Slashdot Mirror
Playstation Emulator Will Ship
Pont writes "Sony
failed to get an injunction against Bleem, a
Playstation emulator for the PC. " This is a nice step in
the right direction for an industry struggling to come
to grips with annoying little problems like emulation.
Way to go Bleem. Now how about a Linux Port?
Did you know that Sony loses money on every single PSX console it sells? Not only that, but it'll lose even more money on every PSX2.
So how does Sony make money off the PSX? Software licensing. It gets a cut of every game made for the PlayStation. That's one hell of a lot of cash, way more than enough to make up for the losses it incurs selling the consoles. The point: Sony is actually saving money when emulators are sold; it does not lose them.
Now, as to hexing the program to run gold: that's a lot harder than you would have us believe. Perhaps, eventually, someone will do it. But as you said, even your grandmother's PSX is modded; this won't promote piracy any more than the average modchip.
Finally, you assume that the emulator cannot possibly be 100% cleanroom. I admit, I have my doubts as to how such an emulator could have been developed so quickly by so few people. But it is always possible. It's not easy by any stratch of the imagination, but it's possible.
Some issues that may or may not be true:
Sony may *not* want the PSX game base to last longer, especially with their PSX2 close to fruitation. With a healthy emulator, their PSX games would not die; people would still release games for it and people would still buy them, especially as PC hardware gets more powerful.
Imagine that the PSX2 is out, but likewise that the average PC is P3-450, with a TNT2 level accelerator as the base. Bear with me, this is like 2 years from now... Bleem has released version 2.0, fully backwards compatible with all original PSX games, but also enabled with additional features, now that the original PSX is no longer available on the market. Sony won't license out new games and SDKs in an effort to feed their PSX2 developer base, but a second tier game development community will arise around Bleem, shortchanging Sony of a bunch of profit.
All the big players like Square and Konami will be releasing PSX2 games of course for the console, but dinky small no name companies who still want to reach a large audience and want to use a decent stable platform will code for the PSX1, plus additional features!
Can you imagine? How ironic that the PSX emulators create a truly crossplatform gaming situation, with hardware acceleration and all! I don't know if this is the case, but if Bleem and Connectix VGS became standard on PCs and Macs, then M$'s Direct3d would lose some of its fire when such a stable, available, and open platform exists...
AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
But a difference in PSX1 vs PSX2 is that Sony controls who gets SDKs and who can develop or license for the console...
If there were a software only package, all Bleem or Connectix have to do is release their own libraries and such for development on the PSX, and Sony loses control of their baby...
In the software emulation scenario, Sony loses all control and profits from licensing of the SDKs and libraries because competitive distrobutions exist for alternative platforms...
In the PSX2 case, Sony could just deny approval of games if a company were to release a PSX1 game in the PSX2 era...
AS
-AS
*Pikachu*