Nintendo's Playstation Settlement Bombshell (or not...updated)

Magamo writes "Console Talk has the story on a settlement between Sony and Nintendo over the rights to the "PlayStation" name, which was originally a joint owned copywrite, given to a CD and Cartridge based system to play SNES games. The settlement is for 10% of Sony's proceeds, past and present on the "PlayStation" name, currently amounting to approximately $2.3 billion. Nintendo is allowing Sony to pay it off in installments over the next 20 years. Nintendo currently plans on using the money to create a new game studio comprised of members of some of the biggest in the japanese industry, in order to create titles exclusively for the GameCube. Hmm, my guess is that Sony's next console will be shying away from the PlayStation moniker..." CD: It seems that I might have fallen for a hoax. Doh!

Comments

Not copyright

[0x0d0a]

joint owned copyright

I think it should be "trademark"...

Re:ummm..

[stratjakt]

No, this suit's been going on since sony took the jointly developed CD player addon for SNES and spun it into their own console - and threatened to stop supplying Nintendo with the SNES' sound chips if they tried to stop it.

The PlayStation name was already being thrown around in the Nintendo world at that point. I remember reading magazines and waiting for the 'playstation' CD player for SNES to come out.

Sony technically announced their box as the "Playstation X" (Hence, PSX)

Well, there's more to it than that - but that's what it boils down to.

WTF?

[Frozen-Solid]

I am in total disbalief that an upstanding bullshit free site such as slashdot as posted this article. For one, Nintendo has never had ANY stake in the playstation name. Nintendo and Sony's partnership on the then dubbed "SNES CD" ended without the project going anywhere. Because of Sega CDs flop, Nintendo pulled out extremely early in the process and left Sony to develope it alone. AFTER Nintendo left the partnership is when Sony took up the PlayStation name. Check out Copyright.gov if you dont believe me. 3. Registration Number: VA-759-813 Title: PlayStation. Description: Computer graphic. Claimant: acSony Computer Entertainment, Inc. Created: 1994 Published: 10May94 Registered: 2Apr96 Title on © Application: PS device. Special Codes: 5/S The official copyright database says NOTHING ABOUT NINTENDO. There is no way in hell that Nintendo could POSSIBLY win this suit, and there's no way in hell they are dumb enough to pursue it. I have lost much faith in my beloved slashdot for posting such total unofficial rumored bullshit.

Re:WTF?

[stratjakt]

Well, the story is fake, but, IIRC the history was more like this:

- Nintendo and Sony to jointly develop CD Addon for SNES

- Nintendo reannounces its partnership with Phillips - citing 'superior' technology. Though it was probably just a better (cheaper) deal.

- Sony gets pissed. Sony produces many of the proprietary chips inside the SNES, like the audio unit for one.

- Sony shows up at industry trade show with a new console, called Playstation. It has a cartridge slot, which plays SNES games. It has a cd-drive which playes SNES CD games (which never existed). SNES liscencing was Nintendo's, but the tech was Sony's. Sony has Nintendo by the balls.

- Nintendo does some kissing ass, and eventually winds up in some screwy 3-way partnership thing with Sony and Nintendo to jointly develop the 'Playstation', Phillips to be involved in production somehow.

- As you said, Nintendo sees Sega CD and TurboGrafx CD, watches them bomb, drops out, vows to only produce cartridges.

- Sony produces new console, Playstation X (the PSX we all know), Nintendo partners up with SGI for N64

There is a kernel of truth. There is some litigation as to the contract Nintendo had with Sony. Sony may have the trademark, but there's a contract saying that "Playstation" was to be produced for Nintendo. AFAIK, it's still in the hands of the lawyers, and will likely stay there forever.

This simply cannot be true

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's why:

I would expect Sony's stock price to have plummeted and investors would be made aware (no evidence on Yahoo Biz).

I would expect that Sony's website would mention this issue (here's the press release site for the Playstation http://us.playstation.com/news/PressReleases/ and Sony's official press release site) Note the lack of this story.

Google turns up no results either.

Don't post stories like this without checking them.

Re:I bet this is a faek story.

[micheas]

Probably, since a google news search of sony playstation nintendo turned up this article from Dec. 4 calling it a rumor for the gullible. http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?sect ion_name=pub&aid=998

How the shit did this get here?

[rosewood]

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?sect ion_name=pub&aid=998

uh? This is an old rumor. Fuck, its damn near ready for snopes. chrisd: Dont just post cause it looks cool, check it out first.

US Patent and Trademark Office

[minesweeper]

After doing a search on PlayStation, here are some of the results:

• PlayStation
  • (REGISTRANT) KABUSHIKI KAISHA SONY COMPUTER ENTERTAINMENT CORPORATION JAPAN 1-22 AKASAKA 8-CHOME, MINATO-KU TOKYO 107 JAPAN

• PlayStation
  • (REGISTRANT) Kabushiki Kaisha Sony Computer Entertainment CORPORATION JAPAN l-l Akasaka 7-chome Minato-ku, Tokyo JAPAN

Text from the article..

[Anonymous Coward]

After searching the Internet, I came up with the text of the original article:

(Tokyo)- In an announcement early this morning, Nintendo and Sony executives announced that they had come to a legal agreement over the rights to the name 'Playstation'. The name, which was originaly given to a joint-venture CD rom based add-on for the Super Nintendo, was technically, a joint-owned copyright. Sony has agreed to pay Nintendo 10% of all past and future proceeds made off of the name. This ammounts to a whopping 2.3 billion USD in back-payments. Nintendo will allow Sony to pay the money back in installments instead of a lump sum over the next 20 years. However, Nintendo has plans for their new found source of income. They will immidietly finance a new game studio called 'The Artists Group' which will feature members of Sega, Nintendo, Namco, Capcom, Konami, Tecmo, Square-Enix and more to collaborate on projects for Nintendo systems, and exchange copyrighted properties. The first projects announced out of this new studio are a new RPG using various gaming icons as the central charachters, a new Smash Brothers game, featuring mascots from accross the companies, including Pacman, Megaman, Sonic, Mario and more, as well as a new Sega-AM2 developed racing game that will also feature multiple icons from the various companies. The final collaboration is the recently announced Viewtifull Joe from Capcom stuidios. Nintendo has also promised that completely original more collaborations between studios will take place in the future, but for now, they will be focusing on quality content showcasing the newfound bond between the various development houses. Contrary to internet rumors however, Nintendo has not as of yet purchased any software developers, and as such, all members of the Artists Group will be allowed to explore development on other systems of their own accord. More as it develops.

Re:Sorry but

[btellier]

Particularly since Penny Arcade just did a comic on it.

backward compatibility costs nothing

[Anonymous Coward]

Few people realize the jump between PS2 and the original Playstation. I know the halfly informed will jump out and say "yeah the old one is 33MHz, new one is several hundred," etc. But in this case the MHz (just as in intel/amd world) says nothing.

in every PS2, the "PS1" portion is not even another chip, let along anything they had to work hard for: there was no signal routing on the circuit board, no data passed between the new and the old (gfx proc, new cpu), and I don't even think it usued the memory (might be wrong on the last part, though).

The PS1 portion is but a corner of the I/O processor. (I/O processor handles (duh) I/O - but also sound - so PS1 core pipes the audio directly through.) So pretty much PS1 is running on the "sound card" portion of the PS2, if you will. I highly suspect that they had a lot of chip area left when making the I/O processor (or adding on the entire IP core of PS1 costed minimally) so they just said fsck it let's put that on there.

In desktop terms, this is equivalent to, say, running a Pentium II system using your SCSI card controller. (which, btw, the higher end ones from adaptec actually do use a P2 for the microcontroller)

Contrastingly - while that's not possible for the PS2 to be integrated into a dusty corner of a new-gen console for now - by the time P2 retires, I would not be surprised if they can pull the trick again - or if it proved to be costly then, they will probably just skip it.

Not sure if this is coverable under NDA, as it should be pretty common info via developer kits; but i am posting AC anyhow.

Re:backward compatibility costs nothing

[rsearle]

The Sega Genesis had the ability to run games from Sega's previous console the Master System. The Genesis was a 68000-based console, but it used a Z80 for sound processing. You could buy a converter that adapted your old Master System cartridges to the Genesis form and ran them on the sound processor.

*sigh*

[autopr0n]

Don't you think the trademark of relevence would have been filed in japan, not the US?

Re:Slashdot Liablity (slightly off topic)

[Osty]

As a "news site," how liable is Slashdot for posting this story should it turn out to be total fiction? There was apparently zero editorial checking, and since the story isn't there, you have to wonder if it ever was. Did some Slashdot editor just see a cool story and "OK" the submission? If that's the typical way things get done, it's awfully unethical.

Until you can prove a direct correlation between something like a major dip in Sony stock and this story on Slashdot, I don't think Slashdot is liable for anything. Oh my, did I just stick up for the Slashdot editors? Crap. Anyway, you're 100% correct -- the editors should have at least followed the link (when the link is to a page that doesn't exist, don't post the story. end of ... story). Failing that, they should've realized that any legitimate story on this would've at least linked to a more reputable source (cnnfn, yahoo, even msnbc), either without the consoletalk link or along side it.

My prediction is that this will get blamed on the editors seeing the Two Towers today. The movie was so damned long, they were probably half asleep by the time they got back to "work".

Re:Well, damn

[Nexx]

I've been wondering if Sony changed the name from Playstation to PSX

No, the PSX moniker came about because the popular Japanese abbreviation for the PSX (puresute) sort of implied "play and throw away"(1). It had *nothing* to do with Nintendo and everything to do with Sony's brand image. Subsequently, they pushed "PSX" in the US as well, because ultimately Sony K.K. in Japan outranks Sony of America, Inc.

(1) The moniker PSX didn't stick in Japan. Not all marketdroid schemes work. *grin*

Re:Slashdot Liablity (slightly off topic)

[iapetus]

The story did exist at the time the article was posted. I know, since I've had to prune out countless topics about it on a well-known gaming forum (incidentally, if Slashdot is covering ludicrous gaming rumours these days, I'm sure we can supply them with a few more interesting ones...) Consoletalk have since taken it down, presumably partly in response to the widespread coverage Slashdot is getting it. :)

Copywrite and Copy2pc

[tstoneman]

Anyone remember copywrite and copyiipc?

I'm dating myself, but back in the day, these were the two major copying programs that everyone used to copy IBM PC games/programs, back in the mid-80's. They would break most floppy-disk protection schemes and new versions would be coming out, it seemed every few months that would cover more and more programs and games.

I think it was thanks to the efforts of those two programs that software companies finally gave up on trying to add physical protection mechanisms on the floppies and eventually give up entirely.

Now if only the RIAA and the rest of the music industry would just learn from the mistakes of the past, they would realize that all their stupid protection mechanisms are just a complete waste of time.