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?

Comments

Heh

[mrbaggs]

Scary thing is, I bet this will do far better than Phantom could ever hope to.

DRM?

[Nos.]

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.

Gauntlet?

[American AC in Paris]

This could be the first gauntlet into the ring

Pssh. Atari already had theirs in the ring in 1985.

Target market

[keeleysam]

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!

Short on details...

[Reignking]

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?

Re:MAME? Licensing?

[someguy456]

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.

Bad emulators?

[Guspaz]

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.

Re:Bad emulators?

[GameNutz]

FCOL. Doesn't anyone read anymore? Nowhere in that press release did they state they were writing emulators. Client side software to run host based games is not emulation. This will, most likely, be a client/server based model that had a portion of the execution always sitting on the server (and this demands that you have broadband.) Almost every online game today that works across dialup is doing all of the render/execution locally so the amount of bits that need to be pumped are smaller. This means that the client side won't do anything without being connected to the server. This helps stop piracy and mandates that you have to be connected to their service to play said games.

This is not new in the computer world but is "newer" in the games world.

I'm in.

[black mariah]

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.

I Call Bulls**t

[Donoho]

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.

Get it?

[soniCron88]

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.

Why bother?

[billybob]

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.

There already is a VGAA

[tepples]

There already is a VGAA, and it is called the ESA.

Re:MAME? Licensing?

[geminidomino]

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.

um.

[ultramk]

This could be the first gauntlet into the ring a major media company.

Main screen turn on.

m-