Slashdot Mirror
Xbox Emulator Plays Retail Game
Ryan M. Pamplin writes "The critically acclaimed Xbox Emulator, CXBX, has made its way into Xbox history. Caustik has announced that "Turok Evolution" is now playable at real-time speed with comparable graphics to the Xbox while utilizing nearly the same graphics hardware found within the Xbox itself. The development of CXBX will continue to advance at rapid pace. Expect many additional titles to become playable upon the release of the next binary in the near future. A DivX video, binary, and GPL'ed source is available at the website."
While Piracy IS a negative side effect of all this, there is no reason why it has to be all about piracy.
There are plenty of people who would just LOVE to play XBox games on their PCs.
If this means just sticking an XBox game in their PC and firing up a good game through an Emulator, I don't see anything at all wrong with this.
Legally, though, I'm sure Microsoft would differe in opinion, but if it were to actually increase games sales I don't know how they could really have too much to complain about.
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
Microsoft lose money on the XBOX hardware, so if they can get the license fees from XBOX games without selling the XBOX hardware, they're making more profit.
I'll need a $2000 computer to play a game that almost looks as good as the one played on the $150 console?
I think I'll stick with the real thing.
Let me put it simply. Here are some facts.
Microsoft takes a loss on each Xbox sold.
MS does this hoping the profit from games will overcome loss on hardware.
This emulator allows people to run Xbox games without buying an Xbox.
MS can only benefit from this. The only reason I'd see to defend against it is if Microsoft didn't want people playing them on PCs and instead on consoles. But that's kind of a dumb reason.
Etiquette is etiquette. He kills his mother but he can't wear grey trousers.
You're forgetting one important thing M$ would lose on: revenue from games because they can now be pirated and played... without a modchipped console. People can just copy them from a friend and play them on a computer that contains no piracy check. Expect M$ to come down on this product like a 10 ton sledge hammer.... I'm not saying it's right, but that's what they will do.
...but I'm afraid you meant Agent Under Fire. ;)
I am sure this is the exact reason. There are multiple layers of copy protection on the XBOX now, DVD Format unreadable, MS Signed executables, etc.
If M$ could have that kind of protection on standard PC hardware they would have released their own emu and sell games to PC and XBOX owners at a huge cost savings.
an Xbox is, what, $150??? How much is your time worth? I mean really, working on this kind of project seems to me to be a serious misallocation of resources.
Unless...
-- You can make the games play better
-- Do things you can't normally do with an XBox that are interesting and fun
-- Improve the development of XBox titles
-- Port other cool games to XBox more easily
On what grounds will Microsoft pull out the DMCA? It may be a law with several evil clauses (and a couple of good ones, like the safe harbor provisions), but it's not an all-purpose beating stick.
I don't see how this can be construed as a mechanism to defeat copyright protection, and emulators are well established as legal; it's just the legality of actually having any ROM data to run the emulators on is occasionally questioned. (For the record, I think if you own a license to a copyrighted work you should have full rights to put it in whatever media format you like, as long as it is undistributed, but to be fair, the legal precendents are mixed at best.)
"There are plenty of people who would just LOVE to play XBox games on their PCs."
Argh.. more of this 'I physically can therefore I should' mentality. If you want to play an xbox game, then BUY the xbox to play it.. OR if you don't want to buy an xbox, you cope with doing without the game.
It's as simple as that. There's so much rationalizing of why it's ok to break 'the rules' now.
Mod me down, I feel curmudgeony today!
They don't sell the X-Box to sell games.
They sell the X-Box to control the gaming market.
If there are emulators, they can not control the market.
See?
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
The Xbox is a loss-leader, which means each one sold costs them money. They make it up on the games. This means that every game sold to play on CXBX makes them more money than if you bought it to play on an Xbox.
So you're claiming that someone who is avoiding paying $149 for the console is suddenly going to pony up $49 a game to play on this emulator? I think not. The FIRST thing someone is going to do after downloading the emulator is to download some games.
Yes but Piracy is also what got Microsoft where it is today. How many pirated copies of Win95/98/2000, Office 95/97/2000 are out there? Casual piracy is a huge part of the way Microsoft got to its monopoly position.
For the near term more people playing Xbox games will only lead to greater mindshare for Microsoft. Xbox 2 comes out and you have a whole other market of "Xbox gamers" who never bought the first gen console but are now hooked on Xbox games and might consider buying Xbox2 even thought they never owned Xbox 1.
Regarding it hurting sales, people who have an Xbox will most likely continue to buy retail games. They play on Xbox and Not a PC for a reason. Those that don't own an Xbox but download this emu to play Xbox games were never going to buy an Xbox or Xbox games in the first place. So how does MS lose revenue on games people had no interest of every buying?
I think the publicity will only help Microsoft and get more people using Microsoft products. Remember the way Microsoft does business on the PC side. In order to gain in their goal of World Domination, Microsoft would rather give their products away for Free then lose a customer. Even if that means "losing" money. *Tinfoil hat on* I wouldn't be surprised in 10 years if we found out that someone internal at MS "helped" this guy out in order to get more people using Microsoft products.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
Care to point me to "the rule" that states I *must* have an XBox to play a game? Just because it says it on the box doesn't make it so. After all, UT2003 never said you could play it on Linux on the box.
If it does not enforce or comply with the scurity model of a (C) DRMed piece of media then OF COURSE it "circumvents" it. It could not be more simple. This device circumvents the X Box software DRM model and therefore is clearly illegal. There is no gray area here.
If this means just sticking an XBox game in their PC and firing up a good game through an Emulator, I don't see anything at all wrong with this.
Sure enough. But does this emulator magically make your DVD-ROM or, even more likely, CD-ROM able to read a retail Xbox game disc? (I don't know, I can't RTFA because visiting such a site is discouraged here at work) Cause if not, it has no use other than to play ROMs and NOT retail games. And if you don't have an Xbox you don't have a legal way to make your own legal backups. It sounds highly like that if it doesn't allow even a normal DVD-ROM to read the disc, the law would legally differ in opinion.
But hey if it does work its a whole other ballgame.
In that case, they are doomed to collapse under the weight of their own hubris, emulators or not. It's not like Sony and Nintendo are just sitting on their hands.
"If you're thinking what I'm thinking, you're right." -
Only on Slashdot is someone "doing a favor" for a company by emulating their console so that nobody buys it.
Somehow, your logic is:
Game sales > Game sales + X-Box sales
Completely insane and depressing.
MS loses a lot of money on every x-box sale.
So by not buying X-Boxes, they're magically recouping the money for those X-Boxes sitting at the store?
Every company sells something in an attempt to succeed and control that market. Welcome to what we call "capitalism."
People that aren't willing to spend $150 to buy the official console that runs the games properly are, in 90 percent of cases, not going to be willing to shell out $50 for the official game disks and then go home and play them with buggy graphics and/or sound. Especially when they could buy the PC equivalent for a lot of the Xbox games for less and get a proper running game with full multiplayer support etc.
'Pirating the hardware' goes hand in hand with pirating the software. An Xbox emulator won't be causing an explosion in game sales any time soon.
Most likely, this will push virtually all of the borderline Xbox purchasers (who will be buying 10+ games over the ownership duration) to say 'Fuck it, i'll download the emulator onto my PC and get the DVD-Rs cheap off my mate Bob who's into all that piracy stuff'
Mother, do you think they'll like this sig?
People keep saying, "this is good for Microsoft because they lose money on hardware and make money on software, so pure software is good for them!"
In the pre-XBox days, Microsoft had a software games divison. They were already producing software. By that logic, they'd have no reason to make a console, because people always lose money on console hardware. Why didn't htey just stick with games for PCs?
They did it for "living room presence." Right now, or at least moreso 3 years ago, people thought of computers as a workstation. Microsoft's wants to push computers to all areas of the home, and the XBox in the living room is their foot in the door. By establishing a foothold in the console division, they'll be able to have future hardware generations integrate better with with normal PCs to give "ubiquituous computing" or some such.
Microsoft *could* make an XBox emulator on the PC, but they just don't want to.
Don't forget that buying the XBox actually helps them recover some of the loss they took by building the console.
as long as the law stands...THAT is the rule, and we are morally obliged to adhere.
And Thoreau rolls in his grave.
Rob
as seen in the DreamX, attempting to connect to xbox-live with an xbox that has a different processor will get you banned.
d re amx_xbox/
http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/friendtech_
Capitalism isn't about trying to control a market. It's about selling something so good that people will buy it.
Trying to control a market stems from the idea that one should play the capitalism game just long enough to get to the point where one doesn't have to play by capitalism's rules anymore. It's not supposed to work that way. Your reward is not getting to lock out competitors, fix prices, and coast; your reward is enough money to keep playing. You can opt to keep selling your stuff as is, if it sells well, or make it better or different, if it's not; but you don't keep working, you can't expect to keep eating your cake.
Lately democracy seems to be based on the skybox, the Happy Meal box, the X-box, and the idiot box.
Platform lock-in.
If someone were to be able to play XBox games without owning an XBox, they are statistically less likely to actually buy said games. Because they haven't invested any money into the platform, they don't have that sense of loyalty / hazing that comes with a system purchase.
(warning, old numbers ahead) The average system sells with 5 games the first year, and 5 the second... After which it slopes off. What is likely to happen if people don't make an investment in hardware? Chances are, more people will use the opportunity to buy that one "must have" game (in my case, Ninja Gaiden), but will not pick up the other 4 per year. The "system seller" is a well-known effect, but what happens if people can satisfy that system seller desire without the system? Or what happens when people can emulate all 3 platforms consistently?
You want your players to make an investment in your hardware. It makes them better customers, more likely to come back and buy more games.
The ______ Agenda