Playstation 4 Discussion

[Jason]

I have to question why they own the patent for it then. Large companies don't bother to patent technology they have zero plans to ever use.....

The opposite is mostly true. A lot of large companies (including Sony) file patents for stuff they don't have any immediate or future plans for using. Patent trolls kind of make this a necessity, nowadays. I think we had something like 2100+ patents granted the year I left (120+ in a single year).

The Xbox is more likely to have some sort of used-game blocking before the PS* does, unless Microsoft drops those plans. Physical media is too important at this point, but once one of them does it successfully others will follow.

 

[Carlos]

To make matters worse, Sony has announced their plans to seamlessly port games to the PS4, but have no intention of honoring purchases made on the current iteration of PSN. Its like they are saying "we know you want to play the games you currently own on the next console for us, and you can, if you buy it again". This is actually the most disturbing part of the entire BC issue.

This is where you have me beat in this discussion. Congratulations. I understand how it's perceived, but the thing is...

The emotion engine was the actual processor from the PS2, and only the US version had this chip. They did decide to leave this out to cut down production costs of the console, and then decided to maintain BC through emulation, until they decided to drop that as well. Besides this time they are going from PPC to x86, where there are several excellent porting tools available, which means that developers can port their games with minimal effort and sell them as new, even though you have purchased them before.

That particular BC was limited, though. I remember that very well; Sony said it themselves, the BC will only play certain PS2 games to a point. It wasn't exactly full-on BC.

You want a PS2 emulator? http://pcsx2.net, open source and everything, up for the grabbing. Sony can use it on the PS4, assuming they follow the terms of GPL, i.e. making any improvement available back to the community. They don't even have to pay for it, they just have to make it run on the PS4....

[EDIT: Reply has been moved to two posts below.] I distinctly remember PCSX2... I forgot all about it until you brought it up.

Your ATi vs nVidia comparison is way off, by the way. Its not like you can't play Borderlands 2 on a PC with an ATi card. Heck, with small hacks you can even use it with Phys X features. You can experience some issues with different cards on PC, usually fixed with patches if the developers are serious, ignored if they are just milking the title.

It wasn't a comparision, I was saying that some PC games have some incompatibility. I said this in the last paragraph (quoted below), and I intended to imply it, but you said it exactly what I inferred.

Once again, the systems have different architectures. The PSN games you bought with your PS3 was coded to be played on PS3. You can't just put the pre-existing PS Store on PS4, and expect PS3 games to play flawlessly on PS4, it's the same reason why you don't play a game on PC that was designed for ATI Radeon graphics cards, when you have a Nividia GeForce card in your motherboard. It will create problems. It's common knowledge. Developers have to code the game to work with the cards it's intention of reaching... If they want to reach Nividia cards, it will. If it wants to reach ATI cards... It will.

I was talking about out-of-box compatibility here, which leads into the topic of having the game play natively on the card of choice. I realize and understand that companies can patch the games to be compatible with the graphics card it wants to reach.

The whole point is that in the first place, some PC games don't work with every [present] graphics card. It is up to the developer. But when the developer finds out that some players want compatibility with a particular graphics company, they patch it, and it turns out that the game runs well, "not so perfect." Which degrades player experience in the end.

 

[Forsaken]

This is where you have me beat in this discussion. Congratulations. I understand how it's perceived, but the thing is...

That particular BC was limited, though. I remember that very well; Sony said it themselves, the BC will only play certain PS2 games to a point. It wasn't exactly full-on BC.

The problem here is that PCSX2 was released around the time PS3 was about to be revealed, therefore, it would have been too late to implement it into PS3. I distinctly remember PCSX2, but it was new at the time... I forgot all about it until you brought it up.

It wasn't a comparision, I was saying that some PC games have some incompatibility. I said this in the last sentence, and I intended to imply it, but you said it exactly what I inferred.

PCSX2 has been in development since 2001, 5 years before PS3.

It did become much more stable around 2006, however it has been in development for quite a while.

Also believing that Sony couldn't support backwards compatibility through emulation is complete bull. They've got a massive head start on any of the third party emulators, because they don't have to reverse engineer anything.

 

[Jason]

You want a PS2 emulator? http://pcsx2.net, open source and everything, up for the grabbing. Sony can use it on the PS4, assuming they follow the terms of GPL, i.e. making any improvement available back to the community. They don't even have to pay for it, they just have to make it run on the PS4.....

That'll never happen. Using GPL'd code in a commercial product is more complex than that.

If you distribute an application, and use code licensed under the GPL as part of that application (even if you're only linking to a library at run-time), and even you don't change a single line of the GPL'd code, you must make the source of your application available to licensed users of it. That doesn't mean you have to offer it up for download. You could send a photocopy listing instead, but you can't escape that obligation. Simply using the API of the PCSX2 module would make it a derived work, so everything would fall under the GPL. That makes it a no-go for something like the PS4.

Anyway, until June (more specifically E3) nothing is all that concrete. No native BC is mostly a cost cutting call (and believe it, or not, it's not that important to a majority of users). Consoles already sell at a loss.

 

[Carlos]

PCSX2 has been in development since 2001, 5 years before PS3.

Development. It was released in 2002. I'm looking at the wikipedia right now. However, it was not perfect until 2006, which goes in line with what I thought.

Also believing that Sony couldn't support backwards compatibility through emulation is complete bull. They've got a massive head start on any of the third party emulators, because they don't have to reverse engineer anything.

The emulation in the PS3 was limited when they changed from physical BC to emulation BC. Telling me that Sony is pretty slow at finding the best technology to work with... with regard to... BC.

Going back and editing nao.

That'll never happen. Using GPL'd code in a commercial product is more complex than that.

If you distribute an application, and use code licensed under the GPL as part of that application (even if you're only linking to a library at run-time), and even you don't change a single line of the GPL'd code, you must make the source of your application available to licensed users of it. That doesn't mean you have to offer it up for download. You could send a photocopy listing instead, but you can't escape that obligation. Simply using the API of the PCSX2 module would make it a derived work, so everything would fall under the GPL. That makes it a no-go for something like the PS4.

This is also a point I wanted to touch on. There's legal bases that could erupt into a full-blown lawsuit, which I don't think Sony wants. Glad someone else came forward with this thought.

Anyway, until June (more specifically E3) nothing is all that concrete. No native BC is mostly a cost cutting call (and believe it, or not, it's not that important to a majority of users). Consoles already sell at a loss.

Another excellent point, but I think Mangus (and maybe others) already knows this.

 

[MagnusB]

That'll never happen. Using GPL'd code in a commercial product is more complex than that.

You can do it, though it might not be clear cut. Its also kinda beside the point, my point was that emulation isn't impossible. My problem isn't that they are cutting BC, but that they are planning to re release most, if not all, PS3 titles on the PS4 and make you buy them again, regardless of you having bought them before. That seems a bit beyond cost cutting.

This is where you have me beat in this discussion. Congratulations. I understand how it's perceived, but the thing is...

That particular BC was limited, though. I remember that very well; Sony said it themselves, the BC will only play certain PS2 games to a point. It wasn't exactly full-on BC.

It wasn't a comparision, I was saying that some PC games have some incompatibility. I said this in the last paragraph (quoted below), and I intended to imply it, but you said it exactly what I inferred.

I was talking about out-of-box compatibility here, which leads into the topic of having the game play natively on the card of choice. I realize and understand that companies can patch the games to be compatible with the graphics card it wants to reach.

The whole point is that in the first place, some PC games don't work with every [present] graphics card. It is up to the developer. But when the developer finds out that some players want compatibility with a particular graphics company, they patch it, and it turns out that the game runs well, "not so perfect." Which degrades player experience in the end.

You are comparing Apples with Oranges. PC hardware is by nature varied, so sometimes there are issues with some hardware configurations. If a developer only targets one vendor, it is almost commercial suicide, particularly since nVidia has about 50 - 60% of the market and ATi has 30 -40% of the market. Besides, you are ignoring the fact that even though Sony is not planning any BC, they are intending to offer you most of your currently owned titles, if you pay them, again. This is what most people (or at least I am) pretty PO'ed about.

 

[Jason]

You can do it, though it might not be clear cut. Its also kinda beside the point, my point was that emulation isn't impossible. My problem isn't that they are cutting BC, but that they are planning to re release most, if not all, PS3 titles on the PS4 and make you buy them again, regardless of you having bought them before. That seems a bit beyond cost cutting.

Sure, you can do it (and Sony already does [1] -- Tim Bird has spent a lot of time working on behalf of the embedded community to improve Linux and support GPL compliance), but it'll never happen with something like the PS4. There's a difference between building your application around GPL'd software (e.g., writing a wrapping layer), and using it in derivative way.

Sony, from my experience working there, avoids using GPL'd software in its proprietary products. There's been quite a few instances where we've had to do clean-room re-engineering of such software because they wanted to avoid the licensing issues. The GPL software that does get used, such as the Linux kernel, have a long history of no GPL enforcement.

Anyway back on topic...

If they do charge, it'll likely be to recuperate costs poured into the porting effort. After all, game sales are how they make money from any of this (not console sales -- they actually lose money with those). That said, I wouldn't read too much into anything at this point, they've kinda jumped the gun on this announcement (there's not a whole lot that's concrete atm), to the point they're almost overpromising.

[1] https://products.sel.sony.com/opensource/

 

[MagnusB]

The GPL software that does get used, such as the Linux kernel, have a long history of no GPL enforcement.

Linus Torvalds have clearly stated that the only reason he want for GPL was that he wanted any improvement made on Linux to be given back to the community (or I think his words were "me"). IIRC, it was originally licensed under a custom license, but then he went for GPLv2, cause that suited his needs. Its only FSF that are religious about it, most people retain their own copyright and are able to manage the license them self, they use GPL because they want improvements back, not to force you to make your application GPL.

As for recouping costs, if I am not mistaken there is a tool available that makes it very easy to port from PPC to x86, what Apple used when they went for Intel. Can't for the life of me remember what it was called or who made it though. And if I understand their plans for Gaikai right, they won't actually do any porting. And you are right, they blew it with the announcement. I think they were trying a strategy that backfired, instead of generating allot of hype.