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Sony Hiring Emulation Experts?

Posted by simoniker on from the emulate-surprise-and-shock dept.

Thanks to TotalVideoGames for their article indicating that Sony are hiring an 'Emulator Development Engineer' on their Japanese website. According to TVG, the move "..fuels speculation that the PlayStation 3 will indeed run PSOne and PlayStation 2 titles", though it could equally be for the handheld PSP or, well, a red herring. But the site still boldly claims: "It's an ironic situation however and re-ignites the debate between Bleem! and Sony; for those who missed out on the multi-million dollar law-suit, Sony successfully muscled Bleem! from the market for selling emulated PSOne titles for the Dreamcast."

4 of 59 comments (clear)

  1. Bleem! by ronfar · · Score: 4, Informative

    Bleem! also marketed a commercial PC emulator that ran most PSOne games, and they never lost any of their court cases. Sony "muscled" them by running up their legal bills, something that a tiny company like Bleem! couldn't afford.

    --
    All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
  2. Re:It wasn't all Sony by ronfar · · Score: 3, Informative
    Without Bleem! my expensive import copy of Rockman 3 for the Playstation was just an overpriced coaster. Sure, I would have preferred to play it on my modded Playstation, but I would've had to re-mod it with a "stealth" modchip. (Or pirate the game...)

    Bleem! for the Dreamcast works well, it would have to considering the way they decided to sell it (one "Bleemcast" disk per Playstation game, I only have the one for Tekken III).

    But there is a key point here, Sony wasn't just killing Bleem! (I sincerely believe they could've stayed afloat if they hadn't had legal bills), they were killing the idea of commercially viable emulators (they also went after Virtual Game Station). Remember, Bleem! played any disk that would work in a modded Playstation. Later they regretted not adding "pirate" detection, I think, because they put it in the Dreamcast version.

    At that time Sony wasn't really cracking down on the modchip market, I think they were terrified (unjustifiably so) by the implications of Bleemcast.

    --
    All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
  3. Re:It wasn't all Sony by Guppy06 · · Score: 2, Informative

    "Then instead of releasing a single disc that could be used for all games, they released four separate discs that were tweaked for only certain titles, etc."

    "And this is not to mention that the controllers weren't compatible (two analog sticks on the Sony, only one on the Dreamcast)."

    You do realize that Bleem! came out for the PC long before "Bleemcast" came out, right? And that said disk played most PSX games and let you use any PC controller you wanted, right?

  4. PS2 support already planned by Drathos · · Score: 1, Informative

    Sony has already stated that the PS3 will be backward compatible with the PS2, but not the PSOne. Perhaps they are changing their stance and looking for a way to emulate the PSOne in software.

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    End of line..