Emulation Arrives On the PS3 169
YokimaSun writes "Following the recent exploit that allows you to jailbreak your PS3, the homebrew community have now breached the console with the first homebrew game, which is the classic Pong. Also released is the first emulator for the system in the shape of a SNES Emulator great for those 16-bit games. Finally drk||Raziel, the coder of the Dreamcast Emulator NullDC, has posted screenshots of his Dreamcast emulator working on the PS3 (albeit at a very early stage). The PS3 is building up to be the Dream Console for emulation."
Dare I say it? (Score:3, Interesting)
I would think that the ability to run linux *again* might be of more interest here on /.
Having to crack a console to get functionality back sounds like a joke but I suspect few are laughing.
To get back to the topic at hand, given John Carmac's view of the PS3 architecture, it's likely that porting emulators for the more modern consoles (i.e., those that require 3D accelleration) may be a lot more trouble than it was for, say, the original Xbox.
John: I never liked the Cell architecture. You can get high peak numbers out of it, but software development time matters a lot, and not having caches and virtual memory makes development take a lot longer, especially for the majority of applications that don't fit neatly into the DMA pipeline model.
From http://www.tomshardware.com/news/ps3-playstation-3-linux-john-carmack,10035.html [tomshardware.com]
Re:XBMC? (Score:3, Interesting)
I CAN HAS XBMC FOR THE PS3?
Your delivery was child like but the question is valid.
What I want most for PS3 is XBMC. I have a PS3, O!Play and an original XBOX.
XBox - w/ XBMC best return on investment ever. Getting long in the tooth as it won't play 1080p.
O!Play - GUI is pathetic and controls are terrible. Although it plays 1080p no problem and I haven't had a format problem yet.
PS3 - GUI is OK, BT remote is great and it supports most formats... but doesn't support CIFs. UPnP is the biggest waste of time IMO and the reason I hate PS3 as a media center.
Now that the PS3 is cracked wide open I'd like to hear technical reasons why XBMC can/cannot run on PS3. The PS3 is net 0 cost to me at this point and I won't want to upgrade the O!Play to a Zotac MAG... how long should I expect to hold out?
Great! But... (Score:2, Interesting)
Already blocked by a new firmware update [slashdot.org].
So we're still stuck with the choice of running either PS3 games or homebrew, but not both.
Re:Could be tricky (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Well, is this a good thing? (Score:3, Interesting)
In practice and in my experience, it does. Examples: On the Xbox1, after the ripped SDK became the defacto homebrew platform, OpenXDK never took off. On the Wii, after libogc became the defacto homebrew platform (while its author hid the fact that most of it was decompiled from the Nintendo SDK, which came to light when it was too late), nobody cared to make a legal replacement.
Once people become accustomed to using inherently illegal but convenient software, it is extremely hard to gather support to build a legal alternative. It's just too easy to keep things as they are instead of starting over from scratch.
Re:Give Us Back Linux (Score:3, Interesting)
I disagree with Sony that the negative effects would outweigh the positive effects. However, if any developer could write a game that could play on PS3, using Linux with full access to PPC, SPUs and RSX (all the PS3 HW), they could indeed write games that any PS3 owner could get and play. Those games would directly compete with Sony-licensed games, but without paying Sony a license, and without paying for a Sony development environment. So Sony would not get any revenue from those games, which is where all their profit comes from (the console is sold at a loss). And it would make it harder for Sony to negotiate with even big developers, like EA and movie studios like Lucas (though maybe just those a little smaller than that), to get license money for "the real thing", when they could threaten to do it the free way instead. So I see why Sony wants to lock every game into licensing.
However, that explosion in games would sell a lot more consoles. Not just to developers and hackers, but to people playing all those other games. It would drive down game prices, especially with free games competing. But cheaper games would sell many more copies. Overall I expect that the bigger share of the platform market and the overwhelming number of games ("something for everyone, no matter how lame") would mean more licensed games sold, even if a much smaller slice of a much, much bigger pie. But Sony is a company that loves "premiums", so I don't think Sony's execs see it that way. Especially since Sony is a record label and movie studio, which means it's a big part of the RIAA and MPAA crusades against openness, so its corporate culture has talked itself into the value of DRM and exclusion despite repeated lessons to the contrary.
I don't have statistical studies of anything to demonstrate that opening the platform would grow Sony's profits rather than shrink them. Sony doesn't have actual data to the contrary, either. So it's my gut feeling against Sony's, and Sony's of course wins. But it does seem to be losing lots of important battles, and overall the war. Maybe eventually some kind of desperation will get Sony to change course. Like if a really definitive crack showed openness is easier, while closedness is much harder and doesn't save that much anymore. Maybe this crack, or the next one following up on it, are the ones.
Re:Well, is this a good thing? (Score:3, Interesting)
People, this is the wrong way to go. It will just end up like the Xbox1, whose homebrew scene was underground (except for linux-based stuff). Not a good plan.
It worked out GREAT on Xbox. Nobody ever got in trouble for using the SDK and yet XPort and Team XBMC were able to release a significant volume of software and keep it updated. I do think Sony is more assholish than Microsoft Entertainment, though; they might actually stoop to suing their customers. They know there's plenty of Sony fanboys out there to take their place in line to buy a PSn.
Plus, nobody really knows how Sony's software ecosystem works yet. For all we know, at one point, all users who have ever installed a homebrew pkg (even if they update later) will have their consoles permanently banned from PSN.
Early adopters will suffer. Those of us who will only buy a PS3 when they are outdated rejoice. I won't care if the console is banned from PSN when the PS4 is out and PS3-game servers are getting turned off... and it will come to pass.
Re:Well, is this a good thing? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:They already do (Score:1, Interesting)
One other reason PS2 emulation is not 'top notch' yet is simple. Because the people who can write these sorts of things (ie the good emu guys) do not even want to touch it. They get TONS of junk email of 'emulate xyz game pluuueze'. Day in and day out. People randomly harassing them on boards because some random game is not pixel perfect yet. So the sort of people who could write a ps2 emu dont not work on it at all. There are tons of other kinds of emus without the grief.
One day we will see a full software stack PS2. But not for say 10 years. Not because the hardware isnt up to it. But because it just simply too recent of a machine.
When MAME guys gets around to making system246 style hardware work decently. Then we will see better PS2 emulators. They have deliberately stayed away from it for this very reason.
http://www.system16.com/hardware.php?id=543 [system16.com]
http://www.system16.com/hardware.php?id=831 [system16.com]
http://www.system16.com/hardware.php?id=586 [system16.com]
http://www.system16.com/hardware.php?id=802 [system16.com]
Re:Well, is this a good thing? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Well, is this a good thing? (Score:3, Interesting)
Yup, similarly to the DS homebrew scene. IIRC the libdns homebrew library had parts which were ripped of the original nintendo SDK... of course people just turned a blind eye on that
It's a subject of some debate. The Xbox homebrew scene, as I understand it, used files directly copied from a leaked Xbox SDK. libnds uses some code that is more or less directly translated from disassembled DS SDK code (though you can get most of the same code from dumped games anyway); some feel that this is morally / legally equivalent to just copying the files.