Slashdot Mirror
Sony Hiring Emulation Experts?
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."
Bleem did as much to kill themselves as anything Sony could have done. First they were late on their shipping date for something like a year. 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).
It all became such a pain in the ass, that it was simply easier to pick up a PSX1 on the cheap if you really wanted to play PSX1 games.
Seriously. Although I don't think it's so much necessary for the Playstation, to be honest, but I want emulators in my games. I've said this before and I'll say this again.
I want classic games included with newer ones.
This is something for the GameCube, of course, considering how Nintendo has the only straight-through hardware chain left these days.
In my dream world, every big new release would come with 3-4 old classic releases. They can even reuse them, I don't care. License the SMS and Genesis technology from Sega, and have Sega include their old games in their games. Old game-boy games, 8-bit and 16-bit games, would be great to see.
Would I be more apt to purchase a borderline game (as it is, I only buy the best) if it had a classic game I wanted to play? Of course I would. And considering if they could make a common emulator program, the costs would be low.
Even better would be if the system had a small amount of storage media to store roms you wanted to keep to both save games and ROMS so you didn't have to jump between discs...but I think that's asking TOO much.
What's more important, long term, is that once you've got a customer you're much more likely to keep that customer if you can guarantee that new hardware, especially hardware that enable better games, will still play the old games the customer has already paid for. Just like the old lament here about Microsoft lock-in for its software: once you've bought in, it becomes harder to rationalize switching to another system.
This was Nintendo's trick, but they resisted using it in the console world. Sony, through the happy accident that a small component of the PS2 is the main part of a PSX, found out that it works just as well in the console world as it has for Nintendo's handhelds. Nintendo, meanwhile, still seems to be chasing the dream of cross-system functionality, the Super GameBoy, GBA Player for the GameCube, and GBA/GC connectivity being the prime examples. Each of these is a nice trick for people already in the Nintendo fold, but not one of these has set the world on fire and drawn new customers by the millions.
If Sony can pull it off, telling everyone that the PS3 will allow them to keep all their PS2 and PSX games while offering a great platform for new games, then I think they'll have a leg up. I wouldn't be surprised to see the Xbox2 doing the same thing, since it will be more like a PC upgrade than the PS3 would be. As for the Cube and the next Nintendo platform, who knows?
The real question, of course, is whether the PSP will turn out to play PSX games in some way. If it does, then perhaps the Sony handheld is an attempt to cut into the handheld market by using a library of software developed on a console. That'd be a neat trick. And, in the sense that the GBA titles are ripping from the SNES library, is another interesting example of Sony using an idea already in use by Nintendo.
I'm not trying to make Sony out to be super-clever here, just trying to point out that some of the things Sony is doing (and that Microsoft may eventually do) are ideas that Nintendo has been using, in some form or another. Coincidence or not, I felt it was worth explaining.
Curmudgeon Gamer: Not happy
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)
... and more likely for building a PS3 emulator to get into the hands of developers before the actual hardware is ready.
Ryan T. Sammartino
"Ancora imparo"
If it does, then perhaps the Sony handheld is an attempt to cut into the handheld market by using a library of software developed on a console. That'd be a neat trick. And, in the sense that the GBA titles are ripping from the SNES library, is another interesting example of Sony using an idea already in use by Nintendo.
Sega did this a long time ago. They made a handheld called the Nomad that played regular genesis carts. You can even use a genesis A/V cable to play on the tv like that new gamecbe addon, but with this you still have a screen on your controller in case someone blocks the tv. Pretty cool system, I still have it.
Another point I might bring up is that, and maybe I'm just alone in this, but I don't play my old PS1 games anymore so I would have no need for that type of backwards compatibility. Of course, I play a lot of sports games so that might be the reason why but I would rather see PS1 emulated in software rather than a hardware sacrifice in the PS3 to get the games running.
Just my two cents.
I hate liberals. If you are a liberal, do not reply.
I mean, Sony could want to get as many bugs and issues identified as soon as possible before go and start finalizing the hardware designs and making a bunch of prototypes. I imagine being able to emulate a PS/3 on existing X86 desktops or other already easily accessible existing hardware would be useful, especially OS developers.
The *FIRST* application for Sony to be getting running on any new games systems should be an emulator.
If the new box can't emulate the old box in hardware, its not good enough.
That said, I believe that Sony have woken up to the fact - as have many, namely Microsoft and Apple - that hardware emulation has its place in the modern computer software development field, where obsolescence happens faster than pubescence.
Emulation is a total solution to hardware market re-definition, and not only that: its a pretty good rule to play by.
If you can't reasonably emulate - in software - the old hardware on the new box, the new box isn't ready.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
...that Bleem! wasn't the only commercial emulator for the PlayStation out there. (And Bleem! existed for platforms other than the Dreamcast, too. As another poster noted, Bleem! was available first as a software package for the PC, and worked quite well.)
The other commercial emulator besides Bleem! was none other than Connectix's excellent Virtual Game Station, which was cross platform. Virtual Game Station was first demonstrated and sold on the Power Macintosh, then ported to Windows. Sony had more success hassling Connectix legally (many speculated that Bleem! did a better job doing a clean room reverse engineering job on the PlayStation), but ultimately what killed VGS was Sony settling out of court with Connectix. Part of the settlement was that Sony got the rights to VGS, and Connectix stopped selling the product themselves.
Sony made vague rumblings about updating VGS and bringing a better version to market, but really all they were interested in doing was sitting on it.
Sony did everything they could to kill PlayStation emulation, but all they succeeded in doing was driving the emulator writers underground and promoting OpenSource solutions; the proprietary commercial offerings from Bleem! and Connectix were squashed through legal pressure and back room deals.
Is anyone else suspicious of Sony now trying to hire emulator writers? I wonder if this is a honeypot to entrap emulator coders and rake them over the coals (legally speaking)?
The number one utility of emulation as far as Sony's concerned is software development. If I recall correctly, the devkit Advance contained an emulator (tied to a hardware dongle). This can be especially useful when the hardware isn't fully available, tested, or produced. Its simple to write a correct emulator; whats difficult is writing one thats fast and efficient. But for locating serious bugs an emulator can often suffice during early testing.
I Browse at +4 Flamebait
Open Source Sysadmin