Just like everyone else. You overclockers are as bad as pirates who crack time-locked "trial" versions of software to get the full version for free. Ya want the full version? THEN PAY FOR IT K1DD13Z.
Not at all the same thing. If I buy a computer, I can do any damn-fool thing I want to with it: overclock it, not overclock it, convert it into a water fountain, whatever. What's the problem with that?
it's a good question, why is Scott's "word" considered official? Surely Phillip K. Dick is the only one who could give the OFFICIAL word since he wrote the thing. I mean come on, Scott could have said that Deckard was a fish with limbs grafted on. That would be just as official. Poor.
PKD wrote the book the film was based on, not the screenplay. Dick has authority over the book, but not the movie. A director is responsible for the content of his film, even moreso than the writer many times, since directors often bar the writers from the set. The fact is, the movie is very different from the book and has to be judged seperately.
Gotta love that Linux reliability. Sure is ready for the enterprise!
What does Linux have to do with anything? The article says the data loss was due to hard drives failing. What, does NT have some sort of miracle "hard drive lifespan lengthening" program?
But in the book it is also said that the test used is flawed, and will give a false negitive with the newer, more advanced, replicants.
Phillip K Dick flat out said in interviews that Deckard is not a replicant in the book... In fact, he was upset that the movie made the character seem like one, even if it was ambigous in the theatrical release.
Of course, the movie is very different from the book, and the decided to go a different way. I don't have a problem with that... Most of my favorite movies-from-books are quite different than the source material... this one, LA Confidential, Psycho to name a few.
Perhaps this is true, I dunno cuz I've not seen the DVD. What I can say is these cases of people actually observing the "compression artifacts" are cases of super-human perception, a result of prolonged exposure to Quake at 60+fps.
I don't know... there are plenty of DVDs which have artifacts... It's damn annoying but still better than fuzzy VHS tapes or laserdiscs which have to flip in the middle of a movie. I can say that I have definitely noticed artifacts in Bladerunner, and in most movies that have lots of big, black areas... The shadows just aren't right. It doesn't really hamper the viewing to much, though.
Why is it 'economically unsound'? Because there is no real secondary market? Do you mind telling me what the secondary market of resteraunts is?
Buying groceries and cooking the food yourself. Not an actual secondary market, but an alternative to the main one.
You mention fair competition in your post. This is exactly what the record companies _don't_ want. They control every avenue of distribution... Even a college, "noncommercial" radio station like the one I work at is heavily influenced by the desires and demands of the big companies. I think what the poster was trying to get at is that companies want to set us up in a system where there are no secondary markets, so they control all levels of distribution. They have succeeded at the national level in the last few years, until Napster. They have tried to do as well on the local level by trying to stop record stores from selling used cds. This was less successful. But it inspired several companies to research the concept of "licensing music", much like you license software... where it would be illegal for you to sell it so someone else, if if you didn't want it anymore.
I'm not posting this to excuse theft or copyright infringement. I buy lots of music. I'm a DJ. Today I made an order for 74 different records and CDs. I admit to sometimes downloading songs off of napster... But since I do it for the purpose of playing those songs on my radio show, I doubt the bands would mind too much. Personally, I try and buy the music I like directly from the artists, avoiding the companies entirely. (I understand, however, that this option is not available to most,depending on the musical styles you like.) This way, I don't get ripped off (and $17 cds are a rip-off) and the artist actually gets paid more by me buying their cd from them for $10 or $8 or even $6, than if I bought it at Wherehouse/Ballbuster Music.
This is not really true. The collages can just scan the packet to identify Gnutella packets. Gnutella needs to use an encrypted protocol (like SSL or SSH) to prevent the collage routers from blocking packets.
But wouldn't scanning every packet that left their network slow down their system more than just allowing Gnutella traffic? I doubt they'd do this.
I don't know about you, but the last I checked, I haven't seen any free music with an open license for copying out of all the countless thousands of titles available, so their product was designed from the beginning specifically to transport pirated music.
Huh. Imagine that. Not one? What about live concert recordings, obscure techno songs, independent label music, free song giveaways? Hell, go to epitonic.com or riffage.com and you will find hundreds of songs that are available for free, and freely distributable. ANd these are not unsigned artists like on mp3.com, they are mostly signed bands on smaller labels.
There are plenty of bands that are willing to give there music away for free (or at least a few songs) in the hopes of finding fans. Most people seem to forget that.
And what their doing isn't anything new- Hotline, FTP servers, IRC and even AOL have facilitated the sharing of copywritten material for years. The only difference is that Napster is much better at it, and easier to use. (I know someone's going to point out that ftp and aol have other uses, too, and it's true. But Hotline is basically the same as Napster or Gnutella, just not as easy to use).
The problem I have with Napster (and the one area that I agree with Lars) is this: Napster is using their popularity to try and go public and make lots of money, and their popularity is because of the copywritten songs on their network. That sucks. I don't really have problems with Gnutella, because no one is making any money off of it. I think Gnutella?Napster programs are much more like new radio than anything else, for me at least. The kind of music that I listen to, the artists don't generally mind if their songs are on the net because it's all DIY anyway, with no record labels involved. They make all their money from touring and t-shirts, and kids listening to MP3s brings more kids to the shows. I can see how people in one-hit-wonder boy bands might have a problem with Napster, though...
"And that's the fun of it, innit? Here's Napster saying "please don't give away copies of our intellectual property, because if it's freely available we won't have any way of generating revenue""
Actually I think they said "please don't sell our intellectual property". And, in this case, the way the laws work, they had to sue, or at least come to an agreement. Trademark law says you have to defend your trademark or you lose it, while copyright law is immutable. So, if Napster turned a blind eye to people using their logo, then that's it. No matter how many people bootleg an offspring song, it still belongs to them.
I'm not getting into whether or not I like Napster, just remarking on the way the law works (as I, a non-lawyer understand it).
Though I'm sure the courts would disagree.. selling napster t-shirts is not really dilution. They are note not in any way diluting napster's right to call it's product napster, or to refer to it as napster, or have it know by napster.
No dice, it's still dilution in the eyes of the law. If you doubt it, try starting up a website that sells Microsoft t-shirts and see if you win the lawsuit with MS.
What happens when you slam a corporate or university computer system the attacker used to lauch his attack? No computer criminal worth his salt would use his own machines to do this.
If reactive software gets popular, I expect a whole new twist to the DoS attacks: get access to the company you want to hurt's computers and launch a mild attack from there (or spoof it to make it look like they are attacking). Direct the attack at a company who is know to have massive counter measures. Wait for their server to crush the one you "attacked" from. Laugh evilly.
I can imagine a scenario where net traffic grinds to a halt over this, with smart computer criminals triggering everyone's defenses at once, much like the cold war fears of WW3 being kicked off by computers. Hopefully it won't get to the point where these things are "pre-aimed" at enemies, but you never know.
Half-Life was built on the Q1 engine. And it ended up being better than the Q2 engine...
That's funny, from what I understand, part of the reason why Half-Life took so long to come out was that they started the game with Quake I source code, then Quake II came out, then they had to redo everything they had done to make it work with the Quake II engine (so it wouldn't look outdated).
And of course it looks better. Theoretically, any new FPS should look better than it's predecessors, if the development team is on the right track. This is why UT and Q3 look better than half-life. Or Doom. This is also why many FP games have been cancelled... They lagged behind to the point where their graphics couldn't compete in the marketplace. (It's sad that graphics sell games, but they obviously do.) It is probably also why FP games are notoriously late... The developers have to play catch up with whatever the newest tech is.
Quake 2 sure looked like Doom on a Quake engine. We had space marines, similar guns, kind of similar bad guys. The only difference was that instead of going to hell and back, they went to another planet that was pointing a really BFG at earth. Yawn. I think I'll stick to Half Life or Rogue Spear.
There would be no Half-Life without Quake II. It's built on the Q2 engine.
I'm sure people like him and Jon Katz think that it's "cool," in that trite I-wanna-be-a-rebel way, when a subordinate makes ultimata to the people running the show, but it's really not amusing in the least. Oh well, maybe his pals in the unemployment line will enjoy the tales of his tough-guy antics.
Well, as I understand it, John Carmack was a founder of id with (I believe) Adrian Carmack, John Romero and Kevin Cloud. John Carmack owns a large chunk of the company, as well as being the main developer of the engines which make id's games run. I believe that would imply that he, as well as Kevin and Adrian, "runs the show" and is not just a "subordinate". So if John Carmack wants to make a demand, such as "we will make Doom 3 or I will leave the company", then it seems like that's within his rights. It also seems like it was successful, seeing that they are making Doom 3. And I doubt he (or Paul Steed, for that matter) will be on any unemployment lines soon. Forgoing the fact that he is a multimillionaire, he is also one of the world's most famous and accomplished programmers. (And I'm sure Steed will have a high-paying job within days, or start his own company.)
The Patent Office does review Patent Submissions, at least the technologically simpler ones. My father designed an elevated platform that could be used to help simplify roofing work, yet was inexpensive to build, and was rejected because someone else had already patented something similar. I think that they probably just rubber stamp more advanced submissions, since they just don't have the time to figure it out.
What he misses (among other things) is that those of us who are not presidents of multimational companies don't have the power to enforce our privacy, as does he. Thus remaining anonymous is the only means we have to prevent companies from abusing their knowledge of us.
A price has not been set on Bleem! for Dreamcast & it will come on one disc (not four).
It would appear you don't know what you're talking about. The president of Bleem announced weeks ago they would release bleem on a series of discs, four to begin with, each retailing for about $20 and hold around 100 games each. This has been reported on ign.com, dailyradar and i believe nextgen magazine.
Using Bleem, Dreamcast owners will have access to 400 or so Playstation games, along with a projected 200 Dreamcast games, before Playstation 2 is even released in the US.
This could make things interesting!
I am Dreamcast owner, and I do not own a PSX. But I don't think I'll be going the Bleem route... to be able to play all 400 of the PSX games they are advertising, you have to pay $80 or so for the 4 Bleem discs... Personally, I'd rather just buy a PSX. I'm sure they'll drop in price again when the PS2 comes out... And if not, I'd still pay the extra $20 to have the actual hardware... And guaranteed compatibilty for any game. The only way I'd go Bleem is if there was just one game that I wanted, or if they organize the discs by genre. If I could buy one disc and get compatibility with all the RPGs, I'd go for that. But I imagine they'll mix them up...
People are JUST starting to get the original PSX's potential, and it looks as good as any Dreamcast game! All my DC owner friends are still pulling their PSX's out to play the newer games because they look just as good, just lower resolution!
Yes, I agree. However, most people fail to notice that the DC is also equal in graphics ability to the Atari. Pole Position looks just as good as Crazy Taxi, though it's resolution is somewhat less.
Several years ago, two of my friends both bought computers from Comtrade and _both_ of them, with different configurations and processors, ended up with overmarked chips.
Someone told me Comtrade is either out of business or going out, I don't know if that's true or not, but I can believe it.
I'm sure Sony could do it... But they're more worried about making the PS2 sell as well as the PSX. If the PS2 has a hard drive, I expect to see various emulators appear on the system eventually. It would be very cool to be able to play all your emu games on a console, not your PC!
ROFL! I'm sure having Saturn emulation would really increase their user base;)
Yeah, I know. I bought my Saturn for $10- with 3 games. Not a bad machine, but they definitely fumbled the ball on it.
The Dreamcast also has no cartridge port. If Sony were to do a Master System emulator, what's to stop it downloading files from the same place Sega do?
Well, for one thing- the law. Sega owns those games, or has the rights to them. They are the only outlet to legally download them. They are using a legal scheme like Divx or PPV. If Sony supplied consumers with a way to circumvent this distribution scheme, they could get sued. Trust me, if Sony developed a way to watch pay-per-view movies without using your cable box, they would get sued. Especially if the PS2, with it's large memory cards or rumored HD, allowed for the games to be saved due to some sort of bug. Sony wouldn't open themselves to that sort of lawsuit. Not mention I doubt Sony cares about this development.
This, however, only applies if they use the Japanese distribution model. Most likely, these files are going to be distributed in America exclusively over Sega.com's internet service. (Remeber Sega Channel?) Thus, there would be no way for PS2 users to access them unless they were Sega.com subscribers. I doubt Sony would go to the trouble of developing something only 1% (or less) of their customers would be able to use.
Also, why does Sony care? They don't care. They basically own the market. Sega is adding a feature to their console, and trying to squeeze a few bucks out of their legacy. PS2 has no need to do this, they have the PSX library to squeeze for spare change.
so what i don't get is why the hell sega would want a psx emulator on their platform. if people buy a dc and bleem, they can buy psx games and play them on their dc. the money for the psx games lines sony's pockets, not sega's. sega winds up losing money on the dc, and never recouping it on the software sales because people are buying psx games.
How many people, once they own a next gen system, will buy last gen's games? very few.
If it is true, thsi is a ploy to try and get some of the PSX owners to move up to Sega instead of PS2. One of the big selling points of PS2 is that you can still play your old games. If You can play the old games on the DC as well, for half the price, the PS2 suddenly looks less appealing. This, of course, only applies to mass market consumers, not hardcore gamers.
Once those mass market gamers get a DC, they will buy DC games, because those games are new, and are prettier than the PSX games they already have. It's all about gaining market share.
Seems to me that Sega are desperately trying to catch up with all the cool features of PS2.
Not really. If they were, they'd be making the DC backwards compatible with the Saturn. I think this is more like they're trying to milk the Japanese market, which is very different from our own. The Japanese consumer will pay those prices to play the games... If this makes it to the USA, expect it to be a feature of the Sega.com internet provider... Either free with subscription or an extra charge monthly to access all games. If they try to bring this system over without price drops or a major change, it will fail.
I don't think they ever will. If Sega can put Bleem onto Dreamcast, Sony can certainly put some Master System emulator onto PS2!
There is no way they could make the PS2 a Master System emulator. I think it'd be really hard to fit the cartidges in the cd-tray. They could emulate the Master System, sure, but Sega owns the game library. And thats what this is about. They have a huge library of games, doing nothing for them, so they are trying to put it to use, make a little spare change and add one more attractive feature to their online aspect and their console as a whole.
Slashdot Mirror
Just like everyone else. You overclockers are as bad as pirates who crack time-locked "trial" versions of software to get the full version for free. Ya want the full version? THEN PAY FOR IT K1DD13Z.
Not at all the same thing. If I buy a computer, I can do any damn-fool thing I want to with it: overclock it, not overclock it, convert it into a water fountain, whatever. What's the problem with that?
Josh Sisk
it's a good question, why is Scott's "word" considered official? Surely Phillip K. Dick is the only one who could give the OFFICIAL word since he wrote the thing. I mean come on, Scott could have said that Deckard was a fish with limbs grafted on. That would be just as official. Poor.
PKD wrote the book the film was based on, not the screenplay. Dick has authority over the book, but not the movie. A director is responsible for the content of his film, even moreso than the writer many times, since directors often bar the writers from the set. The fact is, the movie is very different from the book and has to be judged seperately.
Josh Sisk
Gotta love that Linux reliability. Sure is ready for the enterprise!
What does Linux have to do with anything? The article says the data loss was due to hard drives failing. What, does NT have some sort of miracle "hard drive lifespan lengthening" program?
Josh Sisk
But in the book it is also said that the test used is flawed, and will give a false negitive with the newer, more advanced, replicants.
Phillip K Dick flat out said in interviews that Deckard is not a replicant in the book... In fact, he was upset that the movie made the character seem like one, even if it was ambigous in the theatrical release.
Of course, the movie is very different from the book, and the decided to go a different way. I don't have a problem with that... Most of my favorite movies-from-books are quite different than the source material... this one, LA Confidential, Psycho to name a few.
Josh Sisk
Nominations for other movies with horrendous endings:
Titan A.E;
I'm sorry, this movie was horrible from start to finish.
Josh Sisk
Perhaps this is true, I dunno cuz I've not seen the DVD. What I can say is these cases of people actually observing the "compression artifacts" are cases of super-human perception, a result of prolonged exposure to Quake at 60+fps.
I don't know... there are plenty of DVDs which have artifacts... It's damn annoying but still better than fuzzy VHS tapes or laserdiscs which have to flip in the middle of a movie. I can say that I have definitely noticed artifacts in Bladerunner, and in most movies that have lots of big, black areas... The shadows just aren't right. It doesn't really hamper the viewing to much, though.
Josh Sisk
Why is it 'economically unsound'? Because there is no real secondary market? Do you mind telling me what the secondary market of resteraunts is?
Buying groceries and cooking the food yourself. Not an actual secondary market, but an alternative to the main one.
You mention fair competition in your post. This is exactly what the record companies _don't_ want. They control every avenue of distribution... Even a college, "noncommercial" radio station like the one I work at is heavily influenced by the desires and demands of the big companies. I think what the poster was trying to get at is that companies want to set us up in a system where there are no secondary markets, so they control all levels of distribution. They have succeeded at the national level in the last few years, until Napster. They have tried to do as well on the local level by trying to stop record stores from selling used cds. This was less successful. But it inspired several companies to research the concept of "licensing music", much like you license software... where it would be illegal for you to sell it so someone else, if if you didn't want it anymore.
I'm not posting this to excuse theft or copyright infringement. I buy lots of music. I'm a DJ. Today I made an order for 74 different records and CDs. I admit to sometimes downloading songs off of napster... But since I do it for the purpose of playing those songs on my radio show, I doubt the bands would mind too much. Personally, I try and buy the music I like directly from the artists, avoiding the companies entirely. (I understand, however, that this option is not available to most,depending on the musical styles you like.) This way, I don't get ripped off (and $17 cds are a rip-off) and the artist actually gets paid more by me buying their cd from them for $10 or $8 or even $6, than if I bought it at Wherehouse/Ballbuster Music.
Josh Sisk
This is not really true. The collages can just scan the packet to identify Gnutella packets. Gnutella needs to use an encrypted protocol (like SSL or SSH) to prevent the collage routers from blocking packets.
But wouldn't scanning every packet that left their network slow down their system more than just allowing Gnutella traffic? I doubt they'd do this.
Josh Sisk
I don't know about you, but the last I checked, I haven't seen any free music with an open license for copying out of all the countless thousands of titles available, so their product was designed from the beginning specifically to transport pirated music.
Huh. Imagine that. Not one? What about live concert recordings, obscure techno songs, independent label music, free song giveaways? Hell, go to epitonic.com or riffage.com and you will find hundreds of songs that are available for free, and freely distributable. ANd these are not unsigned artists like on mp3.com, they are mostly signed bands on smaller labels.
There are plenty of bands that are willing to give there music away for free (or at least a few songs) in the hopes of finding fans. Most people seem to forget that.
And what their doing isn't anything new- Hotline, FTP servers, IRC and even AOL have facilitated the sharing of copywritten material for years. The only difference is that Napster is much better at it, and easier to use. (I know someone's going to point out that ftp and aol have other uses, too, and it's true. But Hotline is basically the same as Napster or Gnutella, just not as easy to use).
The problem I have with Napster (and the one area that I agree with Lars) is this: Napster is using their popularity to try and go public and make lots of money, and their popularity is because of the copywritten songs on their network. That sucks. I don't really have problems with Gnutella, because no one is making any money off of it. I think Gnutella?Napster programs are much more like new radio than anything else, for me at least. The kind of music that I listen to, the artists don't generally mind if their songs are on the net because it's all DIY anyway, with no record labels involved. They make all their money from touring and t-shirts, and kids listening to MP3s brings more kids to the shows. I can see how people in one-hit-wonder boy bands might have a problem with Napster, though...
Josh Sisk
"And that's the fun of it, innit? Here's Napster saying "please don't give away copies of our intellectual property, because if it's freely available we won't have any way of generating revenue""
Actually I think they said "please don't sell our intellectual property". And, in this case, the way the laws work, they had to sue, or at least come to an agreement. Trademark law says you have to defend your trademark or you lose it, while copyright law is immutable. So, if Napster turned a blind eye to people using their logo, then that's it. No matter how many people bootleg an offspring song, it still belongs to them.
I'm not getting into whether or not I like Napster, just remarking on the way the law works (as I, a non-lawyer understand it).
Josh Sisk
Though I'm sure the courts would disagree.. selling napster t-shirts is not really dilution. They are note not in any way diluting napster's right to call it's product napster, or to refer to it as napster, or have it know by napster.
No dice, it's still dilution in the eyes of the law. If you doubt it, try starting up a website that sells Microsoft t-shirts and see if you win the lawsuit with MS.
Josh Sisk
What happens when you slam a corporate or university computer system the attacker used to lauch his attack? No computer criminal worth his salt would use his own machines to do this.
If reactive software gets popular, I expect a whole new twist to the DoS attacks: get access to the company you want to hurt's computers and launch a mild attack from there (or spoof it to make it look like they are attacking). Direct the attack at a company who is know to have massive counter measures. Wait for their server to crush the one you "attacked" from. Laugh evilly.
I can imagine a scenario where net traffic grinds to a halt over this, with smart computer criminals triggering everyone's defenses at once, much like the cold war fears of WW3 being kicked off by computers. Hopefully it won't get to the point where these things are "pre-aimed" at enemies, but you never know.
josh sisk
Half-Life was built on the Q1 engine. And it ended up being better than the Q2 engine...
That's funny, from what I understand, part of the reason why Half-Life took so long to come out was that they started the game with Quake I source code, then Quake II came out, then they had to redo everything they had done to make it work with the Quake II engine (so it wouldn't look outdated).
And of course it looks better. Theoretically, any new FPS should look better than it's predecessors, if the development team is on the right track. This is why UT and Q3 look better than half-life. Or Doom. This is also why many FP games have been cancelled... They lagged behind to the point where their graphics couldn't compete in the marketplace. (It's sad that graphics sell games, but they obviously do.) It is probably also why FP games are notoriously late... The developers have to play catch up with whatever the newest tech is.
Josh Sisk
Quake 2 sure looked like Doom on a Quake engine. We had space marines, similar guns, kind of similar bad guys. The only difference was that instead of going to hell and back, they went to another planet that was pointing a really BFG at earth. Yawn. I think I'll stick to Half Life or Rogue Spear.
There would be no Half-Life without Quake II. It's built on the Q2 engine.
I'm sure people like him and Jon Katz think that it's "cool," in that trite I-wanna-be-a-rebel way, when a subordinate makes ultimata to the people running the show, but it's really not amusing in the least. Oh well, maybe his pals in the unemployment line will enjoy the tales of his tough-guy antics.
Well, as I understand it, John Carmack was a founder of id with (I believe) Adrian Carmack, John Romero and Kevin Cloud. John Carmack owns a large chunk of the company, as well as being the main developer of the engines which make id's games run. I believe that would imply that he, as well as Kevin and Adrian, "runs the show" and is not just a "subordinate". So if John Carmack wants to make a demand, such as "we will make Doom 3 or I will leave the company", then it seems like that's within his rights. It also seems like it was successful, seeing that they are making Doom 3. And I doubt he (or Paul Steed, for that matter) will be on any unemployment lines soon. Forgoing the fact that he is a multimillionaire, he is also one of the world's most famous and accomplished programmers. (And I'm sure Steed will have a high-paying job within days, or start his own company.)
Josh Sisk
The Patent Office does review Patent Submissions, at least the technologically simpler ones. My father designed an elevated platform that could be used to help simplify roofing work, yet was inexpensive to build, and was rejected because someone else had already patented something similar. I think that they probably just rubber stamp more advanced submissions, since they just don't have the time to figure it out.
What he misses (among other things) is that those of us who are not presidents of multimational companies don't have the power to enforce our privacy, as does he. Thus remaining anonymous is the only means we have to prevent companies from abusing their knowledge of us.
josh sisk
Um, where did you get that piece of information.
It would appear you are making things up.
A price has not been set on Bleem! for Dreamcast & it will come on one disc (not four).
It would appear you don't know what you're talking about. The president of Bleem announced weeks ago they would release bleem on a series of discs, four to begin with, each retailing for about $20 and hold around 100 games each. This has been reported on ign.com, dailyradar and i believe nextgen magazine.
Using Bleem, Dreamcast owners will have access to 400 or so Playstation games, along with a projected 200 Dreamcast games, before Playstation 2 is even released in the US.
This could make things interesting!
I am Dreamcast owner, and I do not own a PSX. But I don't think I'll be going the Bleem route... to be able to play all 400 of the PSX games they are advertising, you have to pay $80 or so for the 4 Bleem discs... Personally, I'd rather just buy a PSX. I'm sure they'll drop in price again when the PS2 comes out... And if not, I'd still pay the extra $20 to have the actual hardware... And guaranteed compatibilty for any game. The only way I'd go Bleem is if there was just one game that I wanted, or if they organize the discs by genre. If I could buy one disc and get compatibility with all the RPGs, I'd go for that. But I imagine they'll mix them up...
Josh Sisk
People are JUST starting to get the original PSX's potential, and it looks as good as any Dreamcast game! All my DC owner friends are still pulling their PSX's out to play the newer games because they look just as good, just lower resolution!
Yes, I agree. However, most people fail to notice that the DC is also equal in graphics ability to the Atari. Pole Position looks just as good as Crazy Taxi, though it's resolution is somewhat less.
Josh Sisk
Several years ago, two of my friends both bought computers from Comtrade and _both_ of them, with different configurations and processors, ended up with overmarked chips.
Someone told me Comtrade is either out of business or going out, I don't know if that's true or not, but I can believe it.
Josh Sisk
I'm sure Sony could do it... But they're more worried about making the PS2 sell as well as the PSX. If the PS2 has a hard drive, I expect to see various emulators appear on the system eventually. It would be very cool to be able to play all your emu games on a console, not your PC!
ROFL! I'm sure having Saturn emulation would really increase their user base ;)
Yeah, I know. I bought my Saturn for $10- with 3 games. Not a bad machine, but they definitely fumbled the ball on it.
The Dreamcast also has no cartridge port. If Sony were to do a Master System emulator, what's to stop it downloading files from the same place Sega do?
Well, for one thing- the law. Sega owns those games, or has the rights to them. They are the only outlet to legally download them. They are using a legal scheme like Divx or PPV. If Sony supplied consumers with a way to circumvent this distribution scheme, they could get sued. Trust me, if Sony developed a way to watch pay-per-view movies without using your cable box, they would get sued. Especially if the PS2, with it's large memory cards or rumored HD, allowed for the games to be saved due to some sort of bug. Sony wouldn't open themselves to that sort of lawsuit. Not mention I doubt Sony cares about this development.
This, however, only applies if they use the Japanese distribution model. Most likely, these files are going to be distributed in America exclusively over Sega.com's internet service. (Remeber Sega Channel?) Thus, there would be no way for PS2 users to access them unless they were Sega.com subscribers. I doubt Sony would go to the trouble of developing something only 1% (or less) of their customers would be able to use.
Also, why does Sony care? They don't care. They basically own the market. Sega is adding a feature to their console, and trying to squeeze a few bucks out of their legacy. PS2 has no need to do this, they have the PSX library to squeeze for spare change.
Josh Sisk
so what i don't get is why the hell sega would want a psx emulator on their platform. if people buy a dc and bleem, they can buy psx games and play them on their dc. the money for the psx games lines sony's pockets, not sega's. sega winds up losing money on the dc, and never recouping it on the software sales because people are buying psx games.
How many people, once they own a next gen system, will buy last gen's games? very few.
If it is true, thsi is a ploy to try and get some of the PSX owners to move up to Sega instead of PS2. One of the big selling points of PS2 is that you can still play your old games. If You can play the old games on the DC as well, for half the price, the PS2 suddenly looks less appealing. This, of course, only applies to mass market consumers, not hardcore gamers.
Once those mass market gamers get a DC, they will buy DC games, because those games are new, and are prettier than the PSX games they already have. It's all about gaining market share.
Josh Sisk
Seems to me that Sega are desperately trying to catch up with all the cool features of PS2.
Not really. If they were, they'd be making the DC backwards compatible with the Saturn. I think this is more like they're trying to milk the Japanese market, which is very different from our own. The Japanese consumer will pay those prices to play the games... If this makes it to the USA, expect it to be a feature of the Sega.com internet provider... Either free with subscription or an extra charge monthly to access all games. If they try to bring this system over without price drops or a major change, it will fail.
I don't think they ever will. If Sega can put Bleem onto Dreamcast, Sony can certainly put some Master System emulator onto PS2!
There is no way they could make the PS2 a Master System emulator. I think it'd be really hard to fit the cartidges in the cd-tray. They could emulate the Master System, sure, but Sega owns the game library. And thats what this is about. They have a huge library of games, doing nothing for them, so they are trying to put it to use, make a little spare change and add one more attractive feature to their online aspect and their console as a whole.
Josh Sisk