Slashdot Mirror
ROM Rental Service To Launch
Neon Spiral Injector writes "Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. (TBS, Inc.), a Time Warner company, just put up a website for their new GameTap service. It appears to be a flatrate, all-you-can-play program that will allow ROMs to be downloaded to a PC and run through their software. Today's press release says that there are 17 publishers onboard with nearly 1000 games (300 available at launch)." This could be the first gauntlet into the ring a major media company. Who will be the next into the industry?
Scary thing is, I bet this will do far better than Phantom could ever hope to.
I wonder what sort of techniques they're going to incorporate to stop people from sharing/keeping the games and "programming" that are available. I'm guessing someone will come out with a freeware client and we'll start seeing torrents of their software before too long.
Pssh. Atari already had theirs in the ring in 1985.
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
So how are the users to run these ROMS? MAME's current licensing allows distribution of derivative works only if the source code is freely available. If Turner made the source for their product available, it would presumably be possible to work around the DRM that they're using..?
- jon
Ganymede, a GPL'ed metadirectory for UNIX
I don't think this is targeted at the /. crowd, more towards the people that buy those Pac-Man joysticks at the mall because they think it will bring them back to childhood.
We, on the other hand, have grown to know and love MAME, so this isn't all that exciting, UNLESS they get some ultra-rare game that us MAME'ers don't have yet
P.S. The icon for this is a X-Arcade controller, the ULTIMATE MAME controller!
Nothing for you to see here, Please move along.
As we've all figured out, this web site so far is high on hype and low on details.
I find it quite interesting that "TBS" is doing this, though -- why them? This just doesn't sound like something TBS should or would be getting into. I mean, this is the company and station the bring you the Braves and The Real Gilligan's Island.
As a Time Warner company, wouldn't this have made sense as part of something else, maybe that albatross named AOL?
One man's Funny is another man's Offtopic.
And where does it say anything about MAME? Did you read the article?
This is a private company with full access to legit games and presumable game system internals, I am sure their code would not necessarily have to be based on MAME.
Robert Bindler
A Computer Science student's views on technology.
This could be the first gauntlet into the ring a major media company
I think the editors could stand to hire an editor.
MAME isn't the only emulator out there. With access to the companies that own the games, they likely have access to more advanced development tools and information specific to the systems than freeware emulator developers do. Thoseo tools could very well include emulators, and if not, will probably include enough specifications to make high-accuracy emulation easier.
The press release says that they're writing their own emulators for these games. While this could be interesting for newer platforms that still don't have very good emulation (They'd be the only people to make emulators licenced by Nintendo/Sony/Microsoft), for older platforms (SNES or older, perhaps even N64 or older) this would be a step backwards.
Using SNES as an example, current emulators are very advanced, highly optimized, and about as good as they're generally going to get. This new company would have to reproduce many years of work that has already been done.
They'd go much further (appeal to a wider audience) renting regular unencumbered ROMs that work with any emulator. If ease-of-use is an issue, they could have their "client" program set up and launch the emulator for the user.
My point is, I don't see this company suddenly producing multiple emulators that are half as good as the opensource emulators that have been in development for years.
Look, as long as it is reasonably priced and keeps me from having to deal with dumbass rom sites then I'm all for it. If they can give me the same bullshit-free service that the sorely missed mame.dk once did, then I'm going to sign up.
'Standards' in computing only impress those who are impressed by things like 'standards'.
The press release makes NO use of the term 'ROM', so why is that term used here?
Secondly, ROM stands for "Read Only Memory", so why is everyone assuming ROM means it's to do with MAME or other emulators? Technically any file that is READ ONLY and resides in MEMORY could conceivably be considered a ROM file (though it would not quite be accurate use of the term).
I would be willing to bet that some code similarities will appear between MAME and this new services' client software.
But I'm all for it. Now it will be much easier to find ROMs of my favorite games. Their encryption will be cracked sooner than Ted Turner can call Jane Fonda to whine about it.
I was the first to say it.
Political correctness is the newest form of slavery.
Yes, but have you looked at MAME? There's a tremendous amount of development that has gone into it, and with the high number of ROMS they are promoting, they're going to need something similar.
All the commercial emulation packages I've seen have handled only a dozen or so games at most.
- jon
Ganymede, a GPL'ed metadirectory for UNIX
Sure, but not for 1000 different pieces of hardware. That's a hell of a lot of development (and debugging), especially when you have to be accurate down to the register level on this stuff.
- jon
Ganymede, a GPL'ed metadirectory for UNIX
Will a VGAA ( Video Game Association) be formed then to prevent P2P from stoping games?!?!?!
This bullshit service is a preemptive strike against free emulators. Do the publishers have the right to do this? Hell yeah! But I've also got the right to tell them to f**k off and make some decent new games.
If I play Zelda (I still have that gold cartidge somewhere) on my Treo 650 using an emulator and the original rom I believe its fair use. If I play the Adventures of Bayou Billy (shiver) which I rented once but never owned, not so much. Take equally or more obscure games and you get the same result. Who's going to throw a fit over me playing Atack of the Killer Tomatoes... unless someone has the brillant idea to pitch to publishers, lets take all the games most people don't even remember and resell them as a pay to play service. That way no matter the game, we can sue anyone that doesn't use our service to play these games, and since you originally published the game I'll cut you in... As in individual publisher, it really wasn't worth you time to pursue this alone, but if we ban together you might squeeze a couple more cents out of this game.
Nintendo had it's classics collection for the GBA. For $20 I could play the original Mario Bros (which if I remember correctly I at one point ripped out of the console, flung across the room and proceeded to jump up and down on. @#$$ world 8). All I could think was You Greedy Money-Grubbing Asshats. I don't need you to play this game. I would pay $20 for all the classics they released on one cartridge, but what they pulled was in my opinion obscene.
Michalangelo Progr
There's not going to be a thousand different pieces of hardware to begin with. They have a thousand GAMES, not hardware systems. Doubtful they'll cover more than a dozen hardware systems. MAME doesn't cover a thousand different pieces of hardware either, for that matter. Furthur, all of the development that's gone into MAME has gone into other emulation projects. MAME is only the most ambitious emulator out there, trying to emulate several dozen (not several thousand) different platforms, but there are still many other emulators that match, sometimes even outperform MAME, and even more emulators that emulate systems quite well that MAME doesn't even try to support yet.
Lastly, we come down to the original point: Do you really think they're going to use an emulator that was made by people who lacked intimate knowledge of the systems? Most all publically available consoel and arcade emulators are hodge-podges that were assembled bit by bit to get best-fit support of the hardware being emulated. The hardware manufacturers, however, often produce much better emulators simply because they have access to better details of the system and how it works together. Sony had a PSP emulator out last year, it was even mentioned on Slashdot because it included a battery usage simulator. Currently, Zophar.net hasn't even linked to projects that claim they're going to try to emulate it, let alone ones that have already started to try, or had any success. Same goes for the DS. So far, all that's been accomplished is two screen GBA emulators that don't yet support the DS hardware, but guess what? Nintendo probably has emulated it already because they're far more knowledgable about the system. Emulating the CPU is only the beginning. The emulator has to also emulate all the other hardware and how it's connected, and none of that information is public. It's attained by trial and error. The manufacturer doesn't have that weakness.
We're not going to use MAME, although we certainly COULD. You forget that you can always get another license from the person/people who made it, if he/they are so inclined.
I'm reading a lot of talk about how it'll be a step backward, the emulators can't be as good as the ones already out there, it'll only be good if they release some ultra-rare games, etc. I suppose most are missing the point: It would be legal to play the ROMs.
And, cmon, don't do any of this "but I own a copy of [blah-blah], but I'd rather play it in MAME". If you've got an arcade cabinet, I DOUBT you'd be playing it in MAME (not to say there aren't plenty of reasons to). Point is, the major malfunction with the emulation scene is that it's by and large an illegal community. Unfortunately, though, this is gonna be somewhat similar to these boxes and boxes of 1930's DVDs you find at Walmart. Most people won't even think twice about looking at them, the few that do will be happy to get to play a copy of Super Mario Bros., etc. But to top it off: they can now claim that distributing ROMs on the internet is stealing sales. (Ie. prosecuting in heavy numbers the distributors of ROMs, similar to how they are doing with movies, music, etc. My 2 cents.
Digital Sailor
A tremendous amount of development has gone into MAME because it's all been trial and error and reverse engineering. It's a whole lot easier to code an emulator when you're given the specs on exactly how it's supposed to work, which is almost certainly what's happening with TBS. As for commercial emulation packages that only handle a dozen games, which are those? If you're talking about the joysticks at WalMart, the games you get there are the ones they've chosen to include due to high demand. I assure you it would be fairly trivial for the manufacturers to support several hundred more games on those if they chose to. For someone with such a low /. ID you really seem to be completely missing the mark on this thread...
I dont know why someone would actually take the time to try and do that when if they wanted to go the illegal route, it's no problem to download every ROM every made from your P2P network of choice and use it with the many emulators that are freely available.
Joseph?
There already is a VGAA, and it is called the ESA.
Same goes for the DS. So far, all that's been accomplished is two screen GBA emulators that don't yet support the DS hardware, but guess what? Nintendo probably has emulated it already because they're far more knowledgable about the system.
Your point is well made. However, the Nintendo DS emulators are progressing faster than you think.
so the PC games could be delivered in a STEAM-like system and run directly without emulation.
"PC games" != "Windows XP games". A lot of classic games for DOS would have to be run in a virtualizer, which is like an emulator but runs a lot of the code natively, especially computation loops that do not access hardware registers.
If you've got an arcade cabinet, I DOUBT you'd be playing it in MAME (not to say there aren't plenty of reasons to).
Even if you have a PCB without a cabinet, or you have one of Namco's "Namco Museum" emulator+ROM discs, you are still the owner of a copy, and if you manage to dump your ROMs subject to 17 USC 117 or foreign counterparts, you can emulate them.
Point is, the major malfunction with the emulation scene is that it's by and large an illegal community.
Accent on the "by and large". There do exist substantial pockets of people in the emulation community who do not gratuitously infringe copyrights. See pdroms.de, gbadev.org, nesdev.com, and other online communities of people who develop original Free (or otherwise freely distributable) software for video game consoles.
As for commercial emulation packages that only handle a dozen games, which are those?
The Digital Eclipse packages for Windows and Mac, the various PS2 arcade emulation discs.
- jon
Ganymede, a GPL'ed metadirectory for UNIX
You forget that you can always get another license from the person/people who made it, if he/they are so inclined.
No, I didn't forget that, actually. But if you were to license MAME under other terms, someone would need to get approval for relicensing from all of the contributors to MAME, assuming that MAME does not require copyright assignment by their contributors.
I am astonished that anyone would try to replicate the amount of work that has gone into the existing emulators, though. I know that for a lot of the games that MAME supports, the original companies no longer exist, and internal technical documentation (beyond that which was used by the MAME team) is not likely to be forthcoming.
- jon
Ganymede, a GPL'ed metadirectory for UNIX
that's nice... now how much?
However, the Nintendo DS emulators are progressing faster than you think.
Dropping the subject right after that with no further information... Sheesh, I bet you're sitting there stroking a waxed handlebar mustache and petting a fat, overly-fluffy cat, you evil bastard.
The Williams Arcade Classics in the 90s was amazing. It took MAME a few years later to run games like Robotron and a lot more cpu power to play at acceptable speed. WAC ran acade speed on minimal cpu.
Gee, you don't think having real access to the specs for that had anything to do with it, do you? :-p This jonabbey guy is pretty much refuting his own words with the evidence he's supplying.
I cannot find any words such as roms, emulations, 8-bit, retro etc. on the announcement. For what reason did you regard them as a ROM rental service?
This will work because most people arent willing to scour the internet looking for free roms instead of just going somewhere simple and reliable and getting them for a small price..time is money and the cost of convinence and being trustworthy is important to non techies...lets face it, do you want your kid going to roms sites...their filled with all kind of weird porn advertisements.
Point is that iDeaS already partially implements the 3D core, the touch screen, and a lot of other DS-specific hardware.
This could be the first gauntlet into the ring a major media company.
Main screen turn on.
m-
You catch enchiladas by picking them up behind the head and holding them underwater until they don't kick anymore -VeGas
Although I seriously doubt there's going to be Linux support, so I guess I'll pass.
I don't, oddly enough. If you know enough about the original system to make a working emulator, performance just comes down to time tuning your CPU emulator code and the like.
And Digital Eclipse, when they did the Williams Arcade pack, only emulated, like, 6 games. I know, because I own the original CD.
So, like, bite me.
- jon
Ganymede, a GPL'ed metadirectory for UNIX