Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Games Entertainment

The X-Box: An Emulator's Dream Platform? 134

Posted by Cliff from the copy-everyone dept.
Fros1y asks: "Okay, it seems like Microsoft may well make a big splash in the console market when they unroll the X-Box. With all the emulators out there, why wouldn't Microsoft expand their box's ability? If they took the new Playstation emulator and ported it for the system, they could tap a large market right off the bat. Roll in some cute NES and SNES emulators and they'd have an interesting system. Being Microsoft and all, they might even want to reverse engineer or license N64 and PSX systems. I guess there might be problems with ROM loading and such, but I'd bet that Microsoft could use their clout to license older games and put them onto a network pay system. Why wouldn't Microsoft want to pursue this kind of market strategy? Or have they already and I'm just out of the loop?" A nice thought, but Microsoft would have to play extremely nice with a lot of people to pull this one off. Thoughts?
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

The X-Box - An Emulator's Dream Platform? More

The X-Box - An Emulator's Dream Platform?

Comments Filter:
  • I'm sure Bleem will have a PSX and possibly a PS2 emulator out for the X-Box a few months after it's release. That is, if Bleem is still around Q1 2002.

    I just can't wait for the DC version of Bleem to come out. Seeing side by side the differences at E3 was amazing.

  • Nice? (Score:1)

    by Lion-O ( 81320 )
    but Microsoft would have to play extremely nice with a lot of people to pull this one off.

    When money talks anything can be possible. Just my 2 cents though.

  • Microsoft support other people's software/hardware?
    That would be very un-Microsoft.

    Often wrong but never in doubt.
    I am Jack9.
  • Well, it's an interesting thought but is this the Microsoft way of doing things?
    Usually when M$ find something they like they buy the company and merges their software (or hardware) with their current strategies. I don't know of any kind of software that Microsoft licenses from others, but say they wanted to, would the SNES/N64 guys really allow it?

    Nah.. No licensing. With their size and cashmachine, they will succeed anyway.
  • Sure, Microsoft could do some great things with the X-Box, and it could be a great console. The only problem is they don't get along well enough with others to get enough good games. I'll stick with Sony and quality game makers like Square and Electronic Arts, thank you very much.
  • Okay, so it wouldn't be too hard to port an emulator. Of course, Sony would object, and might posibly sue. Microsoft vs. Sony - That would be a bloodbath. Neither side wants to get into that fight, and Microsoft have easily enough clout to make sure they have a good line up at launch.

    Add to this the relative ease of porting PC games, I think we'll see Microsoft just porting them.

    Of course, a third part emulator is almost certain. There will also probably be a PC X-Box emulator.

  • Why not the Dreamcast? (Score:3)

    by stx23 ( 14942 ) on Monday July 10, 2000 @10:59PM (#944000) Homepage Journal
    Given the availability of tools for the DC out there, and the fact that bleemcast is almost ready to roll, what's to stop anyone developing mamecast or similar for that box? If not mamecast, the next version of the sega browser will supposedly have java support built in to it, and that would be able to run this version [utanet.at] of Pacman. I wouldn't think that XBox will be very open to develop for, but the DC might be.
  • i hope so. heres why.
    First off emulation of consoles isnt nesecarily illegal but playing a rom you dont own on cart certainly is. Meaning these companies that disown roms would have to take them and use them. I doubt on nintendo.com you are going to see anytime soon .nes files for your fav nes-8bit carts, though good luck buying them at anywhere but a thrift store or ebay.
    Not only would ms microsoft have to play nice with companies like nintendo who i doubt it has ties with which would be lame, but it would take off the flash of newness that the x-console would have. If people start using it for nesticle wouldnt people ( hopfully) find out that its free and with enough crawling the net you can GET THOSE ROMS FREE anyways.
  • Microsoft wont make any money from the hardware, just as all the other console manufacturers they will make their money from licencing fees. I dont see how they can do that when people play old PSX games on their hardware.

    The Xbox seems nice but I dont see what It can do that my present computer cant.

    /das Ix

  • Perhaps it's all a ploy and Microsoft is just goign to buy Sony, and Nintendo.

  • http://www.xbuk.co.uk/features/2000060 4a.asp [xbuk.co.uk]

    Lets bring it up to our playing field....

    /nutt

  • The X-Box looks to be a great piece of hardware, but personally I don't see much that it's doing that you don't already see in high-end graphics engines. Personally, I might buy one just to figure out how to slap Linux or *BSD on it and get it running in the corner as a rendering powerhouse, but other then that...I don't view it as that special.

    Kind of sad about Bleem...there was going to be a Linux port of their new game Halo, which looks schweet (and I spend much more time coding than gaming, so that's a real compliment). Now that MS has 'em, probably no port. :(

  • Why was this even posted? It seems fairly obvious to me that this is a ridiculous idea. Microsoft is in a very precarious position right now - I don't know if you've read the news, but they are about to get broken up until further notice. Another thread on slashdot covered the very topic of this, and how microsoft might appeal, etc...

    Trying to monopolize the console market like this, by taking away the advantages of each separate console manufacturer and putting it into their own hands would hardly help Microsoft establish its angelic look.

    It's just another thorn in Microsoft's already bleeding foot. I think they would rather let it heal...

  • Uh (Score:3)

    by sxyzzx ( 125040 ) on Monday July 10, 2000 @11:11PM (#944007)
    If Microsoft was going into the video game emulation business, wouldn't they have already done it for Windows?
  • Wrong company there bucko... MS got Bungie, makers of Myth and Marathon, among other games. Bleem = PSX emu

  • You might wanna have a look at this thread. [slashdot.org]

    I agree, if your gonna say, have the gut's to stick your name behind it.

  • Hasn't it already been established that emulators like Bleem are legal?
  • Or maybe, if it's all commercial, you go to your games store, buy a NES emulator and a cartridge reader that plugs into the USB port or whatever it is the X-Box has, and play genuine, real NES carts?
  • If such a thing were ever to happen, or even if a commercial S/NES, N64, Genesis, etc., emulator were to hit store shelves, then the game companies would kill off the whole semi-legit side of emulation. As it stands now, there are many websites which have been around for over a year, which are the center of the emulation scene. Some of these sites literally have tens of thousands of ROMS for download, everything from early 80s arcade games to Nes and Genesis to 90s NeoGeo stuff. And as of yet, no one except for the N64 emulator people (N64 is too recent--still being sold--so Nintendo cares about preventing ROM download) and Bleem! have been hit by the game companies.

    But if a widely sold commercial product offered to play these ROMs, Nintendo and Sega and SNK and the rest would sick the lawyers. It would be a horrible bloodbath, since using emulators is legal but offering ROMs for download isn't. I hope no one ever, ever, tries that.
  • How easy is it going to be for somebody familiar with Windows to reverse-engineer an X-Box (presumably there's very little non-standard about the hardware) and write an emulator to run on another MS platform? You'll sure-as-hell not going to need to emulate the processor, for one. I can imagine that should someone do an emulator, their desktop dominance might become a big stumbling block for them: I mean, how do you sell an X-Box to people who've bought a PC who know they can play the X-Box games just as easily...?
    Or are MS going to take the chance and sell an X-Box emulator to keep people with Windows? Hmm, quite a few possibilities / conspiracy theories there.

  • Razor / blade business model ... (Score:3)

    by LL ( 20038 ) on Monday July 10, 2000 @11:30PM (#944014)
    Ummmm .... Sony follows the give away the razor, sell the blades which I suspect Microsoft hopes to replicate. This requires:

    a) a high margin on the blades which they achieve through developers licensing model at minimal risk (they get a slice no matter what games are produced)

    b) blades wear out and thus require replacement. Now the trick with this is to periodically make the razor slightly incompatible enough that people are motivated to buy the new version. A more sophisticated form is make the product so compelling (a la Gilette) that the competition is basically sidelined by the hype

    c) you retain control over the distribution/branding of the razor/blades. If people forgot, Sony has recently purchased a bank. Given their technical wizardry and ability to interface every consumer electronics gadget known to man-kind into their system (not to mention owning significant audio/video/digital content) then you can probably guess their strategy.

    The problem with games is that the significant up-front costs of development is so high that you really want a block-buster (a la movie studios) to recoup additional money through merchandising (can we say Laura Croft?). Microsoft certainly has the cash-cow, but do they have the creative smarts to become a content powerhouse like Sony? While putting out emulators may be a short-term win, what they really want is control of your cable and entryway into your house (he who has the beachhead, controls the shores). Whichever group gets a 50% market share can then have more leeway in dictating access rights and conditions of entry (e.g. insistence of "inspection" of code against "viruses"). It doesn't have to be anal-retentive to be classified as anti-competitive (and risk bringing more anti-trust lawsuits), just onerous enough that they can delay and browbeat content producers into submission (think musicians but on larger scale). The problem is not so much *development*, but *distribution*. Control, control, control ... of the key nexuses and technologies is enough.

    However, the fatal assumption is that the blades (software) can wear out fast enough to gain significant revenue flow. Emulators have a purpose, they preserve the value of any large-scale software collection against hardware obsolescence (deliberate or otherwise). One can see the case in Inform, the Infocode compiler for interactive text adventures from Infocom which a certain group wishes to preserve for their own enjoyment. It was not intended for wholescale piracy of existing works but to maintain portability of the software across multiple platforms and across a longer time scale than the fortunes of any single company.

    <rant mode=on>

    ***** PROSUMER PROTEST *****

    I reject the presumption of media companies that digital media (especially games) are a disposable item. When I acquire an item to add to my not-inconsiderable collection, I expect the value (include resale) of that collection to be retained over time. While OSs are clearly a service industry (their job is to maintain system stability and interoperability), the computing games industry business is entertainment and I expect to recreate the pleasureable experience from fragging (in the nicest possible digital way) my younger brother for many years to come in the future.

    Altering the system from a durable item (console + disk + game) to a mere temporary license to use for a limited period due to the "oh, so sorry, parts for your failed console are unavailable" is a subtle form of *BAIT and SWITCH* IMHO. Hardware is failable, but software can always be recreated/emulated. Why won't companies like MS or Sony play fair? Think about it. If there was a *CREDIBLE* (ie FUD-proof) software competitor to their hardware, guess how they would retain long-term control over developers who can bypass them and go straight to the software emulator? From the point of view of a prosumer (ie take the con- out of consumer), I would prefer a long-term competitive landscape so that prices reflect reality and also give incentives for the smaller niche players (e.g. MUD) to develop really innovative games (plus as a matter of principle, I like supporting the underdogs).

    If people are serious about preserving the long-term value of any games they may buy, I would strongly urge you to support the WulfStation project [sourceforge.net] on SourceForge. It is in *your* long-term interests to keep any PSX2 games you buy when they roll around with the PSX3 in 5-6 years time. The X-Box may or may not be worthwhile emulation platform but that's irrelevant if the goal is to preserve your priviledges as a collector. Ditto for any X-box/Dreamcast/Amiga/Sega games in that any good ones should be preserved for prosperity if possible.

    </rant>

    LL

  • Re:Why not the Dreamcast? (Score:5)

    by slim ( 1652 ) <{ten.puntrah} {ta} {nhoj}> on Monday July 10, 2000 @11:35PM (#944015) Homepage
    The Dreamcast is certainly not free to develop for in any official sense. That's not to say it can't be done: details at this site [mangakai.org]. Basically, someone at Sega messed up, making it possible to burn a bootable CDR for Dreamcast. Bleem for Dreamcast took advantage of this: their product is not endorsed by Sega. Yes: MAME on Dreamcast is now (surely) a possibility.

    Nobody (outside X-box product development) knows whether X-Box will be hackable in this way, but I think it's pretty safe to say they'll be sticking to the standard console business model of "if you want to develop for our console, pay us $$$ for the licenced devkit".

    That's not to say that all emulators are "underground" or require illegally copied ROMs. Sega paid Steve Snake for his KGEN Genesis emulator for DOS, and packaged it together with the ROMS they own and a front-end, as a Sonic the Hedgehog collection for the PC. Sega are currently running a service called "Dream Library", where Dreamcast users can download legally licenced ROMS to play on Genesis, Master System and PC Engine emulators running on Dreamcast.
    --
  • I think that it was more that Bleem doesn't breach copyright. It might still breach patent.
  • Don't you mean it's sad that MS bought Bungie? I know I do. I really hope MS gets broken up before Halo comes out. If it does then MS-App will have no reason to not release a Linux port, because they won't have any great interest in Window's survival.
  • Typically u get modded up...


    I wouldn't think that XBox will be very open to develop for, but the DC might be.


    Yeah, just like windows, not open to develop, no wonder windows has the least applications and games of any OS...oh wait...

    for your interest, you can develop for x-box with visual studio (C++/VB etc) and the SDK will be free (like all the windows SDKs).

    You're kind of, umm...deluded.

  • Re:haha (Score:5)

    by The_Messenger ( 110966 ) on Monday July 10, 2000 @11:55PM (#944019) Homepage Journal
    I hate to say it, but the troll is right. This site may claim to not give a shit about Microsoft, but jumps at the chance to post anything concerning them. You seem to do a fair job with other subjects, but when it comes to Microsoft, you're just an online tabloid. You'll openly attack Microsoft one day, and ruminate over their vaporware console the next. What's the deal? And why do I feel that the Rob "I can't watch Quicktime movies because I never use Windows, except for all of my games" Malda will be one of the first to own one?

    If you don't care about Microsoft, don't talk about them at all. You think this is the only place on the Internet to go whine about them? Please. And so you say, "Well we can't ignore them. They're an unfortunate reality in the business world, and so to ignore them would be unrealistic." Yeah, almost as unrealistic as discussing the "possibility" (snicker) of GNU/Linux taking the desktop from Windows?

    This site was better when no one was under the illusion that it's either a political force or a real news outlet.

    Slashdot openly proclaims its hostility with that [mildly amusung, I'll admit] Borg icon. And all pro-Microsoft posters are flamed into oblivion. I see more anti-MS FUD in one day here than I've ever seen anti-Linux FUD in Redmond. And yet we still have those that would say, "It's news for nerds, not just news for Linux users." And then we see stories about the X-box and Windows-only games.

    The FUD is going to be this movement's downfall. There's enough wrong with Microsoft; who needs to make stuff up? But every day I see more and more of this childish anti-"Windoze" attitude. When did it become so trendy to constantly talk about how much Microsoft sucks? When you installed your l337 Red Hat 6.2 distro? And why do I know that 99% of those poseurs could't even begin to discuss the technical merits of UNIX and NT kernels? But I digress. The childish attitude prompts people to say things like, "Oh, well I'm sorry, but I cannot possibly [do something on a computer] because I use Linux . <snobbish, elitist sneer>" Is that kind of attitude going to help us? No. The average luser sees that and thinks, "This guy uses some crazy, fringe OS. Apparently this OS can't do anything Windows can. And its users are mean and talk down to people." The fact that Malda, who usually rises above that crap, did this exact same thing in a story post a few days ago seems to be an omen. (Come on, Rob, you're as elite as it gets. You don't need do act that way. You should be encouraging the same mature activism that you applaud Maddog for, instead of perpetuating the snobbish-yet-amazingly-ignorant-5cr1p7-k1dd13 act. If you're willing to waste hours playing games on that Windows box, you should be willing to turn it on to see a video clip for a story post. For the amount of cash you get to run this site, you'd better be fucking willing to.)

    In today's world, each and every Linux user on this site is a spokesman for our cause. Maturity and a realistic attitude, combined with a real knowledge of what makes Linux the best choice in some situations, is the only hope we have to take any real market share away from the "dreaded" Microsoft.

    LOL, this is what happens when you start a rant at four in the morning. G'night.

    ---------///----------

  • Lots of odd points in this post, which I felt I ought to respond to:
    • Microsoft certainly has the cash-cow, but do they have the creative smarts to become a content powerhouse like Sony?

      Sony? A content powerhouse? OK, I can name some great games that came directly out of Sony (Kurushi, Parappa the Rapper) but you'll find that the "big name" games which really sold the Playstation were pretty much all developed by third parties (Crash Bandicoot -> Naughty Dog, Tekken -> Namco, Tomb Raider -> Core, Resident Evil -> Capcom etc.) and often published by third parties like Eidos, Activision, etc. too.

      All of these third parties are free to develop on X-Box and Dreamcast. All the major 3rd pary developers (with the exception of EA ) have had a stab at Dreamcast development with some success. They will support X-Box, have no doubt. Microsoft does not need to become a master console game developer in order for X-Box to succeed.

    • Altering the system from a durable item (console + disk + game) to a mere temporary license to use for a limited period due to the "oh, so sorry, parts for your failed console are unavailable" is a subtle form of *BAIT and SWITCH* IMHO.

      So you're asking for an end to hardware obsolescence? Blimey. Good luck! To be serious though, I'm a classic console collector, and to be honest, these things don't tend to go wrong - or if they do, they're either still supported, or so cheap to replace second hand, you're best off doing that. When they get so rare that the 2nd hand prices get too high, you can pretty much guarantee that emulators will have shown up that are mature enough to support the software 100%.

      I'd be more inclined to worry about non-physical software distribution. We'll be seeing online-only console games soon. What happens to them when in 20 years time someone pulls the plug on the (proprietary, centrally run) game server?

      I honestly don't see how the WulfStation project would "preserve the long term value of any PS2 games you may have" -- the project has nothing to do with gaming, after all.


    --
  • Yes, but AFAIK the vast majority of console emulators are free. Microsoft's would cost money. And money is what lawsuits are all about. :)

    ---------///----------

  • ...yes, you are out of the loop.
  • And I wasn't talking about Bleem, by the way, which costs much less than Microsoft would charge for theirs. ;-p

    ---------///----------

  • Hmm... (Score:1)

    by BJH ( 11355 )
    Not a chance. Microsoft wants the X-Box to be seen as a completely unique and revolutionary platform by consumers (although it presents a familiar face to developers). They'd never go for something like a PS emulator simply because it would make the average consumer view it as "that PS compatible that also plays some PC games". That's the last thing that MS would want to happen. The only way you'd see something like that would be (A) if some third party developer ports an emulator or (B) after the X-Box has been on the market for a while and has started to lose the "new product" gloss.

  • don't be naive (Score:3)

    by jilles ( 20976 ) on Tuesday July 11, 2000 @12:06AM (#944025) Homepage
    Emulating is a nice gimmick, but nothing more. MS needs to market their x-box as on par with the current generation of game consoles. Being compatible with a few obsolete platforms is not very relevant for them.

    In addition they need to market their own platform, so they'll focus on marketing directX games. Unlike other game console platforms they will have a huge amount of existing directX games when this thing is launched (assuming it is relatively easy to port them). So the need to include support for obsolete platforms is not very high.

    And finally, emulators could be ported to other game consoles as well. There is not much stopping Sony from porting mame to their platform, yet they are not doing it. The reason is simple, you don't buy a playstation 2 to play old nintendo games.

  • They have (Score:4)

    by J.C.B. ( 141141 ) on Tuesday July 11, 2000 @12:11AM (#944026) Homepage
    MS has produced one of the most popular game emulators out there. They spent a considerable amount of time and effort to emulate a deck of cards using the advanced innovative technology of Windows, but right now their emulator is only limited to one game, solitaire. They are planning to rectify this by adding support for Poker and Blackjack in a service pack that is slated for release by Fall 2014.
  • Firstly I dont think it's very likely that M$ would release a psx or n64 emu for the x-box. That's not to say that someone else wont do it, but i'm guessing the xbox has a single dvd drive and probably no hard disk, so where would u put the PSX rom u were playing!? If it reads cds as well as dvds then I suspect the pir8 market will be quite quick to realise that you can package up existing software burn it to disk and play it on the xbox, and with no hardware compatibility problems it doesn't seem impossible that they could fit a copy of psemu or bleem + a psx rom on a single ready-to-play disc. MS may be betting on easy pir8tability so that they can get market dominance - after all that's why windows/office are so popular. Anyway who would spend $$$ on an Xbox to play the same games they can play on a $40 playstation?

    As for emulating the X-box, I wouldn't have thought it would have been particularly difficult, but why!?? The clear benifit for game developers using the X-box platform is that they can build simultaneously and easily for both x-box & win32... hence low end users will buy the xbox version and high end users can buy the windows version. Disclaimer - I have no information to back this up but if it's not the case then M$ are fools (but they are anwyay)

    Right now it's nintendo and sony that should be worried. Now that developers need only make their software once over to have Windows, X-box, Linux (if wine catches up with all the DX8 stuff), and possibly even MacOS (since Macs appear to be soon using a similar nvidia graphics chip and recompiling the code wouldn't be too difficult, particularly if a subdivided microsoft starting supporting apple better).

  • As far as I understand it, consoles are sold at a substantial markdown, so that companies can recoup their losses on game sales. Any company that actively supports an emulator for another company's platform keeps the games sales for that platform alive, and profits high.

    Does that sound like a Microsoft tactic?

    Gingko
  • To do what this article suggests would open up all kinds of legal nastiness for Microsoft when it's quite apparent their lawyers are needed elsewhere. Ahh, but what if this idea really appealled to Microsoft, then what would they do between wanting to do it, and having legal ramifications?

    Get somebody else to do it for them!!

    Document the heck out of whatever interface talks to this thing, and provide it to a couple of smaller hardware companies, possibly some new upstarts. With the possibility of making the doohicky that gets tacked on to an MS console selling to millions of folks, you'd bet there'd be folks in line to do this.

    Once all the legalities have been fought out by the wee upstart, draining them of any capitol they may have been able to put together from actually selling products, big friendly MS swoops in and buys them out. Everybody wins but the competition, and all it cost to MS was a little extra documentation and a possible loophole in their licensing.

    Some day I want to run my own evil company! <audio src="evillaughter.mp3">

  • Re:Why not the Dreamcast? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    for your interest, you can develop for x-box with visual studio (C++/VB etc) and the SDK will be free (like all the windows SDKs).
    Can you back this up, or is it just conjecture? There's no info on MSDN about XBox development...
  • sorry. MS licenses 1000's of things, from codecs to entire video games. And they don't just buy any company they like, especially hardware. I don't want to discourage you from posting, it's good that you want to participate, but you are so clueless here you'd better sit back and soak up some knowledge. I'm afraid you've fallen victim to linux zealot FUD on this one.
  • Sure, dude, the X-Box will be COOL, but can it JAM? Like, hardcore rockin'. DUDE. Nothin' gets my my wheel in the sky turnin' like the NV25 chipset, that shit is BITCHIN!!!!!

    PEACE, Journey ROCKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  • M$ are already at it. A friend of mine who will remain unnamed works for a computer games company who was recently visited by an "X-Box aquisition team".

    They didn't make an appointment, they just turned up in suits, had a look round, presumably made an estimate on the value of the company, and left again.
  • Every week or so we have another article about X-box. It won't even be around for over a year.(esp with the way MS keeps dates) Yes it will have nice hardware, but then so will the Indrema [indrema.com], In fact they seem almost identical hardware wise. (except Indrema can have a larger harddrive up to 50gigs, think TIVO, it comes with a MPEG encoder).

    As far as software goes the Indrema is much more interesting because the SDK is free and the licensing very open.

    Why would anyone bother with an X-box? The only reason I can think is to try to load linux or something inorder to screw MS from licensing fees.

    Then again maybe I just hate MS.;)


  • >When did it become so trendy to constantly
    >talk about how much Microsoft sucks?

    This is just a natural reaction to release from as big an 'authority figure' as Microsoft. Microsoft is the doorkeeper from Kafka's 'Before the Law' [www.esc.de]. When you realise you can just walk right by, you trip out on endorphins for a while and rail against MS. You're out of your reins! All those blue screens, and all the time you could simply have WALKED ON BY. So you start crowing about your heroic defeat of MS, and overenthusiatically advocate emacs.
    What we need to do is catch people earlier, so they don't come TO Linux FROM Windows. I'd imagine if someone was used to Linux, they'd look at Windows and just shrug. "Can't think of a good reason to use it." But when they 'find' Linux after years of MS, they get discombobulated about having been on the wrong end of the stick for so long, and MS becomes The Evil Empire.
    What we clearly need are "My Little Linux" toy PCs. Tux gives us an immediate advantage in the preschool sector. Let's go!
  • Wow, quite a rant! I'm not quite there with you on the tone it was delivered in, but I agree with the basic point you're trying to get at.

    As I've begun to post more frequently around here I keep finding myself in the position of defending Microsoft. Thing is, in the off-line world I'm usually the first one in line to give them a hard time, especially concerning Internet technologies.

    I don't think of myself as being two-faced or hypocritical in my opinions on this. I firmly believe in giving credit where it's due, and pointing out flaws where they exist. In so doing, I don't fit neatly into any of the on-line cliques that form up around product lines. Perhaps it's this aspect of the whole "Everything MS Sucks" crowd that appeals to many of the folks around here.

    The importance of Linux taking market share seems to keep getting lost on a lot of folks. The battle isn't over releasing the source code of every bit of software. The real battle is to get enough Linux and other alternate OS's out there to insure that the entire computer industry HAS to rely on open standards to survive. As citizens of a much large community than just Open Source or FSF we all need to keep this in mind.

    Here's where I'm gonna get skewered here, but MS brings a lot of cool stuff to the table. They're directly involved with darn near every standards body that has the possibility of making a difference to what the future holds for the whole of the industry. Heck, they had a huge part in helping build this industry from the very beginnings of the very first PC. Sites like /. really need to be covering this stuff, both the good and bad.

    There's a lot to be learned from Microsoft that seems to get lost on the Open Source crowd. Yes, they've done some stupid things, but if that's all you can see then you've got some serious side blinders on. I personally love the "NT crashes every 5 minutes" posts. I've got enough experience with NT to know one hell of a lot better, and to also know where NT truly does fall short. What I find odd is how you never see those NT crashing posts in the same thread as some fella bouncing his Linux distro hard due to a bad make.

    For whatever reasons, it's cooler to just be a zealot than to evaluate based on merits.
  • Exactly, if they can't buy the company then they enter the market with a crappier product and use their monopoly to push that company out.
    Hee hee let the flaming begin.
  • I am a full-time "professional" videogame developer in the process of building my first software studio. I have worked on projects from Corporate Flagship Title all the way down to shareware puzzle game, but almost always on PC (the occasional Mac title being the exception) I have been watching the console market for quite a while, looking for my chance to jump in, and I must say this is an extremely interesting point.

    Most of the posts so far have been concerned with either Playstation emulation or older cart game emulation like mame. I have a much different take on the situation, namely that the Dreamcast is the most obvious target for emulation on the X-Box, as it is WinCE/COM based code already. Right? Not only that, but with the hardware being sold as a loss leader for software recouping, and Sega's position as an underdog in the market, this would be a dream come true for Sega. Not to mention [Sega's] recent and heartening madcap maneuvering with ideas like free Dreamcasts with Internet service, broadband support, etc. I think they would embrace this wholeheartedly. It even makes me think there is room for a Sega buyout by Microsoft. Not totally out of the question, if you ask me.

    This makes a huge impact on my strategizing, as I have been deliberating with my partners about whether to pursue psx2, psx1, Dreamcast or PC. We aren't even thinking about Dolphin or N64 for what are to me obvious reasons. We have been leaning in the direction of a PC title, because of the promise of quick porting to the X-Box. Also, we don't necessarily want to spend the $250,000 to $1,000,000 that the console mfctrs. are asking for development rights. X-Box doesn't look to be heading in this direction, which is the surest sign that it will succeed (If I am wrong here, I would love to know, I have been looking for any hints as to what licensing model is actually being planned). Another point in favor of X-box development (for developers) is that MS probably won't be nearly as anal as Sony approving a game. Sony (and to a much worse extent, Nintendo) is notorious for their strong-arming over final approval.

    Now, with the notion of easy console-to-console emulation being planned/thrown about, it makes the Dreamcast extremely appealing, because we could finish two or three titles before the X-Box hits the shelves. We could possibly have our first title ported by that time, but with emulation as a built in feature, we wouldn't even need to worry about it. X-box market share could be viewed as a subset of Dreamcast market share for as long as the first year X-box is out! This would definately make courting investors much much easier.

    :)Fudboy
  • What commies, where? Oh my god, reds under the bed, reds in my hard drive, the ILOVEREDS virus on the internet, where is it going to end? Will General McCarthy come back in our hour of need and save us from the Soviet menace.

    PS the Cold War is over and Communism is dead(except in North Korea and Cuba - China is not Communist any more). I thank you.
  • ... and then they could emulate MAME on it... and then perhaps emulate PhotoShop... and slap in a hard-drive... and a monitor and...

    ... oops! Suddenly they've created a PC!

    Surely the point is that MS are creating a games console, because of the particular economics of game consoles - lock people into a platform and then make money off selling the games to go with the system. Why would they want to open up the system so that other companies could make money from the games?

    "Give the anarchist a cigarette"
  • Exactly. I think this is vapourware designed to hurt the PSX2. Specs may be available and respected programmers may be talking about it, but I think it's more about hurting the sales of a machine that could be a PC replacement and has nothing to do with Microsoft. Actually though I hope it isn't and Microsoft try to take on Sony and Nintendo. That would be very entertaining.
    Until I see one in the shops I'm not going to give a toss.

  • Same reason people buy Windows even though options are now available. Microsoft is a household name, who the f**k are Indrema? But until I see this piece of vapour solidify who cares anyway? As far as I can see, this is more about trying to damage PSX2 sales by convincing people to keep using their PCs until the all new X-Box appears.
  • Here's a question: is the Xbox supposed to be used with a TV (like a console) or a monitor (like a PC)? At a TV's resolution, even my Voodoo 1 is pretty slick; it almost seems a waste to use those l337 nVidia graphics chips. I sure hope Microsoft isn't betting that HDTV will have caught on by the time this imaginary toy is released.

    I could probably go to xbox.ign.com and find this out in two seconds, but I feel like contributing some ignorance to this excellent discussion.

    Oh, by the way, Tracy Bonham owns me. Guess why I'm still up at 6:45AM.

    ---------///----------

  • Games (Score:1)

    by Britz ( 170620 )
    As far as I know (applys probably better to the time before PS2) the most money the console game industry is making is coming from the games. I even heard discussions about giving consoles away for free, since they would earn enough from the games. So it would be highly illogical to produce a console on which you could play games that other companys get money from (not all the games are designed by the console companys themselves, but rather from the game industry where the money the customer is paying gets divided between the console company, which gets a large share and the game producing company).
  • You all should really check out this modified Furby. http://www.fdcor.net/misc/borgby.shtml
  • In fact, the vast majority of console games are designed by companies like Acclaim, EA, and Square, and not the console maker. But you are correct; the console maker gets a chunk of the profit for every game sold. That's the price of the "Licensed by Nintendo" splash screen.

    ---------///----------

  • Negotiations (Score:4)

    by The Famous Brett Wat ( 12688 ) on Tuesday July 11, 2000 @02:12AM (#944047) Homepage Journal

    Scene: Microsoft and Sony Suits, in a plush but generic corporate boardroom, commence negotiation.

    MS: We are very interested in running Sony Playstation titles on our new X-Box.
    Sony: We are not interested in licensing our technology to you for that purpose.
    MS: We hear that you are also losing interest in licensing our Windows technology.
    Sony: Ah, well, when I said that we weren't interested in licensing our Playstation technology to you, what I really meant was that we are interested. Yes. Definitely very interested.
    MS: Good! Now to details...

  • excellent... pure sweetness... a truly amazing post.
    if i could moderate you up to 5, i would.

    ------------------
  • We all know full well M$ has a team of trained monkeys watching this site 24/7! Stop Giving them ideas! Good ones at least...

  • Re:haha (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    C.Lee, you're a twit. You're a complete moron -- nobody on Slashdot likes you. In fact, nobody likes you, period. You're a idiot who can't go for 2 seconds around here without flaming [goatse.cx] someone. And when you do flame someone, you just sound like more of a moron. You're a dumbass. A failed slashbot. A slashdot-terminal wannabe. You really need to take a gun to your head before you somehow get extremely lucky and propagate.

    There's been a history [olsentwins.com] of you sounding like a jackass. Nothing you ever post is credible, or intelligible, at all -- a drunken 2 year old makes more sense than you do. And a drunken 2 year old is nicer too. Have you had a lobotomy? That would explain quite a few things. If not, may I recommend one? You should also have a castration done as well, nobody wants your genetic material to be passed on in the gene pool. We'd be better off if you were a eunuch. At least that way all the pent up testosterone [goatse.cx] wouldn't become a factor. You should seriously seek mental help [olsentwins.com]. And physical help. Emotional help would be a good idea, as well. Or you can take care of all 3 at once, and just put a gun to your head. Or at least to your gonads. And if you're unwilling, I'm sure there's plenty of people around here who are.
  • I think it is unlikely that Microsoft would ever create emulators for other console games.. I think they would see is as a subtle way of "discourging" X-Box developent. With their mentality, I see them trying as hard as they can to just get PC game companies to port their software to the X-Box or offering "incentives" for N64 or Sega developers to move to X-Box.
  • okay okay, so I was a little sloppy, it's very late here in California- 4:20am as a matter of fact...

    By "cart emulation like mame" I actually meant to refer to ROMs, not mame. sorry 'bout that. In an overall sense, I mean the whole emulation scene including mame, NESticle, etc.

    and no, it would not be a superset, Dreamcast marketshare will be the greater for having been out for 2+ years. but moreover, when discussing consoles, market share is to be considered the number of HW units that have been sold. I am talking about the number of hardware units that can play Dreamcast games, and the X-box would be a portion of the total. a subset. Even if the X-box ships more units than the dreamcast, it is still only a portion of the total Dreamcast compatable consoles in living rooms across the U.S.

    I will save further replies for tomorrow. thanks and goodnight

    :)Fudboy

  • For the record: (Score:3)

    by Money__ ( 87045 ) on Tuesday July 11, 2000 @02:39AM (#944053)
    The X Box does not yet exist.
    ___
  • "When did it become so trendy
    to constantly talk about how
    much Microsoft sucks?"

    hm, i think i've been saying it since 1989, that was when i first got a pc. i found them very frustrating compared to the c64 and the apple ][.

    then i got to uni and used unix, and then i *really* couldn't see why people used dos. i watched how borland went from having a great suite of compilers on dos to being frozen out of windows (and their widgets and dialog boxes looked much niftier). then after uni i worked at a place with macs and while i found them wanting compared to my unix workstations i couldn't see how people could pick ms over macs for personal use.

    i still think the cheapest way to run an office of word proccessing users is to use macs with unix based infrastructure. and use an internal web site for collaboration.
  • Apparently nobody read my reply the last time you brought this up.
    And so I will repeat it
    I believe that everyone has the right to his own opinion, but with that right comes the responsibillity to take ownership for it. If you wish to say something, have the guts not to hide behind AC
    I am certainly taking a lot of flak for that post, but quite frankly this proves my point, had I been an AC, you would not have been able to respond with your flames etc. I knew when I posted it that there would be those who dissagreed, and those who didn't, I took responsibillity for my views, and that is exactly why I dissaprove of AC's, by implication an anonymous COWARD is too scared to do that.
    This is not a troll, it is my opinion in truth, that I have every right to, I don't demand that anybody agree, but I have the right to voice it, just as much as you have the right to flame it.
    I always try to respond to the replies my posts get, but I am not always able to (my bos seems to think I should work ocasionally) and I have never in my life made a first post - or tried to.

    PS. If you don't get the Al Bundy analogy, I suggest you hang out on AlfDot [superosity.com] instead of slashdot.

  • Sounds about right, I doubt there is much chance of this happening, if it does it'll be better than wrestlemania. Thanks, it seems your the only replyer who bothered to read my post before replying to it.

  • Just a thought on how a company could make a lot of money selling emulation software on the X-Box.

    (This assumes that all X-Boxes will be hooked up to the net using broadband access and will have a nice big hard drive.)

    1. Company writes emulator for console "foo".
    2. Company licences a whole bunch of titles from the company that produces console "foo" under a rental agreement.
    3. Company sells emulator to the masses which might include a fully legal (licenced) title from console "foo" as a hook.
    4. The masses then insert CD/DVD into the X-Box and is taken to a website where they register. They can now play the game on the CD they purchased or download another game for $$$ which will give them the right to play that game for the next N days.
    5. Company sits back, pays its royalties to comsole company "foo" and takes its cut.

    This should be quite leagal, ROM images downloaded would be crippled to run only with that specific enulator. I would imagine that the X-Box harddrive will not be accessable as you would find in a PC, files could be locked so that they can only be accessed with the emulator. Add auto deletetion once the rental has expired (although i would imagine that the user would be prompted to renew the rental (for more $$$) so that they do not have to download the game image again.) and you have a nice locked system.

    This would work well for older systems, small rom images etc. but for a large full CD game then the download will be longer than most people would endure.

    Sure people would hack the system, but more will just keep forking over the cash.

    Rental is the way Microsoft is heading and they have the infrastructure. If it is not them another company will fill this market.

  • To me, Indrema seems like a more realistic platform for emulators, with open SDK & all. It would be quite a boost for sales, when you could get a DVD full of, say, SNES games (with the average size of 1 megabyte), to play on your television. Of course the "liberal" interpretation of copyrights will have to be excercised, but with Indrema, I don't see this as a problem.

    I want an Indrema too.

  • Step outside games for a moment. How could Sony be anything but a content powerhouse with their domination in music and other industries?
  • Microsoft declares its after the console market. They killed Netscape, and now its time for some of that good, rich Sony Blood. Nintendo I seriously doubt is worried. They've been around for ages, and they have a pretty decent hold on the industry. Number two is usually always better than being #1(Sony). #2 can always go up. When your at the top, where is there left to go? Sega however have different problems. Disappointing system after disappointing system, they're holding on to every scrap of profit they can muster. A few DECENT games on the Dreamcast haven't exactly propelled them to the forefront.

    Let's look at this another way: Would the average mid-teen (12-16) really be interested in these old games?

    These younger teenagers never played the original super mario. Or Metroid. Or Zelda. All these games bring back amazing memories. But, compared to the gee-whiz-pop-bang games of today, they're practically legos to a corvette. They're basic. They're simple. The require less than half the "skill" required in games like Perfect Dark or Resident Evil 23: The Final Evil. For Microsoft to put ALL this money and ALL the time it would require to even get the licensing, would it truly be worth it? A few old games would do nothing but collect (electronic) dust. Newer games might fare a bit better, but lets face it: the 'look' is what most of these 'gamers' look for. The best game on the planet could be released today, have graphics equal to the NES and never sell a copy.

    sigh.

  • I was just thinking "why yet another article on the X-box"? When I got to your comment. Given that the product is still vapor and Microsoft hates everything that Linux and open source stand for, why is X-box getting such frequent news?

  • The real test, of course, will be to emulate a Zebra vagina.

    huh?

  • MS probably won't be nearly as anal as Sony approving a game. Sony (and to a much worse extent, Nintendo) is notorious for their strong-arming over final approval.

    Indeed. Microsoft have never been known for strongarm tactics and bullying 3rd-party vendors.
    I think MS will be just as bad, because they'll be certifying everything, so they have to get it right. They won't be able to blame crashes on anyone but themselves this time, so hassles galore.
  • > I hate to say it, but the troll is right. This site may claim to not give a shit about Microsoft, but jumps at the chance to post anything concerning them,

    When you live in the gorilla cage at the zoo, everything the 900lb alpha male does is a big concern to you, even if you're just an adolescent have-nothing trying to mind your own business.

    > I see more anti-MS FUD in one day here than I've ever seen anti-Linux FUD in Redmond.

    Check your definition of FUD. A steamin' heap of the MS criticism given here is fact. Just because you don't like the implications of a fact, does not make it FUD.

    And when you do see FUD, whether anti-MS, anti-Linux, or whatever, you are perfectly free in this forum to counter it with facts. (And people do correct the unfounded claims, you might notice.)

    > The FUD is going to be this movement's downfall.

    Assuming even that it was as bad as you say it is, how does this follow? MS and IBM got good mileage out of FUD in their time.

    > When did it become so trendy to constantly talk about how much Microsoft sucks?

    When we got the internet and could start infoming people that they didn't have to buy MS products just because an article in PC Mag or a Gartner report said it didn't really suck.

    > And why do I know that 99% of those poseurs could't even begin to discuss the technical merits of UNIX and NT kernels?

    So, only the techno-elite are allowed to hold opinions, eh? If my MSware is unreliable, am I unqualified to point it out unless I have a degree in CS?

    I, for one, don't give a fig whether my OS is running a microkernel, nor how religiously it sticks to the tenants of uK design. I want something that works, and once I've filtered out the ones that don't work, I want the one left that give the best price.

    Yes, there's some anti-MS FUD going around, but not everything said against MS is FUD. Not by a long shot.

    And even if the grass-roots FUD becomes as bad as the commercial-grade FUD... well, that would be nothing more nor less than poetic justice. What comes around goes around, and all that. If the company that killed DR-DOS with FUD died by FUD in turn, will the angels weep? No, not unless they own MSFT or do all their work in VB.

    --
  • Extending the above analogy (simile?), selling a converter to let Sony's blades work on Microsoft's razor is not something that will not make Microsoft happy. Microsoft will get the licence fees from the blade converter (emulator software), but will get none from Sony's blades. Here is where Sony makes the profit for selling blades. Since the razors are sold at litte to no (sometimes even negative) profit, there is no way that Microsoft would allow emulator software for at least the first few months. This way, they can guarantee licence fees from their blades and make a profit from them. Once the hype has died down slightly, then Microsoft will allow the blade adapters to be in use, because they now have a large installed base and can let the hardcore gamers purchase the blade converters. Of course, nobody would want to buy an expensive razor to use with cheap blades. Almost everyone likes the idea that they can use their favorite old blades on a new razor, but it may not be the best of ideas when the new razor is fresh on the market. I hope that whole razor/blade thing is not too confusing, but we are all smart people here.
  • I read in an news posting [zophar.net] a few months ago on Zophar's Domain [zophar.net] that the Japanese Chrono Trigger re-release for the Playstation contained a file called rom.bin on the CD-ROM. People who copied the file onto a PC found that would play just fine in Snes9x [a SNES emulator], meaning that Squaresoft was running SNES emulation on the Playstation.

    This implies 2 things:
    1. Emulation on consoles would be nothing new (even barring bleemcast).
    2. Future emulation on the X-Box (or other consoles) is likely to be transparent to the user -- people buy rereleases of the games they want (or developers write emulators for current games!) which may require emulation, but the user doesn't necessarily have to know that it's going on behind the scenes.
    I wouldn't be surprised to see Square re-releasing some of their PSX games onto the X-Box with emulators built into the discs (that is, if they're not still miffed about MS trying to buy them out...).

    -ubermuffin
  • Arcade, Return Of Arcade & Revenge of Arcade emulate about 12 titles between them, which would have been licensed from Namco. Of course compared to MAME, the implementation sucks, but it has been done.
  • And yet again I get atacked for things I did not say.

    First of all, I see that my grammar is under atack, it might do the people who do this a bit of good to keep in mind that grammar rules differ around the world, even spelling, (color is correct in America, but here the correct spelling is considdered colour) in other words with the exception of the occasional typo I miss while previewing, I have yet to use grammar that would not have recieved full marks in my old high-school.

    And yet again I repeat, I do not have a problem with anybodies wishes for anonimity, I was trying to point out, that by using my nick, I am identifying myself to a sufficient degree for you to differ from my views, and as seems to be the case with some people, stalk my posts on other topics into infinity with regard to opinions they dissagreed with. In other words, I take the responsibillity and the possible flames, trolls, spams etc. that might result from a controversial view. It has nothing to do with elitism. This whole argument started after someone anonymously cried over the validity of a story I rather enjoyed. I merely stated then that since he did not wish to be in any way associated with his complaint, I had litle reason to take him seriously. My previous post was somewhat angered, I appologize for that, it's not my style. Feel free to post anonymously if you feel such a dire need therefore, but keep in mind that I rarely read nor take seriously the words of someone who does not have enough trust of conviction to be associated with those words.

    Perhaps I am not enough of a karma whore, wishing only to be associated with those posts I think will be generally agreed apon, instead I get modded up when I post good posts and down when I don't (the latter in the past having been a very rare occurence)

    Anyway I never used the words "1337 nick" that was a description by the AC's whose been flaming to eternall suntandomn, I guess that's a compliment.

    I will not be responding to further posts on this topic, nor will I reply to e-mails or in any way allow myself to be bothered as it appears that I have been erronously marked as an enemy of privacy and people appear intent to misinterpret my statements. This debate over AC/nick is hardly anything I wanted to spark, and I have tried severall times to explain my feelings, instead people don't even seem able to understand what those feelings are. Wether I am incapable of explaining it clearly or wether it is misunderstood (delliberately or otherwize) this debate is bringing us nowhere so we might as well cease to waste bandwith on it.

  • The speed of the processor is not very important anymore because there are other bottlenecks (unless your entire game is a simple for loop that sits in cache). The bus is a major one, especially for graphics applications. Just because you have hardware T&L it doesn't mean your bus is less saturated... you still have to send down the vertices, etc. (which can be larger that pre-transformed screen coordinate data!)

    The benifit of consoles is the guaranteed hardware so you can squeeze every ounce of performance out.
  • " Given that the product is still vapor and Microsoft hates everything that Linux and open source stand for, why is X-box getting such frequent news?"

    Contrary to popular belief, Slashdot is not and never has been, a "Linux site" or even a "Free Software" site. Think of it as "stuff Rob and his friends find interesting". The stuff about Aibo and Space probes, "Mission to Mars" reviews, stuff about Lego -- that's nothing to do with Linux and Open Source either, and that still gets published.

    Xbox is definitely "News for Nerds"; stop whingeing. And I dunno who else is with me, but I only despise Microsoft when what they're doing is wrong. I personally believe in Free Software on the server and the desktop, but I don't mind about proprietariness on gaming consoles -- good luck to 'em.

    --
  • [Scene: a briefing at Microsoft headquarters]

    Senior Manager: " ... and another thing is that we are all going to have to play "nice" now. Is there anyone who knows the definition of this word?"

    {a few seconds pass with muted mumbling}

    Senior Manager: "Not a problem I had to look it up my self. Let me read it to you from the dictionary."

    "nice (ns) adj. nicer, nicest."

    "Pleasing and agreeable in nature: had a nice time."
    "Having a pleasant or attractive appearance: a nice dress; a nice face."
    "Exhibiting courtesy and politeness: a nice gesture."
    "Of good character and reputation; respectable."
    "Overdelicate or fastidious; fussy."
    "Showing or requiring great precision or sensitive discernment; subtle: a nice distinction; a nice sense of style."
    "Done with delicacy and skill: a nice bit of craft."
    "Used as an intensive with and: nice and warm. "
    "Obsolete definitions:"
    "a. Wanton; profligate: "For when mine hours/Were nice and lucky, men did ransom lives/Of me for jests" (Shakespeare). "
    "b. Affectedly modest; coy: "Ere . . . /The nice Morn on th' Indian steep,/From her cabin'd loop-hole peep" (John Milton)."
    Senior Manager: "After discussing it with the other manager we all agreed that the most appropriate definition to use is this one:
    Wanton; profligate: as in "For when mine hours/Were nice and lucky, men did ransom lives/Of me for jests" (Shakespeare).
    "What this means in this case is that we should be even more bold and brazen than ever! Any Questions? Good! Let's do it!"
  • 'Nuff said.

    Be prepared for disappointment.

  • <Clippy>I see that you are having trouble with the zombie carrying the chainsaw. May I suggest using the shotgun?</Clippy>
    --

  • If M$ were to do this, I'm sure that everyone and their grandmother would all sue M$ for trying to take over the console buisness. That's the popular thing to do these days. I agree with the people that said to simply let Bleem do it.


    -Derick
  • The X-Box has an 8gb hard drive.
  • From what I hear, MS plans to put significant copy protection into the X-box so that you can't just run the games on your PC (even if it's running windows).

    If they didn't do that, not many people would want to buy the X-box, since it's basically just a PC specialized for gaming.

    Of course, many companies have tried "significant copy protection" before, and damn near all of them have been almost immediatly cracked. So we'll see how long it takes before X-box emu appears.
  • I can just see how pissed off this will make those other companies. One _console_ platform that can run anything and everything that the competitors put out there. If such a beast did exist, it would be almost a no-brainer which one to get.

    I mean.. get a PSX to play PSX games, a N64 to play N64 games, etc... but wouldn't a single box that playes PSX, N64 and all the rest on ONE platform RUIN competition? The other companies would have easy grounds for unfair competition (Microsoft has the resources and the clout to pull something like this off).

    As I see it, PC empulators for the PSX and whatnot don't harm the console industry for many reasons. Mainly, the 'desktop' is generally more complicated to use than the console and is also not generally hooked up to the television (giving that the average person has a 14"-18" monitor and a 27" TV).

    A console is easy to use. The computer is not as easy. But there are PC users who want to play console games and not fork over more cash for an extra console. THAT is the market for emulators. If you get one console running EVERYTHING, you can be sure that those other boxes will go out of buisness and their games will also go away.

    I am assuming in this rant that the X-Box is powerful enough to emulate the games smoothly. It wouldn't matter if the X-Box is a pile of junk.. which it more than likely will be ;P. But thats just my opinion.

  • Neat! Any news if there's an american release? It would be fairly trivial for one to use a CD-R and see what other roms worked with their emulator.. :)
  • Sorry Fros1y, you made the same mistake that I and most of the other nerds out there make.
    You're thinking about this from a technical standpoint, not a corporate one.

    Technically, the idea of emu on the X-box sounds great. It's a single spec machine that is optomized for gaming, it would be relatively easy to write good emu progs for it and to dump roms onto it. So the idea sounds great.

    From a corporate standpoint however, it doesn't work. Why would MS want to make X-box do other console emu? So that more people would want to buy the X-box. They wouldn't sell more games, but they would sell more boxes. Okay. So now how do they do it. They could go the way of current emulators, providing you with the emulator (or selling it to you) and leaving you to find pirated ROMs on your own, or they could legally license the technology, maybe even license the games and build an archive of ROMs that you could get cheap.

    If they go the first way, building an emulator only and leaving you to find pirated ROMs, they expose themselves to big legal risk. Now as I recall, Bleem got away with this, but it's a fine line and it's not the kind of legal problems MS wants to deal with. They won't take on the console companies in head to head legal battles like this.

    So now that leaves the option of legally licensing the material. The console companies aren't going to want to license the tech to MS, because the whole reason MS wants it is to sell more X-boxes and to compete with the console companies.

    So I doubt you're going to see any MS backed Emu on the X-box. Maybe some creative hacker types will get it done, but don't look to the companies on this one.
  • Actually Microsoft just has a problem having other people's names on their final products. The Company I Work For(tm) did some contract work for M$, who apparently refused to have our name mentioned anywhere in their product. The Boss says "They don't play that way"

    A friend of mine used to say that MS BOB (or the recent Office ASSistant incarnation) is the only thing MS ever made that was their own idea. hah!
  • I was with you right up to the part where you said old games 'require less than half the "skill" required in [new games]'.

    I recently had a go at Super Mario Land on the NES, and let me tell you, that game is *hard* compared to today's gaming fare -- but then it had to be. The challenge made up for the lower quality graphics of the day. Today's games can be more like a ride; without too much skill, you get to travel through a series of vignettes.

    ... and that's just NES games. I can't last more than 30 seconds on many Commodore 64 and Spectrum games.

    --
  • the Dreamcast is the most obvious target for emulation on the X-Box, as it is WinCE/COM based code already. Right?

    The DC is not technically WinCE based. WinCE can be loaded off of the disk, but only a few games actually use it (Worms being the only one I can think of). Most of the games are using a special Sega OS. I would think that the WinCE games could be easily made to work. The Sega based games might be a lot trickier.

    -B

  • The notion that Microsoft would write an emulator is silly. Microsoft does not write compatible software. They write incompatible software that looks the same as an already popular product. They then get everyone to switch over to the incompatible software. I am sure that is the business model in this case.

    An interesting question does arise if we turn this around and ask how Microsoft is going to protect itself from emulators. Sony tried to sue Connectix for Virtual PlayStation and gave up. Connectix has a lot of experience writing Window emulators, as well as writing game emulators for Windows. They should be able to write an Xbox emulator in no time at all.

    In addition, FWB now has the Windows emulator for Macintoshes and Unix Alpha machines. I suspect that the Xbox will provide a way for them to leverage that property. I bet they will sell Xbox emulators for both platforms.

    All in all, I think we will be able to run Xbox in our current machines for about $100.

  • Ok now this is only rumor, but its from a fairly reliable source. But I hear that there is alot of cross-licensing going on between Microsoft, and Nintendo. So that there it looks as if there is a high possibility that both with be able to emulate eachother right from the start. Note: probably still completly different systems, as dolphin won't be X86 hardware, but the cross-emulation shouldn't be that hard. Note just completly rumor, but it would be interesting to see.

  • Is this a description of a role-play to help readers understand why some people might develop for X-Box? I think some people might miss that, so I had better counter the fud.

    If you really were a 'professional' games developer, you would of course know that very few of the Dreamcast titles are based on WinCE. It is just an option, not a requirement. Sega produce their own OS too which is much closer to the metal, and vastly prefered for games development.

    Anyone that actually spent money on games would see that Sony and Nintendo being 'anal' about releases on their platforms is of course a good thing. It is about quality. They do their best (for the developers and their own licensing revenues) to ensure that people buy originals of games, through proprietary media. They would be pretty stupid to then bring about mass customer dissatisfaction by allowing very low quality software go out the door (as often happens with PC games) with their name on it. Being less 'anal' might be good for developers with low quality products, desperate for a channel through which to recoup some of their losses by selling to the gullible, but its certainly not good for the reputation of the platform.

    Do you really think dev-kits cost between $0.25M and $1M? A PS2 dev kit costs $10,000 , if you are in the position where you have to buy them. If you are a developer with a good track record, Sony will be giving them to you for free. Console makers don't make money out of dev kits, they need developer support to make the platform a success.

    And do you think emulating Dreamcast is trivial? I believe the most efficient emulators can get to an average of five native instructions for each emulated instruction, when running CPU-bound activities. Dreamcast has a 233Mhz RISC processor, so it is about 1/3 the clock of X-Box, and being RISC is going to be requiring more instructions to do the same thing as a CISC design as found in X-Box. Its pie in the sky to suggest that someone could knock out a DC emulator for X-Box, and allow you to start on DC now, for instant port to X-Box if it is ever released. Bleemcast is possible because PS1 only has a 33Mhz processor to start with, and the architecture of the two consoles isn't that different, both being designed with ease of development in mind - at the hardware level. The X-Box might have ease of development at the software level if you are lucky, though I have seen enough posts here derriding the Direct-X development experience to make me think otherwise.

  • Take a look at the best option out there right now: the Dreamcast. Although sega might not admit it, they've got a winner already by bleem! look at: http://www.dailyradar.com/features/game_feature_pa ge_745_1.html for some PSX emulation goodness And don't forget PC-Engine and Turbographix emulation for Dreamcast is already available in Japan -- Bill
  • Actually, I believe it's the games that generate the revenues for a company, not the system itself. Sony actually loses money on selling the playstation consoles, but they more than make up for it by getting a cut of all the games (I believe this came up during the whole Sony vs. Bleem thing). Anyway, if X-Box had emulators for all of these other systems they would be doing Sony/Sega/Nintendo/Vectorex (ha) a favor rather than helping themselves. The last thing they want is to encourage their users to buy competitors' games.

    magic chef
  • I wonder that if someone makes a Dreamcast emulator, that I will be able to pop in my Bleemcast disc and emulate a playstation on my emulation of dreamcast on my XBox. Even better! How about emulating Dreamcast and using Bleemcast to play the emulation of those "Arcade Classics" that Namco and a few others made. Nothing is better than 3rd order emulation! (Ok, well, there are plenty of things better, like the cool KLAT2 computer, but just think of the emulating possibilities!)
  • Your sig says all generalizations are false

    I guess this applies here as well.........................

    Seriously, I have been reading Slashdot for awhile and I think that you are missing the point I think most readers get irrate about their anti-competitive business practices not so much the technologies that they produce.

    IMHO-The X-Box does not seem to be vaporware I think you should look up the definition it seems to me you may be mistaken.

    snip-Maturity and a realistic attitude, combined with a real knowledge-snip

    There does not seem to be alot of that going around these days especially when it comes to open and honest debate on the "Microsoft" empire

    PS - My comments are as much a product of a generalized brain and are equally as full of shit as yourself.

  • ...conspiracy of some kind. Or at least, maybe MS already expects other people to port some of the existing emulators over to XBox. Although I don't know much about emulation in general, considering that the thing's supposed to be pretty much like a PC, how hard would it be? And if people are already emulating things on dreamcast... well, I'm sure somebody there has already considered the possiblility. Great reason to buy an X-Box, and MS would have kept their dirty hands out of it...

    Just as an aside, MS really could get by selling X-Box versions of games for other platforms. What if they wrote the emulator, but only made it work with ROMS that they had made? Then they could advertise that their system can play all those playstation games and so on, and not have to worry about entanglement because of illegal ROMs. Not to mention the profit margin in selling already developed games at standard console game prices.
  • Dear all,

    For a public forum supposedly composed of rational intelligent people I am often amazed at the complete naivety and complacency when it comes to politics and philosophy.

    COMMUNISM

    China, Korea, Cuba , Russia etc have nothing to do with Communism. They were NOT communist. Just because someone applies a name/label to their being does not mean they are actually what they claim to be.

    All the above countries have adopted the label of Communism to further their own causes, whatever they may be.

    COMMUNISM is a system which will...

    completely liberate the worlds potential to create wealth for everyone. Capitalism does not create wealth in any real sense. Capitalism does not want to create wealth. It wants to create riches for those whom it serves and not the people of this world in general.....

    You should know by now that the world is not becoming a better place to live in each year....in spite of the giant increases in knowledge we see. None of it gets applied to make the world a better place unless a capitalist can skim a profit from it....great system...

    Communism wants to take knowledge and use it to produce wealth/produce based on the needs of the people.

    You may all be laughing at what I write here, but I bet none of you have ever read up or studied or even considered questioning the capitalist view of communism.

    The world has unlimited potential. It will never realise this potential under a system which rewards exploitation and negative practices, be these practices aimed at people, the environment or the suppression of questioning and reasoning......

    Look at open-source...by no means a model of communism but it is very closely tied. It is the contribution of knowledge to create something for the people and by the people. Just think if this was applied to the world in general...

    And if anyone says it is against human nature then I say that is a more an indication of your own nature than of human nature in general.

    all the best, Guy
  • Your sig says all generalizations are false
    For some reason, last week Slashdot started cutting off the end of my old sig. That was all I could come up with in five minutes that was short enough. :)
    Seriously, I have been reading Slashdot for awhile and I think that you are missing the point I think most readers get irrate about their anti-competitive business practices not so much the technologies that they produce.

    And my point is that for Linux to succeed, we'll have to forget our ethics. Not to be too mean, but only lifelong academics like Stallman can afford to debate the ethics of it all. Like I said in another post from this thread, business users don't give a damn about Microsoft's anticompetitive business practices unless it affects their bottom line. Sad but true. I suppose that being technology enthusiasts, we can afford to debate too. But market share is what we need to succeed, and ethical arguments are all but useless to your boss. Does it work better, cheaper than NT? Tell us how and why. Tell us how it compares in terms of hardware costs. Tell us what the necessary steps and costs are for installation, training, and maintainence. Tell us how compatible it is with our other systems. Tell us what support options are available. Tell us this and tell us that. Don't even mention any ethical shit to your boss unless you're prepared to answer all that and more. In fact, I recommend not mentioning the "free" nature at all. And, God help you, don't mention the GPL. Tell him it's a high-performace, low-cost Unix-like OS that gets very respectable results on low-cost hardware. Tell him it's a big thing and the industry is abuzz and there's more hardware and software support every day. Tell him it has a industry-standard C compiler, support for Java 2, and features the most popular web server in the world. (Leave the more bitter truth for later.) Tell him that IBM, Oracle, and Sun Microsystems have been supporting Linux. And if your boss is more technical, feel free to blab on for hours about finely-grained kernel locking, software RAID, and support for tons of filesystems, et cetera. Just don't give him a blank look and stutter, "Uhh... Bill Gates sucks and, uh, Microsoft is a monopoly, and, uh, Linux is elite and I am an elite hacker, and uh, MP3s and wares."

    Please.

    Usually I'm not so feverent (or I try not to be) but lately I've had the nagging feeling that if Linux is going to "make it" in the business world, we have to get off our asses now. Drop the childish attitudes and just make it happen. For such an intelligent and determined group of people, it shouldn't be as hard as Microsoft would like us to think.

    PS - My comments are as much a product of a generalized brain and are equally as full of shit as yourself.
    I prefer to think that neither of us is too full of shit. :)

    ---------///----------

  • Why would they do this? They want to sell X-boxen... making it outrageously expensive for small development companies to work on the platform will doom it. Even making it moderately expensive to do so would be pushing things; they'll want the cost of developing for the platform to be as low as possible, in order to entice more development for it early on.

    Precisely because of the razor/blade console business model. If third parties can develop and distribute Xbox software without obtaining a license from Microsoft to do so, MS won't get their take form the software sales, and the whole business model goes down the pan.

    Perhaps I misrepresented things though: the price of entry may not be that high (but still high enough that the average bedroom coder won't be able to get a look in), but you'll pay for the right to make and sell the end product.

    One difference I'll grant you with Xbox is that you can easily develop for normal Windows, then port later.

    I imagine something similar happened with the RPG Silver: basically a Final Fantasy-alike, it was developed initially for the PC, but always looked like something that would me more at home on a console. I imagine the PC version, with no development license to pay for, paved the way and attracted investors who funded the port to Dreamcast.
    --

Slashdot Top Deals

"The following is not for the weak of heart or Fundamentalists." -- Dave Barry

Close