One of the strongly debated issues about emulators is that they are used to play "abandonware" or software that the copyright holder is assumed will never release again.
Well, that used to be fairly reasonable in the 90's when the arcade and console videogame market were in this huge transition towards fully immersive 3D games; nobody thought there would be a future for 2D, and then many old games were automatically assumed to be abandoned forever.
But, the Gameboy Advance changed all that, we are getting re-releases, remakes and rehashes of great, old games because the GBA is not a "3D powerhouse" and it doesn't need to be. I'm actually happy those games are released again, and so are millions of gamers. Just look at how the insane success of the Famicom Mini games in Japan makes the GBA sell even better than the PS2
This is what an emulator really endangers, it makes it more difficult to market an old game, and in fact the argument about "emulators saving good games from the past" is very much reversed as Nintendo can't sell a game to a market that got it for free. And Nintendo of course is trying to (rightfully) protect their IP, it may not be the right way to do it, but what other choices do they have?
OK, I see one alternative. I'm not saying it's good or bad to emulate games, but Nintendo and others should contact the emulators' developers and discuss in good faith about the reality of which games are never going to be released and allow them to be legally distributed and emulated. Of course, this is something very unlikely, but still possible in light of iTunes' success as an alternative distribution model.
Thing is, Nintendo is still a corporation and most of the time it makes decisions that are not popular with gamers, but sometimes you can get good remakes from these decisions. Pac-Man Vs., Super Mario Advance 4 (SMB3) anyone? Nintendo simply doesn't want anyone to compete with their own, official, legal emulators.
I think that for a game to really become abandonware in these new times, it now needs to be abandoned by both the copyright holder AND the consumer, since it is already proven an old game can sell like new. That leaves a lot less room for the emulation scene.
What's about people toting backwards compatibility as the greatest thing since sliced bread?
Think about the situation with the N64 and the Gamecube. When The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time was announced for the Gamecube, everybody just went nuts over it, and I don't know many people who didn't actually try to get it, even though it's a really slight update, and tell you what? I'm happy with it.
And I bet all backwards-compatibility whiners will be drooling hopelessly the very second they see a remake of Halo with higher resolution or a new level/vehicle/weapon.
Yes, compatibility has worked very well for the Gameboy and the PS2, but it didn't work as well with the Nomad, the Genesis, the Game Gear or the Turboexpress now did it?
I said it a dozen times and I'll say it again, don't ever think a game publisher will ever refuse the opportunity of selling you the same game twice (or more).
For more information, here's my last post about this same issue.
All three consoles can and will have very powerful technology, but I think the article is too optimistic and only tries to be "buzzword compliant" when talking about games having motion sensing and voice recognition integrated and the Internet being the "battleground".
These technologies are still at their early years, and making a game with those features increases the difficulty of developing it to a completely new level, as if fragment shaders, 3d audio, physics, and AI wouldn't be enough of a headache. Some current games already started to include voice recognition and motion sensing features in some way, but talking about the videogame industry leaning itself to that I don't think so.
Regarding the Internet, it's indeed an incredible tool and makes wonders with some games, but contrary to what some people might think, I don't believe it's still profitable or even really reliable to do globally, Microsoft's approach to Xbox Live seems to be right, but they're still bleeding a lot of money, so I wouldn't expect the online component to be a reliable revenue stream anytime soon.
Think about it, even Sony with 70 million consoles out there is still skeptical an cautious about online gaming and Xbox Live suscribers don't even amount to 10% of MS' global installed base. Then Nintendo is still battling with MS for second place (the usual "we are, you're not" from both sides), even though they put online gaming as a very low priority.
That said, maybe when these consoles start reaching the end of their respective life cycles, these kind of technologies will be more mature and then we can start to think on having a strong shift towards new ways of interaction into the next decade.
If the current generation serves as an example, the remainder of the decade we'll still be getting remakes and rehashes of old games, and innovation will take a backseat to the ever-increasing economic pressure on the market.
Also, writing off Nintendo as the distant third place was also not very smart to do. Big N's policies may not be attractive to us gamers, but do remember this is still a business and Nintendo is the only company able to sustain a healthy profit every generation, and their current strategies with regards to pricing seem to signal a very important price point which only them have been able to attain. As with the iPod Mini, sometimes the price point is the single most important thing for success, and most of the time this market is not driven by cutting-edge technology.
For every idiot spewing BS about violence in videogames, there are three game-savvy people who can shout "ESRB!". This industry self-regulation system actually works quite well when people, media and retailers get involved with it. It's very efficient when the circumstances are the right ones.
The problem is, it's not as widely enforced as the movie rating system, and it's worse in some countries I've been in, where the ESRB rating is completely ignored and the video games can be sold to minors. Countries in Central and South America come to mind, and some countries in Asia. The US has been improving in this area, as some retailers actually ask for ID when selling mature games, but the situation is still far from perfect.
Let's remember the one with the money is usually not the child, and most of the cases where the offending game gets to a child's hands is the parent who bought it. Whenever there's a case like this the parent simply blames the company or the videogame industry altogether, and of course there's always a "Paladin of Justice" of sorts, ready to take the issue to the media or to some control circles.
In Mexico, for example, I saw a case of some people on national TV saying Pokemon is the devil's work and a priest encouraging children to burn their Pokemon toys (the priest, by the way, used to own a video rental store, ironic, huh?). This stupid issue stopped the very second some news arose about none other than the Pope himself endorsing Pokemon and praising it for getting children together to play. Pokemon is a children's E-Rated game, completely safe to play and yet there are people ready to use it for their own agendas. Now think about the real trouble makers like the M-Rated Resident Evil, Grand Theft Auto or the upcoming Doom 3.
Every once in a while I get to see stupid, ill-informed articles about the issue on media in many countries. I think it's time the videogame industry defends itself by making the same amount of noise as those sensationalist idiots do. We have a good rating system, we need people to effectively use it, we need to strongly enforce it.
ATi have said this can likely be overcome, with shader recompilation most likely.
Technical issues are not their only problem, look into the article I linked in my previous post.
No chance. We're running under an emulator, remember? Anything that tries to step out of the sandbox gets killed immediately.
Oh yes, and we're talking about MS and buffer overflows, remember? What's to stop some guy to find some exploit on the emulation code? there are thousands of capable programmers out there hacking the current Xbox, letting them run their same code on another console should be already something to make MS nervous. It's like saying: "buffer overflows in MS games, No chance!" *cough* Mechassault *cough*
Basically, as people have pointed out, no HD effectively means no backwards compatibility. And no backwards compatibility means everything they spent on establishing the original Xbox is wasted.
Oh yeah and Nintendo wasted all those years on the NES, the SNES and the N64 by making them incompatible with each other. FYI, the SNES was designed with backwards compatibility in mind, it wasn't used. Sega's Genesis and the Game Gear too, had Master System compatibility, and it wasn't a strong selling point either.
I insist, take the Gamecube's example, everybody went nuts over getting a slightly improved version of Ocarina of Time, and you'll forget everything you said when in front of a new Xbox2 Halo/Halo2 remake (I can see it already *Ooooh shiny stuff! Drooolz*:p)
Maybe they'll have to sell a separate $70 "Compatibility expansion kit", with a HD & the emulator
Now THAT's an idea! But, as I said, the Genesis had it, the Game Gear had it, the Gamexpress had it, the Nomad had it, did the feature sell? NO! In contrast, did the Gameboy and PS2 sell because of backwards compatibility? YES!
This is an issue that must be viewed from a business perspective and not only technical, MS will/won't include compatibility if and when it makes business sense, period.
I don't usually feed trolls, much less AC-branded ones, but after several tough coding hours I need some stress relief. Oh yes, I'll bite =)
Bullshit. Xbox TRC says you're not allowed to touch the metal. (Plus MS owns a lot of patents that they swiped from SGI. I wouldn't be suprised if any of them cover shaders.) You have to use XAPI and DirectX for everything. Clever emulation software will intercept these API calls and run them in native code. Easier said than done, but it is possible. Perhaps the only snag to the problem might be the games released with the LTG(?) libs, which is where the linker does funky stuff with inlining the libraries or something. (Can give a fair speed boost!)
Bullshit? Tell that to Nvidia's CEO, for him being the single most important person in that company to talk about this topic, he's not quite sure it's doable, RTFA, not even ATI or MS are really sure about it.
<sarcasm>You should go tell this incredible secret of yours to MS, ATI or even Nvidia, you could get some serious $$$ and stop selling penis enlargement pills!!!1</sarcasm>
Seriously, I conceded MS _can_ solve this and any other issues, but it's more of what's wrong with the Xbox, they can't keep throwing money into an increasingly dead-end architecture. Of course, compatibility has never been out of the question, I merely stated the pros/cons and I don't think it's a wise decision to keep it.
As I stated earlier, why should you care about expensive compatibility, when you could get "improved" versions of your games in the next console, without any old-generation drawbacks or requirements? Admit it, you'll just fall for it =) HDD? Long download waits? wrappers? High-level emulators? Heh, how soon you'd forget all about that...
Oh and I forgot to say this, but some argue: "OMG! Halo/My-favorite-game won't work w/o HDD".
Those guys are either too naive or don't seem to have followed the videogame industry long enough, here's some food for thought:
How would you like a $29.99 2-in-1 disc, containing a "remake" of Halo and Halo2, with "improved textures", 7.1 audio, ONE new level, ONE new vehicle and ONE new weapon? I bet you're already drooling =) Backwards compatibility? What's that?
Don't ever think MS or any other videogame publisher would refuse an opportunity to sell you the same game twice. (Resident Evil, Famicom Mini anyone?)
As some others pointed out, the HDD is very important should MS want to keep compatibility with their current console.
However, backwards compatibility with the Xbox seems increasingly unlikely, because there are several issues and compromises:
- New CPU and incompatible ISA - New GPU (again, with incompatible ISA, and don't start the stupid "DirectX API" thing here, I'm talking low-level pixel/vertex shader code and Nvidia's proprietary, probably heavily patented/copyrighted extensions) - Keeping backwards compatibility could mean compatibility with some current Xbox hacks, like buffer overflows in some games and some BIOS stuff that could allow pirates to.dump "0 day" ROMs/ISOs immediately after the thing hits the market. - The HDD has not proved to be a market advantage, in fact, it negatively affected Xbox sales in some markets (big, ugly, heavy, noisy consoles don't sell in Japan, vertical PS2 anyone?).
Yes, MS could put the resources forward to solve each and every issue, but after not earning a penny in one entire console generation, I think it'd be a wise decision not to include backwards compatibility.
Now, the benefits of throwing it out:
- Smaller, leaner, cheaper to make console - Efficient, durable, reliable architecture - Harder to hack
Basically, MS' strategy seems closer to what Nintendo did right with their current Gamecube console and the hard fact it's the only company capable of making a solid profit with minimum losses (in fact only ONE loss situation in their history). This is smarter than simply throwing money to push everyone else out of business.
If this means MS is taking a honest and technically efficient approach on their next console, I'm all for it. The current Xbox has some great games but it's never been interesting enough, neither from a technical standpoint nor as a game console.
Really, someone who has so far only played with idiotic guys that only keep saying "u fag!" when you frag them, will feel very much relieved when playing against the usually quieter girls. I love playing against other people online, but I hate how the communication is abused with the permanent trash talk. The game is supposedly to be fun and people are there to show their playing skills, not their ignorance and horrible verbal/typing 5k1LL5. Gender mixed teams really help the S/N ratio, even if most of the conversations are "A/S/L?". Hey, both guys and girls go online to increase their chances to get laid, we can't do jack about it.
But I digress, I've had many girls as opponents in several kinds of games. In fact, I would recommend playing the awesome Pac-Man Vs. against women, it's ungodly funny. Women-friendly games are not always stupid things like Barbie. There are great games you can play with your SO, if not together, then taking turns is fun too. Examples? Animal Crossing, Mario Party, Mario Kart (online, yes!), Mario Tennis, Bomberman, Tetris Attack, Parappa and Umjammer Lammy, and Wario Ware, even some FPS I have played against women and had a great time.
I think an all-boy team is just as bad as an all-girl team. But, I also see an advantage with sexual-segregation. There are people very insecure about themselves, those are the ones that will never accept a defeat from the other gender. Let these idiots play with themselves in their closed circles, and let the mixed gender teams get rid of them and enjoy the insane fun.
So please, continue to make your gender-specific teams and keep yourselves out of this horrible, unfair mixed gender world where I play =P
The thing about having Linux on a Gamecube as opposed as installing it on an Xbox is the great power consumption savings.
The Xbox is 4-5 times more power-hungry than a Gamecube, but you'd never get anywhere near 4x performance. For a personal server (even media player) the Gamecube's CPU, GPU and memory performance are great, good enough for most tasks and it has component video and digital audio output capabilities (though Nintendo has never released the digital audio adapter, so the only way to do it is using the Panasonic Q and the component cables are not very easy to get).
The machine is also very cheap at $100 and small enough to fit anywhere, at least better than the Xbox. It may not have a Hard Drive but there's an SD Card adaptor that could be used for mass storage. I really prefer to have a smaller, low power alternative. You just can't get a 40W machine with such strong capabilities for that price anywhere else.
The only thing missing is a way to automatically boot into Linux, as you still need the PSOLoad trick. It would be wonderful if some company like Codejunkies released a boot disk like the Freeloader. I'd hate to be forced into manually loading PSO every time there's a power outage.
I remember Dave Cutler (the man in charge of WindowsNT, also the main VMS developer for DEC), when asked on why did MS use the CTRL-ALT-DEL keyboard combination to log on an NT machine, he said something like: "this combination is sure to be never used by any application". This was taking advantage of the tradition of using it to reboot the computer as everything in the DOS era was running in real mode, so nobody would use it for an application and the NT architecture enabled for the system to intercept it and use it in a supposedly better way. It was thought to be a neat idea.
Still, I think it was not really clever to teach the end-users such an important keyboard combination. I also remember some users back then thinking it would work the same in 95 as in NT, since both systems' GUI looked so similar.
For this future to be realized, the companies would need really fat pipes to the gamers' consoles, and consoles need a big storage capacity. These costs are never going to be lower than massive pressing of physical media.
Any current videogame worth to be pressed on a DVD is anywhere between 1 and 9GB in size. A best-seller videogame can go from 100,000 to 1,000,000 pressed DVDs, think on the necessary bandwidth and storage space to distribute it. Now compare that each DVD is pressed by the cents.
One might say that for the next several generations of hardware and broadband that will be solved, but then the physical media will evolve too, HDTV, HD-DVD, Dolby, DTS and other new technologies will raise again the size of the average videogame.
Rentals, retailers and other distribution channels can't die that easily. There are games that are more suitable for online distribution and monthly suscriptions, but trying to do this for every videogame will result in killing the industry's diversity. That would leave room only for mini-games or old ports (cheap to make and quick to download) or overly-hyped super productions (the only kind of games that will make money on massive distribution), and will kill innovation even further.
Even so, I think all companies (Microsoft at the top, with their EULAs and whatnot) want this future where nothing you pay ever becomes your property, and they will try very hard, but then I'm sure their business models will begin to show their flaws and the physical media will look attractive again. The bad thing is the consumer and the industry as a whole will suffer in the process.
I have been an MD user for more than 8 years.
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New Sony Minidisc Players
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· Score: 2, Interesting
I'm a long time user and I had mixed experiences with MD.
My oldest unit, a japanese Sharp MD, had a very reliable and high quality performance, beating anything available at the time (in terms of price/performance/convenience, remember 8 years ago there weren't many CD burners and DAT/ADAT were too expensive and not very portable). It has S/PDIF, Line In and MIC inputs. The ATRAC codec had a very good psychoacoustic model and better yet, it had forward and backward compatibility with several revisions of itself. My parents are musicians and I'm an engineer, so I know what I'm talking about. I still have this unit, it is a really good piece of hardware. Later I had access to an MD Deck that had S/PDIF output so I could record and edit some live tracks on my computer.
My newest MD, a Sony NetMD unit has also the same inputs (S/PDIF, Line in and MIC), I bought it because it's smaller, has longer battery life, the ATRAC codec is several generations newer and the overall quality is better. I was also hoping NetMD and its applications (OpenMG, Sonic Stage and Simple Burner) would give me a way to upload my live tracks and simply skip the MD Deck stuff, while speeding up the downloads of my tracks.
But NetMD is a piece of crap. Not only the new ATRAC LP2/LP4 are low quality (which is OK for non-audiophiles who listen to MP3s anyway), but the whole OpenMG/NetMD fiasco is completely useless. Here's a little list of the annoying stuff for your reference:
- You can't upload any tracks you recorded from other inputs. - You can't edit on the MD the stuff you downloaded with Sonic Stage. - You can't download in plain ATRAC (only LP2 or LP4) from Simple Burner. - The DRM locks the tracks you downloaded to your computer. If your computer crashes, your MDs can't be erased or edited. - The protocol is obscure, proprietary and Sony has rejected petitions to solve the above-mentioned issues.
I can understand (but not accept) Sony feels the need for DRM with all the music pirates out there, but I'm not an MP3 user (there are better formats for me), I don't download music from Kazaa or whatever, I don't buy pirate media, and as a legitimate user I feel I'm the only one screwed by this DRM fallacy. The new Hi-MD would have me interested by the specs, but either they change this attitude or iPod and friends will definitely kill MD for good. The USB Mass Storage compatibility is definitely a good step, but it doesn't clarify if the unit will be able to play the music you download this way or if it will only play the MagicGate encoded stuff.
If you only want to play PS2 you may not need anything else but cables and a Firewire card. I have a laptop, a DV camera and I'm a frequent traveler. I also tend to take my Gamecube with me to play some PSO (I take my GBA too, for those wondering).
Sometimes in hotels the TVs don't have the means to connect a game console, so I just connect the GC to the camera, then to the IEEE1394/Firewire/iLink and watch the video on the laptop thanks to the great Video IN -> DV Out feature of this camera (I have used three different models of Sony Handycam with this feature, DCR-PC5, PC101 and PC330), and the quality is very high (720x480@24Mbps, 12/16 bit audio). The output can also be captured and encoded in real time either using Windows (Premiere or Studio) or Linux (dvgrab, Kino).
Unfortunately, there are some minor issues. First there is some small latency on the video conversion that could be annoying in some fast-paced games (fighting games are definitely affected), and I'm sure this is the case with a lot of Video Capture hardware. The second issue is that it doesn't have a tuner.
For me, those issues are not a problem because I mostly play PSO (an online action RPG with very mild latency requirements, but even Mario Kart is very much playable, only Soul Calibur II has given me trouble so far) and I stay in hotels, so there's no need for a TV Tuner either.
I remember watching this very same concept on the anime series Serial Experiments Lain, but there, the microchip was actually a powerful drug sought after in the black market.
I believe this is an accurate view of the future, because patients could automatically follow a doctor's prescription using a microchip like this.
I myself have been yelled at several times by my doctor for not taking my medication on time, and I bet drug addicts would die to have something that takes care for them getting their dose and not having to hide in the bathroom or try to sneak prohibited stuff inside a disco.
OTOH, it also has potential for drug screening, because the microchip could be used to detect the presence of certain drugs in the bloodstream and trigger an alarm.
By the way, you can see a summary of the mentioned Lain episode here.
No, the Panasonic Q is very different. It actually has the two different technologies on the same pickup mechanism, and the firmware requires it to change between GCN mode and DVD mode.
This makes it difficult, though not impossible to have the lens be used to read regular DVDs on the game mode. Some groups have already claimed some success, but haven't seen anything myself.
OTOH, the regular GCN can never read normal DVDs, unless there's a special hack, chip or replacement pickup mechanism.
Note: I own both a regular GCN and the Panasonic Q.
Making warez LAN GCN games is going to be difficult to say the least, since they require a hack that enables all DVD drive calls to be fed through the LAN. This will break many games that rely on fast and constant access of the drive.
It's not impossible to hack all games like this, but it's surely difficult. Games like Animal Crossing and applications like the Action Replay are easy to do because they fit nicely into the GCN's memory and don't ever need additional loading from the disc, but there are drive-intensive games like Eternal Darkness which load models, textures, sound samples and everything to memory while streaming sound from the drive, all at the same time.
The best thing about this is that we can have homebrew development without having piracy easy enough to be widespread. I hate when us console hackers get mistaken as regular warez kiddies.
The copy protection scheme works in several ways. You DO need to have a special DVD burner, since the LENS is what's different on the Gamecube. It can't read regular DVDs. Also, the retail discs use a special barcode imprinted on the disc to prevent the cube to be tricked into reading fake discs.
There's a special debugging Gamecube which can read burned games, it's called the NReader, and you can only get it from Nintendo if you are a) a developer b) an important gaming news house.
The catch is, this NReader can't read retail discs, it can only play those burned specially for beta testing or magazine reviews.
Also, the PSO loader works by tricking PSO into loading special code by resolving the DNS of the Sega PSO server to your own PC. Then you have access to the GCN. Animal Crossing is a port of the same N64 game, so it fits on the GCN's memory without having to read the disc more than once, that's why it's completely playable.
The situation is far from the "retail games pirated!" outcry.
GCN selling at $99 is putting it as a temporary loss. Nintendo is not losing too much money to make it a dangerous thing, in fact, they could make it profitable again in the next manufacturing round.
The GCN was designed from the very beginning as a low-price machine. The ATI and IBM chips are very well integrated and have a lot of room for costs reduction. At the time of launch, they were still made using a.18 micron process and that can be dramatically improved now.
Many regarded the GCN's production halt as a sign of weakness, but this has been a normal move since the first NES. I can certainly see a more integrated GCN motherboard (can the thing be even better? It's already incredibly tiny and simple), maybe even putting everything on one die, just what ultimately happened with the SNES. Slashing costs even further is possible because the TSOP technology used is far chesper now than in 2000 when the GCN's spec was frozen.
For Nintendo, this is something they had planned for so long and it's finally paying off. But Sony and Microsoft have much more to lose if their price point got to that low level.
Sony just launched the SCPH-50000 model a few months ago, so I don't think they can roll out a.09 micron console so easily. Microsoft OTOH has not been able to make the Xbox much cheaper, they were supposed to show an "Xbox-lite" smaller console this year at E3, but the event came and went without any sign of it. Still, Sony and Microsoft may need to follow suit, if only to keep sales strong.
This Christmas season suddenly seems a lot more interesting and leaves me wondering about the next one... Historically these price drops happen only when the next consoles are around the corner, which is definitely not the case here.
It is possible, however Nintendo needs to develop a 2.4GHz transceiver adapter specifically for the GCN.
It would have been a killer idea if the Wavebird RF Receiver could be used because that way there's no need to buy an adapter. But that's impossible because the Wavebird is only one way (GCN receives, never transmits), and it's on the 900MHz band.
Maybe some third-party will see a market for it and release such an adapter, but I'm willing to say the chances that Nintendo would release it officially are next to null.
IIRC, the GBA's port is 115kbps maximum. Of course that's slow by today's standards, but it still is quite useful for multiplayer.
Also, for those hoping this technology would be compatible with Wi-Fi because it's on the 2.4GHz range, forget it, the GBA has a minuscule 256KB System RAM, which is just fine when the cartridge's ROM is within the CPU's addressable space, but not enough for anything useful beyond gaming. Keep also in mind this wireless technology needs to have low power consumption.
I tried this on Linux and got terrible performance at the first try, I got a 23MB/s RAID-0 when each HDD is capable of 26MB/s by itself (everything according to Bonnie++ and hdparm). I didn't know what to blame, the bus, the cables, the Linux SCSI layer, or the whole IEEE1394 support on Linux. Windows was noticeably faster with up to 28MB/s.
Then I made some more research and it turned out the problem was caused by the sbp2 kernel module. This module had some good fine-tuning parameters (sbp2_max_sectors, sbp2_max_outstanding_cmds and spb2_max_cmds_per_lun) up to 2.4.20, but these got ditched in 2.4.21 in the name of a "better way of handling these parameters". I understand the logic behind this move, but the tweakable granularity should have been kept.
Using 2.4.20, I managed to get better performance by tweaking these parameters, then modified sbp2.c on 2.4.22 to reflect the changes. However, I haven't been able to get the 35MB/s this guy got so easily on MacOS X, I'm currently stuck at 29.22MB/s maximum and it's painfully slow to test all combinations of those variable parameters on the sbp2 module.
I just wish there was some document which could explain more about the relationship between these parameters for people not actually involved on the linux1394 project. The comments on sbp2.c are not helpful beyond this point.
By the way, I'm using two Oxford-based bridges to connect two 8MB cache Matrox HDDs, and I'm using Bonnie++ and hdparm for testing. YMMV but the least I can say is Linux RAID support on Firewire still has a long way to go.
Slashdot Mirror
One of the strongly debated issues about emulators is that they are used to play "abandonware" or software that the copyright holder is assumed will never release again.
Well, that used to be fairly reasonable in the 90's when the arcade and console videogame market were in this huge transition towards fully immersive 3D games; nobody thought there would be a future for 2D, and then many old games were automatically assumed to be abandoned forever.
But, the Gameboy Advance changed all that, we are getting re-releases, remakes and rehashes of great, old games because the GBA is not a "3D powerhouse" and it doesn't need to be. I'm actually happy those games are released again, and so are millions of gamers. Just look at how the insane success of the Famicom Mini games in Japan makes the GBA sell even better than the PS2
This is what an emulator really endangers, it makes it more difficult to market an old game, and in fact the argument about "emulators saving good games from the past" is very much reversed as Nintendo can't sell a game to a market that got it for free. And Nintendo of course is trying to (rightfully) protect their IP, it may not be the right way to do it, but what other choices do they have?
OK, I see one alternative. I'm not saying it's good or bad to emulate games, but Nintendo and others should contact the emulators' developers and discuss in good faith about the reality of which games are never going to be released and allow them to be legally distributed and emulated. Of course, this is something very unlikely, but still possible in light of iTunes' success as an alternative distribution model.
Thing is, Nintendo is still a corporation and most of the time it makes decisions that are not popular with gamers, but sometimes you can get good remakes from these decisions. Pac-Man Vs., Super Mario Advance 4 (SMB3) anyone? Nintendo simply doesn't want anyone to compete with their own, official, legal emulators.
I think that for a game to really become abandonware in these new times, it now needs to be abandoned by both the copyright holder AND the consumer, since it is already proven an old game can sell like new. That leaves a lot less room for the emulation scene.
Well, it seems in both the cases stated in the post, they used a kill -28 instead!
What's that esoteric signal for, anyway? SIGMURDER?
What's about people toting backwards compatibility as the greatest thing since sliced bread?
Think about the situation with the N64 and the Gamecube. When The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time was announced for the Gamecube, everybody just went nuts over it, and I don't know many people who didn't actually try to get it, even though it's a really slight update, and tell you what? I'm happy with it.
And I bet all backwards-compatibility whiners will be drooling hopelessly the very second they see a remake of Halo with higher resolution or a new level/vehicle/weapon.
Yes, compatibility has worked very well for the Gameboy and the PS2, but it didn't work as well with the Nomad, the Genesis, the Game Gear or the Turboexpress now did it?
I said it a dozen times and I'll say it again, don't ever think a game publisher will ever refuse the opportunity of selling you the same game twice (or more).
For more information, here's my last post about this same issue.
All three consoles can and will have very powerful technology, but I think the article is too optimistic and only tries to be "buzzword compliant" when talking about games having motion sensing and voice recognition integrated and the Internet being the "battleground".
These technologies are still at their early years, and making a game with those features increases the difficulty of developing it to a completely new level, as if fragment shaders, 3d audio, physics, and AI wouldn't be enough of a headache. Some current games already started to include voice recognition and motion sensing features in some way, but talking about the videogame industry leaning itself to that I don't think so.
Regarding the Internet, it's indeed an incredible tool and makes wonders with some games, but contrary to what some people might think, I don't believe it's still profitable or even really reliable to do globally, Microsoft's approach to Xbox Live seems to be right, but they're still bleeding a lot of money, so I wouldn't expect the online component to be a reliable revenue stream anytime soon.
Think about it, even Sony with 70 million consoles out there is still skeptical an cautious about online gaming and Xbox Live suscribers don't even amount to 10% of MS' global installed base. Then Nintendo is still battling with MS for second place (the usual "we are, you're not" from both sides), even though they put online gaming as a very low priority.
That said, maybe when these consoles start reaching the end of their respective life cycles, these kind of technologies will be more mature and then we can start to think on having a strong shift towards new ways of interaction into the next decade.
If the current generation serves as an example, the remainder of the decade we'll still be getting remakes and rehashes of old games, and innovation will take a backseat to the ever-increasing economic pressure on the market.
Also, writing off Nintendo as the distant third place was also not very smart to do. Big N's policies may not be attractive to us gamers, but do remember this is still a business and Nintendo is the only company able to sustain a healthy profit every generation, and their current strategies with regards to pricing seem to signal a very important price point which only them have been able to attain. As with the iPod Mini, sometimes the price point is the single most important thing for success, and most of the time this market is not driven by cutting-edge technology.
For every idiot spewing BS about violence in videogames, there are three game-savvy people who can shout "ESRB!". This industry self-regulation system actually works quite well when people, media and retailers get involved with it. It's very efficient when the circumstances are the right ones.
The problem is, it's not as widely enforced as the movie rating system, and it's worse in some countries I've been in, where the ESRB rating is completely ignored and the video games can be sold to minors. Countries in Central and South America come to mind, and some countries in Asia. The US has been improving in this area, as some retailers actually ask for ID when selling mature games, but the situation is still far from perfect.
Let's remember the one with the money is usually not the child, and most of the cases where the offending game gets to a child's hands is the parent who bought it. Whenever there's a case like this the parent simply blames the company or the videogame industry altogether, and of course there's always a "Paladin of Justice" of sorts, ready to take the issue to the media or to some control circles.
In Mexico, for example, I saw a case of some people on national TV saying Pokemon is the devil's work and a priest encouraging children to burn their Pokemon toys (the priest, by the way, used to own a video rental store, ironic, huh?). This stupid issue stopped the very second some news arose about none other than the Pope himself endorsing Pokemon and praising it for getting children together to play. Pokemon is a children's E-Rated game, completely safe to play and yet there are people ready to use it for their own agendas. Now think about the real trouble makers like the M-Rated Resident Evil, Grand Theft Auto or the upcoming Doom 3.
Every once in a while I get to see stupid, ill-informed articles about the issue on media in many countries. I think it's time the videogame industry defends itself by making the same amount of noise as those sensationalist idiots do. We have a good rating system, we need people to effectively use it, we need to strongly enforce it.
ATi have said this can likely be overcome, with shader recompilation most likely.
:p)
Technical issues are not their only problem, look into the article I linked in my previous post.
No chance. We're running under an emulator, remember? Anything that tries to step out of the sandbox gets killed immediately.
Oh yes, and we're talking about MS and buffer overflows, remember? What's to stop some guy to find some exploit on the emulation code? there are thousands of capable programmers out there hacking the current Xbox, letting them run their same code on another console should be already something to make MS nervous. It's like saying: "buffer overflows in MS games, No chance!" *cough* Mechassault *cough*
Basically, as people have pointed out, no HD effectively means no backwards compatibility. And no backwards compatibility means everything they spent on establishing the original Xbox is wasted.
Oh yeah and Nintendo wasted all those years on the NES, the SNES and the N64 by making them incompatible with each other. FYI, the SNES was designed with backwards compatibility in mind, it wasn't used. Sega's Genesis and the Game Gear too, had Master System compatibility, and it wasn't a strong selling point either.
I insist, take the Gamecube's example, everybody went nuts over getting a slightly improved version of Ocarina of Time, and you'll forget everything you said when in front of a new Xbox2 Halo/Halo2 remake (I can see it already *Ooooh shiny stuff! Drooolz*
Maybe they'll have to sell a separate $70 "Compatibility expansion kit", with a HD & the emulator
Now THAT's an idea! But, as I said, the Genesis had it, the Game Gear had it, the Gamexpress had it, the Nomad had it, did the feature sell? NO! In contrast, did the Gameboy and PS2 sell because of backwards compatibility? YES!
This is an issue that must be viewed from a business perspective and not only technical, MS will/won't include compatibility if and when it makes business sense, period.
I don't usually feed trolls, much less AC-branded ones, but after several tough coding hours I need some stress relief. Oh yes, I'll bite =)
Bullshit. Xbox TRC says you're not allowed to touch the metal. (Plus MS owns a lot of patents that they swiped from SGI. I wouldn't be suprised if any of them cover shaders.) You have to use XAPI and DirectX for everything. Clever emulation software will intercept these API calls and run them in native code. Easier said than done, but it is possible. Perhaps the only snag to the problem might be the games released with the LTG(?) libs, which is where the linker does funky stuff with inlining the libraries or something. (Can give a fair speed boost!)
Bullshit? Tell that to Nvidia's CEO, for him being the single most important person in that company to talk about this topic, he's not quite sure it's doable, RTFA, not even ATI or MS are really sure about it.
<sarcasm>You should go tell this incredible secret of yours to MS, ATI or even Nvidia, you could get some serious $$$ and stop selling penis enlargement pills!!!1</sarcasm>
Seriously, I conceded MS _can_ solve this and any other issues, but it's more of what's wrong with the Xbox, they can't keep throwing money into an increasingly dead-end architecture. Of course, compatibility has never been out of the question, I merely stated the pros/cons and I don't think it's a wise decision to keep it.
As I stated earlier, why should you care about expensive compatibility, when you could get "improved" versions of your games in the next console, without any old-generation drawbacks or requirements? Admit it, you'll just fall for it =) HDD? Long download waits? wrappers? High-level emulators? Heh, how soon you'd forget all about that...
Oh and I forgot to say this, but some argue: "OMG! Halo/My-favorite-game won't work w/o HDD".
Those guys are either too naive or don't seem to have followed the videogame industry long enough, here's some food for thought:
How would you like a $29.99 2-in-1 disc, containing a "remake" of Halo and Halo2, with "improved textures", 7.1 audio, ONE new level, ONE new vehicle and ONE new weapon? I bet you're already drooling =) Backwards compatibility? What's that?
Don't ever think MS or any other videogame publisher would refuse an opportunity to sell you the same game twice. (Resident Evil, Famicom Mini anyone?)
As some others pointed out, the HDD is very important should MS want to keep compatibility with their current console.
However, backwards compatibility with the Xbox seems increasingly unlikely, because there are several issues and compromises:
- New CPU and incompatible ISA
- New GPU (again, with incompatible ISA, and don't start the stupid "DirectX API" thing here, I'm talking low-level pixel/vertex shader code and Nvidia's proprietary, probably heavily patented/copyrighted extensions)
- Keeping backwards compatibility could mean compatibility with some current Xbox hacks, like buffer overflows in some games and some BIOS stuff that could allow pirates to.dump "0 day" ROMs/ISOs immediately after the thing hits the market.
- The HDD has not proved to be a market advantage, in fact, it negatively affected Xbox sales in some markets (big, ugly, heavy, noisy consoles don't sell in Japan, vertical PS2 anyone?).
Yes, MS could put the resources forward to solve each and every issue, but after not earning a penny in one entire console generation, I think it'd be a wise decision not to include backwards compatibility.
Now, the benefits of throwing it out:
- Smaller, leaner, cheaper to make console
- Efficient, durable, reliable architecture
- Harder to hack
Basically, MS' strategy seems closer to what Nintendo did right with their current Gamecube console and the hard fact it's the only company capable of making a solid profit with minimum losses (in fact only ONE loss situation in their history). This is smarter than simply throwing money to push everyone else out of business.
If this means MS is taking a honest and technically efficient approach on their next console, I'm all for it. The current Xbox has some great games but it's never been interesting enough, neither from a technical standpoint nor as a game console.
Really, someone who has so far only played with idiotic guys that only keep saying "u fag!" when you frag them, will feel very much relieved when playing against the usually quieter girls. I love playing against other people online, but I hate how the communication is abused with the permanent trash talk. The game is supposedly to be fun and people are there to show their playing skills, not their ignorance and horrible verbal/typing 5k1LL5. Gender mixed teams really help the S/N ratio, even if most of the conversations are "A/S/L?". Hey, both guys and girls go online to increase their chances to get laid, we can't do jack about it.
But I digress, I've had many girls as opponents in several kinds of games. In fact, I would recommend playing the awesome Pac-Man Vs. against women, it's ungodly funny. Women-friendly games are not always stupid things like Barbie. There are great games you can play with your SO, if not together, then taking turns is fun too. Examples? Animal Crossing, Mario Party, Mario Kart (online, yes!), Mario Tennis, Bomberman, Tetris Attack, Parappa and Umjammer Lammy, and Wario Ware, even some FPS I have played against women and had a great time.
I think an all-boy team is just as bad as an all-girl team. But, I also see an advantage with sexual-segregation. There are people very insecure about themselves, those are the ones that will never accept a defeat from the other gender. Let these idiots play with themselves in their closed circles, and let the mixed gender teams get rid of them and enjoy the insane fun.
So please, continue to make your gender-specific teams and keep yourselves out of this horrible, unfair mixed gender world where I play =P
8)????
9)Profit!
The thing about having Linux on a Gamecube as opposed as installing it on an Xbox is the great power consumption savings.
The Xbox is 4-5 times more power-hungry than a Gamecube, but you'd never get anywhere near 4x performance. For a personal server (even media player) the Gamecube's CPU, GPU and memory performance are great, good enough for most tasks and it has component video and digital audio output capabilities (though Nintendo has never released the digital audio adapter, so the only way to do it is using the Panasonic Q and the component cables are not very easy to get).
The machine is also very cheap at $100 and small enough to fit anywhere, at least better than the Xbox. It may not have a Hard Drive but there's an SD Card adaptor that could be used for mass storage. I really prefer to have a smaller, low power alternative. You just can't get a 40W machine with such strong capabilities for that price anywhere else.
The only thing missing is a way to automatically boot into Linux, as you still need the PSOLoad trick. It would be wonderful if some company like Codejunkies released a boot disk like the Freeloader. I'd hate to be forced into manually loading PSO every time there's a power outage.
I remember Dave Cutler (the man in charge of WindowsNT, also the main VMS developer for DEC), when asked on why did MS use the CTRL-ALT-DEL keyboard combination to log on an NT machine, he said something like: "this combination is sure to be never used by any application". This was taking advantage of the tradition of using it to reboot the computer as everything in the DOS era was running in real mode, so nobody would use it for an application and the NT architecture enabled for the system to intercept it and use it in a supposedly better way. It was thought to be a neat idea.
Still, I think it was not really clever to teach the end-users such an important keyboard combination. I also remember some users back then thinking it would work the same in 95 as in NT, since both systems' GUI looked so similar.
For this future to be realized, the companies would need really fat pipes to the gamers' consoles, and consoles need a big storage capacity. These costs are never going to be lower than massive pressing of physical media.
Any current videogame worth to be pressed on a DVD is anywhere between 1 and 9GB in size. A best-seller videogame can go from 100,000 to 1,000,000 pressed DVDs, think on the necessary bandwidth and storage space to distribute it. Now compare that each DVD is pressed by the cents.
One might say that for the next several generations of hardware and broadband that will be solved, but then the physical media will evolve too, HDTV, HD-DVD, Dolby, DTS and other new technologies will raise again the size of the average videogame.
Rentals, retailers and other distribution channels can't die that easily. There are games that are more suitable for online distribution and monthly suscriptions, but trying to do this for every videogame will result in killing the industry's diversity. That would leave room only for mini-games or old ports (cheap to make and quick to download) or overly-hyped super productions (the only kind of games that will make money on massive distribution), and will kill innovation even further.
Even so, I think all companies (Microsoft at the top, with their EULAs and whatnot) want this future where nothing you pay ever becomes your property, and they will try very hard, but then I'm sure their business models will begin to show their flaws and the physical media will look attractive again. The bad thing is the consumer and the industry as a whole will suffer in the process.
I'm a long time user and I had mixed experiences with MD.
My oldest unit, a japanese Sharp MD, had a very reliable and high quality performance, beating anything available at the time (in terms of price/performance/convenience, remember 8 years ago there weren't many CD burners and DAT/ADAT were too expensive and not very portable). It has S/PDIF, Line In and MIC inputs. The ATRAC codec had a very good psychoacoustic model and better yet, it had forward and backward compatibility with several revisions of itself. My parents are musicians and I'm an engineer, so I know what I'm talking about. I still have this unit, it is a really good piece of hardware. Later I had access to an MD Deck that had S/PDIF output so I could record and edit some live tracks on my computer.
My newest MD, a Sony NetMD unit has also the same inputs (S/PDIF, Line in and MIC), I bought it because it's smaller, has longer battery life, the ATRAC codec is several generations newer and the overall quality is better. I was also hoping NetMD and its applications (OpenMG, Sonic Stage and Simple Burner) would give me a way to upload my live tracks and simply skip the MD Deck stuff, while speeding up the downloads of my tracks.
But NetMD is a piece of crap. Not only the new ATRAC LP2/LP4 are low quality (which is OK for non-audiophiles who listen to MP3s anyway), but the whole OpenMG/NetMD fiasco is completely useless. Here's a little list of the annoying stuff for your reference:
- You can't upload any tracks you recorded from other inputs.
- You can't edit on the MD the stuff you downloaded with Sonic Stage.
- You can't download in plain ATRAC (only LP2 or LP4) from Simple Burner.
- The DRM locks the tracks you downloaded to your computer. If your computer crashes, your MDs can't be erased or edited.
- The protocol is obscure, proprietary and Sony has rejected petitions to solve the above-mentioned issues.
I can understand (but not accept) Sony feels the need for DRM with all the music pirates out there, but I'm not an MP3 user (there are better formats for me), I don't download music from Kazaa or whatever, I don't buy pirate media, and as a legitimate user I feel I'm the only one screwed by this DRM fallacy. The new Hi-MD would have me interested by the specs, but either they change this attitude or iPod and friends will definitely kill MD for good. The USB Mass Storage compatibility is definitely a good step, but it doesn't clarify if the unit will be able to play the music you download this way or if it will only play the MagicGate encoded stuff.
If you only want to play PS2 you may not need anything else but cables and a Firewire card. I have a laptop, a DV camera and I'm a frequent traveler. I also tend to take my Gamecube with me to play some PSO (I take my GBA too, for those wondering).
Sometimes in hotels the TVs don't have the means to connect a game console, so I just connect the GC to the camera, then to the IEEE1394/Firewire/iLink and watch the video on the laptop thanks to the great Video IN -> DV Out feature of this camera (I have used three different models of Sony Handycam with this feature, DCR-PC5, PC101 and PC330), and the quality is very high (720x480@24Mbps, 12/16 bit audio). The output can also be captured and encoded in real time either using Windows (Premiere or Studio) or Linux (dvgrab, Kino).
Unfortunately, there are some minor issues. First there is some small latency on the video conversion that could be annoying in some fast-paced games (fighting games are definitely affected), and I'm sure this is the case with a lot of Video Capture hardware. The second issue is that it doesn't have a tuner.
For me, those issues are not a problem because I mostly play PSO (an online action RPG with very mild latency requirements, but even Mario Kart is very much playable, only Soul Calibur II has given me trouble so far) and I stay in hotels, so there's no need for a TV Tuner either.
Of course, YMMV =)
I remember watching this very same concept on the anime series Serial Experiments Lain, but there, the microchip was actually a powerful drug sought after in the black market.
I believe this is an accurate view of the future, because patients could automatically follow a doctor's prescription using a microchip like this.
I myself have been yelled at several times by my doctor for not taking my medication on time, and I bet drug addicts would die to have something that takes care for them getting their dose and not having to hide in the bathroom or try to sneak prohibited stuff inside a disco.
OTOH, it also has potential for drug screening, because the microchip could be used to detect the presence of certain drugs in the bloodstream and trigger an alarm.
By the way, you can see a summary of the mentioned Lain episode here.
No, the Panasonic Q is very different. It actually has the two different technologies on the same pickup mechanism, and the firmware requires it to change between GCN mode and DVD mode.
This makes it difficult, though not impossible to have the lens be used to read regular DVDs on the game mode. Some groups have already claimed some success, but haven't seen anything myself.
OTOH, the regular GCN can never read normal DVDs, unless there's a special hack, chip or replacement pickup mechanism.
Note: I own both a regular GCN and the Panasonic Q.
Making warez LAN GCN games is going to be difficult to say the least, since they require a hack that enables all DVD drive calls to be fed through the LAN. This will break many games that rely on fast and constant access of the drive.
It's not impossible to hack all games like this, but it's surely difficult. Games like Animal Crossing and applications like the Action Replay are easy to do because they fit nicely into the GCN's memory and don't ever need additional loading from the disc, but there are drive-intensive games like Eternal Darkness which load models, textures, sound samples and everything to memory while streaming sound from the drive, all at the same time.
The best thing about this is that we can have homebrew development without having piracy easy enough to be widespread. I hate when us console hackers get mistaken as regular warez kiddies.
The copy protection scheme works in several ways. You DO need to have a special DVD burner, since the LENS is what's different on the Gamecube. It can't read regular DVDs. Also, the retail discs use a special barcode imprinted on the disc to prevent the cube to be tricked into reading fake discs.
There's a special debugging Gamecube which can read burned games, it's called the NReader, and you can only get it from Nintendo if you are a) a developer b) an important gaming news house.
The catch is, this NReader can't read retail discs, it can only play those burned specially for beta testing or magazine reviews.
Also, the PSO loader works by tricking PSO into loading special code by resolving the DNS of the Sega PSO server to your own PC. Then you have access to the GCN. Animal Crossing is a port of the same N64 game, so it fits on the GCN's memory without having to read the disc more than once, that's why it's completely playable.
The situation is far from the "retail games pirated!" outcry.
GCN selling at $99 is putting it as a temporary loss. Nintendo is not losing too much money to make it a dangerous thing, in fact, they could make it profitable again in the next manufacturing round.
.18 micron process and that can be dramatically improved now.
.09 micron console so easily. Microsoft OTOH has not been able to make the Xbox much cheaper, they were supposed to show an "Xbox-lite" smaller console this year at E3, but the event came and went without any sign of it. Still, Sony and Microsoft may need to follow suit, if only to keep sales strong.
The GCN was designed from the very beginning as a low-price machine. The ATI and IBM chips are very well integrated and have a lot of room for costs reduction. At the time of launch, they were still made using a
Many regarded the GCN's production halt as a sign of weakness, but this has been a normal move since the first NES. I can certainly see a more integrated GCN motherboard (can the thing be even better? It's already incredibly tiny and simple), maybe even putting everything on one die, just what ultimately happened with the SNES. Slashing costs even further is possible because the TSOP technology used is far chesper now than in 2000 when the GCN's spec was frozen.
For Nintendo, this is something they had planned for so long and it's finally paying off. But Sony and Microsoft have much more to lose if their price point got to that low level.
Sony just launched the SCPH-50000 model a few months ago, so I don't think they can roll out a
This Christmas season suddenly seems a lot more interesting and leaves me wondering about the next one... Historically these price drops happen only when the next consoles are around the corner, which is definitely not the case here.
Instead of buying batteries in bulk, just buy an SP...
It is possible, however Nintendo needs to develop a 2.4GHz transceiver adapter specifically for the GCN.
It would have been a killer idea if the Wavebird RF Receiver could be used because that way there's no need to buy an adapter. But that's impossible because the Wavebird is only one way (GCN receives, never transmits), and it's on the 900MHz band.
Maybe some third-party will see a market for it and release such an adapter, but I'm willing to say the chances that Nintendo would release it officially are next to null.
IIRC, the GBA's port is 115kbps maximum. Of course that's slow by today's standards, but it still is quite useful for multiplayer.
Also, for those hoping this technology would be compatible with Wi-Fi because it's on the 2.4GHz range, forget it, the GBA has a minuscule 256KB System RAM, which is just fine when the cartridge's ROM is within the CPU's addressable space, but not enough for anything useful beyond gaming. Keep also in mind this wireless technology needs to have low power consumption.
I tried this on Linux and got terrible performance at the first try, I got a 23MB/s RAID-0 when each HDD is capable of 26MB/s by itself (everything according to Bonnie++ and hdparm). I didn't know what to blame, the bus, the cables, the Linux SCSI layer, or the whole IEEE1394 support on Linux. Windows was noticeably faster with up to 28MB/s.
Then I made some more research and it turned out the problem was caused by the sbp2 kernel module. This module had some good fine-tuning parameters (sbp2_max_sectors, sbp2_max_outstanding_cmds and spb2_max_cmds_per_lun) up to 2.4.20, but these got ditched in 2.4.21 in the name of a "better way of handling these parameters". I understand the logic behind this move, but the tweakable granularity should have been kept.
Using 2.4.20, I managed to get better performance by tweaking these parameters, then modified sbp2.c on 2.4.22 to reflect the changes. However, I haven't been able to get the 35MB/s this guy got so easily on MacOS X, I'm currently stuck at 29.22MB/s maximum and it's painfully slow to test all combinations of those variable parameters on the sbp2 module.
I just wish there was some document which could explain more about the relationship between these parameters for people not actually involved on the linux1394 project. The comments on sbp2.c are not helpful beyond this point.
By the way, I'm using two Oxford-based bridges to connect two 8MB cache Matrox HDDs, and I'm using Bonnie++ and hdparm for testing. YMMV but the least I can say is Linux RAID support on Firewire still has a long way to go.