As expected. So as Phil Spencer describes, they appear to the XB1 system as XB1 games. Thus they need to be in an XB1 package. I've no idea what that entails, but it clearly requires a chock load of data. Perhaps the data is encrypted differently or something? The bloat is curious, but I don't see it as reason to think the PR is lying about the implementation.
The implementation of PS Now beta is able to present any game available within PS Now on the PS4's dashboard so that it appears just like any other PS4 game or app. Effectively it's a shortcut to a game within the environment and selecting to play any such game just bypasses the entire PS Now UI and starts the game. It's completely transparent and this approach could work just as well within in a single emulator application environment. Every game you install just appears on the dash and, like any other game that you need the disc to play, you get prompted to insert the disc.
I think the mostly likely reason for Microsoft's current approach is not that it's not
desirable to have it work like this, but that it's
necessary. I.e. emulating three multi-threaded 3.2Ghz PowerPC cores on seven 1.6Ghz Jaguar cores in in realtime is impressive even using modern emulation techniques. I think - at least for now - Microsoft are unable to offer a single emulator that just runs all games and that the tweaking process they refer too is critical for performance.
True enough. I remember Jak & Daxter not working, though it was kind of a no-brainer, being one of the games that went to extreme lengths to exploit performance gains by using the EE&GS in unique exotic ways. From this point of view, it's of course frustrating, because these games required some form of patching, which if I remember correctly, at least made it more or less playable.
I think the significant detail, which you said in your previously post, is it isn't the games that required patching but the firmware, i.e. the emulator itself. This is the convention for computer, console and game system emulators. Somebody writes the emulator and the emulator evolves and compatibility and like-for-like performance improves, new versions of the emulator are released.
I am curious if Microsoft will be updating their 360 game packages for Xbox One and whether they are roll out minor delta updates.
I think one of the main problems with BC in regards to PS3 is that they never could really emulate the GS - a basic rasterizer with huge bandwidth. Even with a much more complex GPU with dedicated hardware, it's difficult, if not next to impossible to emulate it. How well that in the end can be achieved, depends on how the software was written for it.
The aspect of the GS that makes it challenging to emulate is the 2,560-bit internal bus. I'm sure I've told this story before but I'll tell it again. Back in 1998/99 I was on a secondment to the UK's Department of Trade & Industry (the Government Department that deals with commerce issues) which was home to the Export Control Organisation (ECO). The ECO is a regulator that controls the export of strategic goods (like military equipment), dual-use goods (like advanced manufacturing equipment) and advanced technology (like high-grade cryptography and supercomputers). Some things need licence before they can be exported (or indeed now, traded between overseas countries) because of their inherent opportunity for mis-use.
We received an enquiry for Sony Europe about this new supercomputer technology they had and wanted to come and talk to us about so they could work how they could manage exports of a new product between EU Member States. They came in and told us the product was the "successor to the PlayStation" and they believed it was classified as supercomputer under EU Dual-Use regulations (the EU's law). Bear in mind, this was before Sony had announced PlayStation 2. We were sceptical of course but the Sony guys explained that the internal bus was 2,560 bits wide and operated at whatever frequency and the EU had a definition on supercomputers that includes a threshold for data throughput of about half that the bandwidth of the GS. We some spent time on this and eventually concludes that it wasn't a supercomputer because the bandwidth was not user addressable - i.e. it was high bandwidth but limited in use case scenarios.
I assume Sony had similar discussions with other regulators and I recall the
press story that was carried in many places that Iraq's Suddam Hussein was planning to build a super computer comprised of networked PS2s.
As a PlayStation owner it was utterly cool to know that PS2 was coming but awful that I couldn't tell anybody about it. My most relevant claim to non-fame thanks to the Official Secrets Act. Thanks, Government
The potential financial gains is a separate issue and seemingly not the only reason for Sony's participating in Blu-ray. Imo their level of err... vestedness regardless of the nature was clearly so high that a digital only PS3 (even one version) was simply out of the question. You seem to downplay its inclusion in PS3 as just a reason Sony was visible with Blu-ray, but they went to great lengths to include it in.
Actually, the financial return is 100% entirely the reason Sony (and most other companies) develop products. Cast your mind back to the launch period for PS3 where the prevailing view, which you can find with minimal googling, is that PS3 was
Sony's Blu-ray Trojan Horse and Google shows
84,200 similar results. The anti-Sony narrative was Sony would do almost anything to make Blu-ray succeed and "
destroy HD-DVD" (573,000 Google results), oblivious that Sony was one of a large number of companies with similar interests and not the company with the largest financial gain from Blu-ray were it to become popular.
However if you have evidence, or even a theory, as to Sony's pursuance of Blu-ray as a standard that isn't related to financial return I'd like to see/hear it.
It's inclusion in PS3 alone shows their large commitment to it. PS3 was late and too expensive, this was mainly do to Blu-ray.
Actually not true if you ignore the rabid internet and actually look at attributable press statements. There was diode production problems that pushed PS3 back a few months but the principle reason for PS3 being as far behind 360's launch were due to
Nvidia and RSX.
Let's not allow internet fanboyism to rewrite history or the 2006/07 Sony vitriol to distort reality.