"Developers worried about surviving next gen. - Latest EDGE"

[jvd]

Please tell me you don't actually believe that.

Even when the emulation is done in hardware, a-la PS2, you don't get 100% automatic backwards compatibility. The Revolution will have to use software emulation, which is exactly what the xbox 360 is using, and they will run into the exact same problems. That is, it is virtually impossible to write an emulator that works on every single game.

I think you can count on every single game requiring custom coding to get it to work.

All this will be done by nintendo not the other companys .

Also remember that we are talking about nintendo using a console around xbox 360s power to emulate a nintendo and a super nintendo.

Ms is using an xbox 360 to emulate an xbox . Huge diffrence between the two .

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Please tell me you don't actually believe that.

Yes I do.

Even when the emulation is done in hardware, a-la PS2, you don't get 100% automatic backwards compatibility

Actually you did. A few titles didn't work but on the whole you'd grab a PS1 game and put it in your PS2 and it played.

I think you can count on every single game requiring custom coding to get it to work.

PS2 didn't need individual code for every PS1 game to run them. Neither does my PC need individual code for every Spectrum game if I run a Spectrum emulator.

There may well be a few titles that don't work, but I expect the majority to. And even then, it's Nintendo that are doing the emulation. As far as the developers are concerned, they take they're old NES/SNES games and say to Nintendo 'hey, sell this' and Nintendo sell it. Whereas if a developer wrote an arcade classic like Joust that they want to sell over Live Arcade, they either need to rewrite it for the hardware or write an emulator. Hence the whole argument Arcade and Rev's option are different in that one requires some work for the game dev, and the other doesn't.

 

[OtakingGX]

Please tell me you don't actually believe that.

Even when the emulation is done in hardware, a-la PS2, you don't get 100% automatic backwards compatibility. The Revolution will have to use software emulation, which is exactly what the xbox 360 is using, and they will run into the exact same problems. That is, it is virtually impossible to write an emulator that works on every single game.

I think you can count on every single game requiring custom coding to get it to work.

Well, a widely popular NES emulator for PC supports almost every NES game out there and is 87KB in size. I know it doesn't work with Paperboy, but that's the only game I'm sure doesn't work with it.

The thing about Xbox 360 emulation is that you have to emulate the old arcade machine and package that code into the game you download. The other option is to roll a hardware emulator into the console, then let users download games that work with it. Having access to the source and not just ripping ROMs will also allow them to tweak games that don't work. Super Dodgeball without the flickers, yay!

 

[fearsomepirate]

Atari doesn't exist anymore. It was split up and sold to other companys . Who knows who still owns the rights to the system names .

Atari was big enough and important enough that it didn't get lost in the shuffle. It got split up once (into Atari Games, which did video games, and Atari Corp, which did computers). Games later got sold to Time Warner, who sold it to WMS, which merged with JTS, who later sold all the assets to Hasbro, who sold their Interactive division to Infogrames, who still owns them, as many "abandonware" purveyors have discovered.

After all, manufacturing all those Atari Flashback-style systems would be a ridiculously risky move if they weren't sure they owned all the rights. Most of the games everyone knows and loves from the pre-NES era were either published by Mattel, Atari, and Activision, none of whom vanished into the void with the rights to their IP lost forever. So maybe it's hard to figure out who owns the rights to Demon Attack, but Infogrames owns the rights to Yar's Revenge and Asteroids.

http://home.hiwaay.net/~lkseitz/cvg/nexus/features/lists/atariassets.shtml

It's probably a little easier to write an emulator when you designed the machine yourselves and hopefully still have all the docs. And if a game doesn't work, it's probably easier to tweak the emulator than the game.

So all the games from the nes and supernes era can't be ported to xbox arcade.

The fact is this statement is false. Square has put FF V and VI on non-Nintendo consoles, and there were numerous cross-platform games from the 16-bit era. So "all games can't be ported" is not true, because I can find counterexamples.

 

[Synergy34]

Correct me if I'm wrong but doesn't the PS2 basicly have a PSone on a chip to run games? Or something to that effect? I never really thought of the PS2 using straight software emulation to be backwards compatible.

 

[see colon]

The fact is this statement is false. Square has put FF V and VI on non-Nintendo consoles, and there were numerous cross-platform games from the 16-bit era. So "all games can't be ported" is not true, because I can find counterexamples.

those weren't straight ports or emulation, though. and that's where the difference lies. in fact, i've never seen a collection of (s)NES games sold for a non-nintendo system (legaly) except for a konami collection. i don't know how nintendo's licensing worked back then, but i know atari/tengen accused nintendo of monopolistic tactics. also, when nintendo and the FBI busted radica for selling a plug and play NES emulator and roms i never saw any suits filed by other publishers/developers even though their content was included in the package. maybe they just didn't care enough about the old games, or were trying to avoid any bad publicity. or maybe nintendo has a claim to those titles somehow.

 

[Powderkeg]

All this will be done by nintendo not the other companys .

You sure about that? Somehow I doubt Nintendo has the desire to work on emulating all of those thousands of games for free.

Also remember that we are talking about nintendo using a console around xbox 360s power to emulate a nintendo and a super nintendo.

Have you ever heard of Bleem? Impressive emulator, but even after the years of development that's gone into it it still can't emulate the full NES game lineup flawlessly, much less do the NES, SNES, N64, and GCN.

Ms is using an xbox 360 to emulate an xbox . Huge diffrence between the two .

Yeah, MS is only emulating a single system, not 4.

 

[Teasy]

You sure about that? Somehow I doubt Nintendo has the desire to work on emulating all of those thousands of games for free.

They don't need to emulate every game individually. High level emulation isn't needed to emulate a SNES on the kind of hardware Revolution will be equiped with (especially when the people making it know everything there is to know about the system).

BTW ZSNES emulates every single SNES game I can throw at it, and I have over 800 SNES games.

 

[dopefishzzz]

I think is because of 2 main reasons.

1- No need to do HD content.

2-There is much more room for inavation, as long as a dev make innoavtive games that people want to try the gfx are not so important like in a game that brings very little inovation.

I don't think a game in HD would cost more to produce.

You use higher resolution textures and UP the resolution <-- don't cost a dim.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Yeah, MS is only emulating a single system, not 4.

So...what...Joust was written for the XBox in 1982 was it? And Gauntlet is an XB native game too, right? To play these games either they've been rewritten for Xbox hardware, or they're running on an emulator. The same with any legacy game being made available over Live! Arcade. For each different game or hardware the developer will need to provide the emulation. Hence for anyone wanting to release an old classic on XB360 through Live! Arcade, they going to need to do some work writing code.

For anyone wanting to release a Nintendo console legacy game on Revolution, they can just do so, because Nintendo are supplying the emulation.

To release a legacy game on Live! Arcade, you need to spend some money on development. To release your old Nintendo game on Revolution, you don't. I don't see why some people are having such a hard time understanding this!

 

[pc999]

You use higher resolution textures and UP the resolution <-- don't cost a dim.

Making higher rez textures costs more, and they probably can make the game with less poligons (eg lower rex normal maps), this would increase the cost by itself.