PS3: The Ultimate Emulation Machine?

[racketboy]

Sony Opens Up Homebrew
http://www.racketboy.com/retro/2006/05/ ... haven.html

Some potential there???
Will it backfire?

Digg It:
http://digg.com/gaming/The_PS3_To_Be_Th ... e_Console_

[Ivo]

But for now, just potential.


On the emulation front:

If Nintendo make their moves properly with the Wii's Virtual Console, you would have roughly $400 free to pay micro-payments on old games 100% LEGALLY before you would consider getting a PS3 and having what I assume has to be greater hassle on getting homebrew emulators and ROMs...
Considering that said old games will be available again by the Wii, one can't really justify the ethics of not hurting anyone if you "pirate" a game that is not for sale anymore (and if what you need to pay is small enough, I expect most people won't be "tempted" enough to be on the wrong side of the ethical debate).
As to properly emulating Saturn and DC (which the Wii doubtfully will be able to), I think again considering the price tag of $600 you'd just get an old-fashioned collection of the real thing.


As far as homebrew:

I don't see how whatever would be available to the PS3 wouldn't also be ported open source to run in PC machines or something, but I might be wrong there; it's not like anyone will be spending the money needed to create a "next-gen" title to do justice to the PS3 power and giving it away for free.


My Conclusions: A good turn of events as it has potential. However I see it as a small bonus to whoever gets a PS3. Those who will get one, will surely either do it because of the Blu-Ray drive or because they really enjoy cutting edge graphics in their games. Not exactly an overlap with the crew that cares about retrogaming, is it?

Ivo.

[racketboy]

Yeah, I personally would say that you either need to own the original game if you're going to emulate it unless possibly it is not availible for sale either by legal means that benefit the publishers such as XBLA, Virtual Console, or maybe even GameTap.

So don't take my post as encouraging piracy, but its just showing the potential.

Also, like I said at the post, it's not worth the price of the PS3, but down the road when its cheaper, it may be an option for cheapskate retrogamers.

[grittykitty]

from what i remember, the dreamcast can run linux right? (slowly?) was it possible to run any games or emulators via that?

[racketboy]

from what i remember, the dreamcast can run linux right? (slowly?) was it possible to run any games or emulators via that?

It can yes. Not very many people used it though as it was rather slow and cumbersome.
You could probably run some emulators on it, but again it was slow and you were better off making native Dreamcast emulators.

[lordofduct]

Personally that is the first time this generation Sony made me raise my brow in a good way. It certainly isn't a feature that will sell consoles to the masses as most people have no idea what homebrew, dev station or Linux means. And as someone already pointed out, wouldn't even know where to find this software once people started developing homebrew for the thing. (I still know people who ask me all kinds of questions about XBOX... offer me lots of money to mod their system and put all kinds of software on it. I look at them and say... "Why, you know you can get all of that yourself for FREE!"... minus the fee of the mod chip itself).

The drive to make me want to buy a PS3 due to this kit personally doesn't weigh on the price anymore. It would weigh on the homebrew scene and what they pump out. Though I wonder what Sony will do about copyright protection cause this certainly opens a lot of doors for making it easier to hack the console... I'd assume.

[ducktapevoodoo]

with linux on the system all kinds of security info about the optical drives and such could be dumped without even having to open the console

[gord]

i think it should be noted that the ps3 hardware isn't exsacly ideal for developing emulators on, only the central PPE will be usefull (as the others rely on floating point math to achive their high speeds, add to that the fact that the PPE is based on PowerPC you end up with a system that is essentialy 'forign' to most emulators, ie: dynamic recomplation can't just be ported from the pc code (the Xbox uses a x86 based processor), so im gonna guess that in most cases an interperator will just be used, which is fine for snes emulation and the like but causes problems as you move foward into n64 and higher.

[lordofduct]

So your saying there aren't any people out there that know how to code outside of the x86 based chips?

I find that highly doubtful. As for the floating point math dealy... I don't know what goes into emulating hardware so I don't know if FP math is useless.

[Mega-Dan]

If I had to choose only between the PS3 and the Xbox360, excluding the Wii and the PS3's crazy price point, I think there is no contest between these two systems from what I have seen, the PS3 is the clear winner.
I decided this before I knew about this homebrew issue, but this is just the icing on the cake! The xbox360 has the least innovative controller of all the next gen systems, no motion sensitive stuff at all and its very expensive $70 bucks for the wireless pad with rechargable battery! Also the Xbox 360 seems to not be able to produce as high quality graphics, and since they sold the core system any game coming out for the system cannot rely on the owner having a hard drive which cripples its usefulness.
However, the PS3 can have an awesome media player, emulators, better graphics, a decent controller, a full fledged operating system (linux), a hard drive, a pretty nifty wireless motion sensing controller and you can use it from the comfort of your couch and it integrates with your stereo. Thats not bad, though I am not going to run out and buy one. The $600 dollar price tag is crazy, I wish they didnt make a blueray player, I think thats unecessary, but its probably a good long run strategy three years down the road.
Honestly, I think the xbox360 will be this generations dreamcast, first to market, underpowered, easy to pirate games on without a modchip, with a controller that seems outdated and weak compared to its competitors and very very white.
I am getting a Wii, at $200 why not? If only just to play wario ware, duckhunt and gumshoe again. The fact that it might be able to actually play N64 games at full speed is just more icing on the cake. Hopefull it encourages translations of some old RPGs.for the SNES or something, I hope this encourages some old games that were never brought over to be brought here like the fire emblem games.
My guess is they didnt have any virtual console or xbox arcade style thing happening because they didnt think it was important for whatever reason, remember these are the guys that said SNK couldnt release Metal Slug 3 for Playstation 2, they have no appreciation for retrogamming. However now they realized that this is a big market and they messed up, so they are sabatoging the competition by allowing homebrew (ie: emulators) which will play for free all these games everybody else dumped money into these secure systems to download legal games through. I think from a business stand point its a good idea, but its really cheesy in a way, Sony just never saw the potential in retro gaming and now they are sabatoging other companies efforts to profit from it. And you know what, I may buy a PS3 because it will allow me to play perfect emulators, sue me, but I dont feel like paying 15 bucks for a N64 game like nintendo virtual console is charging or $20 bucks for street fighter 2 like xbox live is charging, those are crazy prices for really old games, you can get new used games for that!
I also heard they will limit the SDK for the PS3 homebrew, meaning the homebrew community wont have access to all the features of the PS3, so they cant access the blueray drive driver, inner workings of the 3d card etc, keeping the device theoretically secure.