version of almost every Dreamcast game have been unable to krack these Bleem discs. I think it likely they would have sold more of these if they had allowed for copied games to play. They certainly would have had a larger market, not to mention the time they would have saved in not creating an iron-clad protection for the discs.
I agree with others who have said that this is a logical time for bleem to make an exit. Playstation's hardware was old when they first began, allowing them to emulate a very popular product with then-current hardware. I'd like to see them come out with something that allows x-box games to play on a PC, but i'm not holding my breath.
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
Matthew @ Bytemark Hosting
Argh... the SlashCode still doesn't recognize URL-encoded text fields submitted by Mozilla, which is why I'm reposting this.
For some shameless karmawhoring, I made a mirror of the Bleem! homepage without all the javascript, so it is visible with any browser.
Don't expect too much from it!
This sig under construction. Please check back later.
A major feature of the PS2 is that it can play PSOne games. If the Dreamcast could play PSOne games, PS2 sales would suffer. If PS2 sales suffer, PS2 game and accessory sales suffer.
didnt they just sell their sole to sony ?
If they sold their sole to Sony, how do they protect their feet?
Even then, how much would Sony pay for the bottom of some smelly, worn out shoes?
I've got this funny feeling you meant something else...
"Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives" should be a convenience store, not a government agency.
XBox emulating PS2? It's not happening.. Try getting your P3 733 desktop to emulate a 128-bit cpu plus two co-processors. Systems emulating other systems is a great idea though. With its standard PC-type hardware, The XBox is sure to get a MAME port as well as emulators for some of the older consoles, such as SNES. PSX emulation isn't out of the question, remember Bleem ran on less.
Want to know what killed Bleem!? It as Bleem!. Those guys were trying to be a viable software company by selling a Playstation emulator. Earth to morons, console gamers that can afford enough games to make Bleem! worth buying already had a Playstation by the time Bleem! hit the market.
Bleem! was bitten by their own product being, well, lame.
[12:59:03] *** Now talking in #bleem
[12:59:03] *** Topic is 'bleem! and bleemcast dead. Existing orders will go out'
[12:59:03] *** Set by Cerlyn on Sun Nov 18 00:50:55
The channel is on EFNet, btw.
Check this out..on the 5th I emailed Bleem because their ordering system was fuxored. I couldn't download the betas so I emailed their sales guy (literally ONE guy). He just now got around to emailing me back with the betas. Here is the full body of his email:
Better late than never.... and I mean NEVER...
This company....er.... message... will self destruct in 5 seconds...
david
Funny as hell.
I'd like to try out the software and see if it was worthwhile or not.
Any place I can get a copy?
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
We have this lawyers.
You die now.
Death To Competition
Death To American Dream
Abusing Corporate Power Is Great!
Remember that you are unique, just like everybody else.
bleem pc really isnt worthwhile, honestly.
but you can go to www.ebworld.com and buy bleemcast for grand turismo 2, metal gear solid, and tekken 3. All for under 10$s each.
I just put in my order for mgs and tekken3.
keep in mind you need a dedicated VMU (dreamcast save card) for bleemcast.
no
Bleem themselves made a good explanation of why they were not 100% compatible. You can find it here. Instead of emulating the Playstation(tm) hardware exactly, they opted to use native x86 code to mimic known Playstation functions they could decipher.
In order to support all Playstation(tm) functions and be 100% compatible, you must know everything the Playstation can do. Keep in mind there are at least four Playstation models, each with their own quirks. Bleem either (1) would have to reproduce Sony(tm)'s hardware and software exactly (very difficult and legally risky) or (2) mimic everything they figured out with completely new code. They did the latter, which in theory has better results over the long run but caused problems in the short term.
A few vendors likely used their own libraries instead of Sony's, making their life difficult. Just using basic statistics, one can see it is easier for bleem to support one game under these conditions than 400 or even 40.
It sad to see bleem go. Besides the fact they were actually challenging the rights of a large firm to deny others the rights to make a compatible product, their court case would have been a modern confirmation of our rights to reverse-engineer. Without such a case, the DMCA and SSSCA may reduce engineering education to textbook theory and looking at encrypted singals with equipment that cannot decode them.
Why would I used a closed source emulator when the open sourced ones run better anyway?
It was meant as a joke to rub it in that they sucked.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
In the meantime Bleems aust site is still up, here Download the demo and squirrel it away.. Perhaps find a crack for it. (Would never advocate that normally, but hey! there dead, so who gives a f)
It may be the last chance!
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
>BTW: Why was the article marked as flamebait??
.sig here...
...Probably because I pissed off one of the stormtroopers I mean moderators. It's the SECOND posting I've had moderated down since I changed my
Oh well. The bigger Slashdot gets, the more it goes down the tubes. I've been here since almost the very beginning too...