Sony Is Using an Open-Source Emulator for PlayStation Classic

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Kotaku has revealed that the PlayStation Classic, which an editor calls “a bare-bones experience,” utilizes open-source emulator PCSX ReARMed, a fork of PCSX-Reloaded (the main version of PCSX from 2000). Some are calling Sony lazy for not developing an official emulator, while others say this is ironic due to past history: the Japanese giant sued Bleem! in 1999, which went out of business due to the cost of legal fees.

Some commentators have already attacked Sony for "laziness" by piggybacking off the work of the open source community rather than coding a new "official" emulator for this new release. But Video Game History Foundation Founder Frank Cifaldi instead sees the move as "an acknowledgement that an 'amateur' emulator can be just as valid as an 'official' one (and they're usually better!)... I've seen people complaining that they're buying something that's free, but what the heck alternative is there?
 
If Sony wanted to double down douche this they'd then turn around and try to DMCA the open-source projects, forcing everyone to buy the packaged version.
 
They should open source emulate on PC then, I mean they have a virtual store so they could easily Sega that shit and create a game that allows games to be downloaded as dlc.
 
sony, still up to your shenanigans i see.
you make me sad that i caved and bought your product after a lengthy refusal to do so.
 
If you are going to use PCSX, why not go the extra mile and use some plugins and give an "HD" option.

Just using bilenar filtering, some AA and custom resolutions would do wonders.
 
I dont understand corporations anymore. this makes no sense (except monetary) what so ever.

sony has all the necessary tech and engineers to make the best damn psx classic ever. but instead of actually spending the minuscule amount of money and man power to make one they cheap out to the point of ridiculous and make at best, a childs project and box it up in a ok looking case. and call it good?

what happened to corporate pride, being a industry leader and adding value to the brand.

i guess even if you have the ways and means to do something properly you just say screw it and do it the cheapest damn way possible to make a buck. I mean really how much could they have really saved in doing this? maybe a couple 100 thousand? and i feel thats an over estimate. just dont understand.

If this is how they are doing all their hardware these days, then its no wonder the sony name has become so tarnished throughout the various industries.
 
Of course it makes sense, no dev costs, and pure profit. That's all corps are about.
 
chaos4u said:
I dont understand corporations anymore. this makes no sense (except monetary) what so ever.

sony has all the necessary tech and engineers to make the best damn psx classic ever. but instead of actually spending the minuscule amount of money and man power to make one they cheap out to the point of ridiculous and make at best, a childs project and box it up in a ok looking case. and call it good?

what happened to corporate pride, being a industry leader and adding value to the brand.

i guess even if you have the ways and means to do something properly you just say screw it and do it the cheapest damn way possible to make a buck. I mean really how much could they have really saved in doing this? maybe a couple 100 thousand? and i feel thats an over estimate. just dont understand.

If this is how they are doing all their hardware these days, then its no wonder the sony name has become so tarnished throughout the various industries.
Click to expand...

It makes perfect sense.

Why would Sony make an investment, to basically manufacture a console from the ground up just to have proprietary hardware and software to run some PSX games, when they can use off the shelf components, pre-existing software, and then only have to package it? Most end users will give zero fucks about Sony's "pride" in developing a product, and it'd just drive costs up for Sony and the consumer. That would be the opposite of adding value to the brand. A couple hundred thousand is what you think it could cost to develop this from scratch? That wouldn't even cover the cost of paying a small 5 person team to develop it over the course of a year. Hell, just the injection molds alone for the case can cost tens of thousands of dollars(that's after everything else is done, and odds are you'd want more than one mold). The idea of doing this for a couple hundred grand is hilarious when you can look up kickstarters like the smachz and such, that after a couple hundred thousand dollars still don't even have the case in a state that they could manufacture and sell, let alone the electronics and software.

As far as this being a child's project, that's not relevant. Similar comments were made about the NES and SNES mini consoles. No one buying these things gives a shit that they could get buy a kit, solder some components, load some software on it, download roms, or anything else. They just want a plug and play nostalgia experience, and Sony is doing the sensible thing by filling that gap(as minor as it may be) in the market with a product to sell.
 
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Merc1138 said:
It makes perfect sense.

.
Click to expand...


I dont know ... this is sony we are talking about they should have every thing they pretty much need to make this . at least in my mind . because they are um sony .

but i guess things dont really work that way, they can output hundreds of thousands of tvs, laptops, cameras, and thousands of other doohickeys.

but somehow they cant make a miniature psx ... i really dont get it regardless of the supposed obvious logic . why dont i get it ?? Because they own and manufacture everything to make a psx!!!!!


sure its cheaper and im not taking away anything from pcsx its a great piece of software, however im pretty sure a halfassed attempt by sony to remake the psx would have bested it.

but to paraphrase you , no one really gives a crap . and to me this is what troubles me about the whole affair. the whole lack of effort of sonys part is just appalling.

i guess for some reason, in the back of my head i still held some regard for sonys engineering abilities. i guess that was misplaced.


on another note i wonder which bios rom they are using in it ? could it be a custom rom from sony or did they cheap out on that too, and torrent one of the preexisting ones.

i wouldn't be surprised if it was the latter.
 
chaos4u said:
I dont know ... this is sony we are talking about they should have every thing they pretty much need to make this . at least in my mind . because they are um sony .

but i guess things dont really work that way, they can output hundreds of thousands of tvs, laptops, cameras, and thousands of other doohickeys.

but somehow they cant make a miniature psx ... i really dont get it regardless of the supposed obvious logic . why dont i get it ?? Because they own and manufacture everything to make a psx!!!!!


sure its cheaper and im not taking away anything from pcsx its a great piece of software, however im pretty sure a halfassed attempt by sony to remake the psx would have bested it.

but to paraphrase you , no one really gives a crap . and to me this is what troubles me about the whole affair. the whole lack of effort of sonys part is just appalling.

i guess for some reason, in the back of my head i still held some regard for sonys engineering abilities. i guess that was misplaced.


on another note i wonder which bios rom they are using in it ? could it be a custom rom from sony or did they cheap out on that too, and torrent one of the preexisting ones.

i wouldn't be surprised if it was the latter.
Click to expand...

Miniaturizing a PSX is not free.

Assuming they could just shrink the thing and eliminate the optical drive(that's like $5 worth of components if that? But the reason is because of the massive volume those are manufactured in), you're still going to need to pay people to design a smaller board with smaller components. Like I said, a small team of 5 people spending a year on it, wouldn't be covered by a couple hundred grand. That's $200,000 right? Well, pay those 5 people for a year and now you're only paying them $40k each. That doesn't even include payroll taxes and benefits that a company pays in addition to the salary, which on average varies between 25-35% in most places. Hell, let's assume it's only 25% so now the real labor cost for 5 developers working on that project is $250k, that you've someone managed to convince to work on this for what is realistically speaking... a terrible salary.

If we also assume a set of injection molds is only $10k, but you'd probably want I dunno... 5 maybe since you're doing these in bulk. Well that's another $50k. That's $300k now, and no product yet.

It's safe to assume that Sony has all of the needed tools across their engineering departments to produce this. But... that doesn't take into account materials for prototyping. Sure, you can get away with a 3d printed case internally for testing really cheap, and you know they've already got printers for that. But the boards? If you aren't doing full scale production, that's not cheap. You'd have to assume at least $50k on materials and production during prototyping for the electronics, which is a drop in the bucket number for a company like Sony. That's now $350k, and still no product.

Now let's look at the cost of this thing. $100, right? Ok, gotta leave 5-10% for the retailer to make money, so lets be generous and say the retailer is making $10 a unit, leaving us with $90 to work with here. If we continue to assume a really high number like say.. Sony making $40 per unit after distribution costs(highly unlikely, but we're making an assumption here), then the assumed cost would be $50/unit(naturally amortization would lower this a bit over time, but it's not even out yet so that doesn't count at the moment). This isn't a small limited run either, but assuming a small number of units to sell, like only 10,000... while making $40/unit, and allowing a markup so a retailer can make 10%, that's still... $500,000.

That'd be a half million dollars, with massively generous margins, laughably low salaries, a fairly small production run, ignoring licensing costs for including games they likely didn't have the exclusive rights to indefinitely, and you'd want them to spend even more time and money to develop an entirely proprietary solution that would benefit absolutely no one?

It's not even a matter of holding the engineering capabilities of Sony in high regard. Things have costs associated with them, and while it may seem like it at times engineers are not miracle workers. They're people who need to get paid for their work, and eventually produce products and solutions that usually also cost money in the end.

Also, let me ask you this: Why do you think the joe blow consumer who would buy this for $100 at a Target, Wal-Mart, or wherever else would give 2 shits whether or not Sony used an existing software program and off the shelf components, or developed a proprietary solution if Sony could still keep it at $100 retail per system? They wouldn't. We're talking about a small piece of consumer electronics designed to tickle the nostalgia boner of some 30-50 year olds, not a fine piece of furniture that will get passed down to generations with people admiring the joinery skill used to put it together.

And if they did torrent a BIOS ROM, so what? It was theirs to begin with. Again, you expect a custom solution when one isn't required just to suit some odd fantasy you have about the design and production of low end consumer electronics. This isn't a $5,000 McIntosh amp that gets a production run of 50 a year, and ends up paired with a $5,000 turn table, and $20k set of speakers sitting on a $2000 table, with another $500+ in cabling behind it so some guy with a metric fuckton of disposable income can sit in his $10k chair and listen to vinyl knowing that his electronics were hand crafted by magical leprechauns who have farted a magic substance into the air to displace any oxygen from the environment while soldering to prevent even a hint of oxidization. It's a $100 box any idiot can connect in 10 seconds and play games while eating pizza rolls and drinking mt dew on a saturday night so they can pretend they're 15 again.
 
I will echo the sentiment that pretty much no one gives a flying eff that they are using an emulator. What the consumer cares about is if they can capture the nostalgia of playing PS1 games again; this is bottom line and has nothing to do with what is under the hood.
 
So it's a raspberry pi with a Sony PlayStation shell and emulator.

Probably cheaper to buy the pi
 
Merc1138 said:
Miniaturizing a PSX is not free.

Assuming they could just shrink the thing and eliminate the optical drive(that's like $5 worth of components if that? But the reason is because of the massive volume those are manufactured in), you're still going to need to pay people to design a smaller board with smaller components. Like I said, a small team of 5 people spending a year on it, wouldn't be covered by a couple hundred grand. That's $200,000 right? Well, pay those 5 people for a year and now you're only paying them $40k each. That doesn't even include payroll taxes and benefits that a company pays in addition to the salary, which on average varies between 25-35% in most places. Hell, let's assume it's only 25% so now the real labor cost for 5 developers working on that project is $250k, that you've someone managed to convince to work on this for what is realistically speaking... a terrible salary.

If we also assume a set of injection molds is only $10k, but you'd probably want I dunno... 5 maybe since you're doing these in bulk. Well that's another $50k. That's $300k now, and no product yet.

It's safe to assume that Sony has all of the needed tools across their engineering departments to produce this. But... that doesn't take into account materials for prototyping. Sure, you can get away with a 3d printed case internally for testing really cheap, and you know they've already got printers for that. But the boards? If you aren't doing full scale production, that's not cheap. You'd have to assume at least $50k on materials and production during prototyping for the electronics, which is a drop in the bucket number for a company like Sony. That's now $350k, and still no product.

Now let's look at the cost of this thing. $100, right? Ok, gotta leave 5-10% for the retailer to make money, so lets be generous and say the retailer is making $10 a unit, leaving us with $90 to work with here. If we continue to assume a really high number like say.. Sony making $40 per unit after distribution costs(highly unlikely, but we're making an assumption here), then the assumed cost would be $50/unit(naturally amortization would lower this a bit over time, but it's not even out yet so that doesn't count at the moment). This isn't a small limited run either, but assuming a small number of units to sell, like only 10,000... while making $40/unit, and allowing a markup so a retailer can make 10%, that's still... $500,000.

That'd be a half million dollars, with massively generous margins, laughably low salaries, a fairly small production run, ignoring licensing costs for including games they likely didn't have the exclusive rights to indefinitely, and you'd want them to spend even more time and money to develop an entirely proprietary solution that would benefit absolutely no one?

It's not even a matter of holding the engineering capabilities of Sony in high regard. Things have costs associated with them, and while it may seem like it at times engineers are not miracle workers. They're people who need to get paid for their work, and eventually produce products and solutions that usually also cost money in the end.

Also, let me ask you this: Why do you think the joe blow consumer who would buy this for $100 at a Target, Wal-Mart, or wherever else would give 2 shits whether or not Sony used an existing software program and off the shelf components, or developed a proprietary solution if Sony could still keep it at $100 retail per system? They wouldn't. We're talking about a small piece of consumer electronics designed to tickle the nostalgia boner of some 30-50 year olds, not a fine piece of furniture that will get passed down to generations with people admiring the joinery skill used to put it together.

And if they did torrent a BIOS ROM, so what? It was theirs to begin with. Again, you expect a custom solution when one isn't required just to suit some odd fantasy you have about the design and production of low end consumer electronics. This isn't a $5,000 McIntosh amp that gets a production run of 50 a year, and ends up paired with a $5,000 turn table, and $20k set of speakers sitting on a $2000 table, with another $500+ in cabling behind it so some guy with a metric fuckton of disposable income can sit in his $10k chair and listen to vinyl knowing that his electronics were hand crafted by magical leprechauns who have farted a magic substance into the air to displace any oxygen from the environment while soldering to prevent even a hint of oxidization. It's a $100 box any idiot can connect in 10 seconds and play games while eating pizza rolls and drinking mt dew on a saturday night so they can pretend they're 15 again.
Click to expand...
350,000 ÷ 10,000 = $35 per unit cost
Then you figure the cost of production/distribution/sales and assumed losses. Everything else sounds about right though, (of course) assuming those numbers. Obviously, the actual cost to build and sell this thing will be different.
 
Just like with mini Nintendo consoles, I am frankly shocked people prefer to buy these things instead of using emulators. I don't get people which is why I am never going to be rich :(
 
dgz said:
Just like with mini Nintendo consoles, I am frankly shocked people prefer to buy these things instead of using emulators. I don't get people which is why I am never going to be rich :(
Click to expand...
Some don't know about emulators, some have mores which prevent them from doing so (dnd good), some are just scared of the legal repercussion that may befall them, some downloaded a virus the last time and would prefer a safer alternative, etc..
 
Stoly said:
If you are going to use PCSX, why not go the extra mile and use some plugins and give an "HD" option.

Just using bilenar filtering, some AA and custom resolutions would do wonders.
Click to expand...
I assumed they were doing that.
 
Nobu said:
Some don't know about emulators, some have mores which prevent them from doing so (dnd good), some are just scared of the legal repercussion that may befall them, some downloaded a virus the last time and would prefer a safer alternative, etc..
Click to expand...
Mores? I assume you meant morals, but wtf is morally wrong about using an emulator for a console that is not sold for decades? What legal repercussions? You mad? There is nothing wrong legally with using an emulator. Even if it was comparable to piracy, no company has ever went after individual people using pirated software, they only sue people facilitating the sharing of software. But I emphasize, emulation is not piracy.

As for downloading a virus, the person who does that will download a virus while checking their emails, it's not the fault of emulators, that's the weakest excuse ever.
 
M76 said:
Mores? I assume you meant morals, but wtf is morally wrong about using an emulator for a console that is not sold for decades? What legal repercussions? You mad? There is nothing wrong legally with using an emulator.

As for downloading a virus, the person who does that will download a virus while checking their emails, it's not the fault of emulators, that's the weakest excuse ever.
Click to expand...
You know, a person's reasons don't have to be well founded in order to affect the decisions they make. Mores. No I'm not mad, you seem irrationally mad, though.
 
Nobu said:
You know, a person's reasons don't have to be well founded in order to affect the decisions they make. Mores. No I'm not mad, you seem irrationally mad, though.
Click to expand...
Sorry, I've never ever seen or heard or encountered that word.

You didn't answer the question though. What is legally, or morally wrong with playing videogames using an emulator? Why would anyone think it is illegal?
 
M76 said:
Sorry, I've never ever seen or heard or encountered that word.

You didn't answer the question though. What is legally, or morally wrong with playing videogames using an emulator? Why would anyone think it is illegal?
Click to expand...
Nothing is. They would think that because people they trust told them that. Yes, those people are wrong, and yes, they do exist.

Of course, that's ignoring that downloading and distributing ROMs which you do not own the rights to is illegal, and those people I mentioned would either see it as a gray area or outright wrong, so would probably refuse to do it. Yes, I know using ROMs you made is legal, that's not the issue I'm talking about.
 
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Nintendo does the same thing with classic and no one is starting an uproar. They even used ROMs you get off the net for it.
 
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vegeta535 said:
Nintendo doesn't he same thing with classic and no one is starting an uproar. They even used ROMs you get off the net for it.
Click to expand...
Honestly, these are sony and nintendo *licensed* products, not sony and nintendo products. They aren't doing this themselves, but are allowing it. Semantics, I know.
 
Nobu said:
350,000 ÷ 10,000 = $35 per unit cost
Then you figure the cost of production/distribution/sales and assumed losses. Everything else sounds about right though, (of course) assuming those numbers. Obviously, the actual cost to build and sell this thing will be different.
Click to expand...

No, it's not just a $350,000 per unit cost. Why? Because my costs above don't even cover the packaging and relies on a laughably low salary for an incredibly small team to get a product from design to manufacturing. $350k is not even close to realistic. Even $500k isn't close to realistic, and there's no way Sony is managing that sort of margin to be able to get these to market for $100/unit.
chaos4u said:
Shocking that making something that seems like it would be trival is so expensive.

taking what you said into consideration its a wonder any damn thing gets built these days.
Click to expand...
It is and it isn't. The reality is, Sony might be making $20 or less per system, but if they can sell 100,000 of the things, it's not particularly difficult to recoup the costs. This is the same reason you hear of things like automotive manufacturers being happy they can change a part to save $5 to build a car, it's not that the $5 is relevant on a single car that might cost $30,000, it matters when you plan to manufacture 500,000 of the things over a span of a few years. It's all about economies of scale. You can get away with razor thin margins on a product if you can sell a fuckload of it, to recoup the manufacturing costs and turn a profit while keeping the cost for consumers within the realm of something they're willing to actually pay. If this thing cost 5x as much, which is would only be $500, hardly anyone would even consider buying it. But if you can sell enough, your cost per unit can come down due to manufacturing efficiency making up for the development cost. It applies to all sorts of stuff. TVs can be had at walmart for $200 because they sell so many of the things, and can produce them at a scale which is economical to do so and make a buck, if you're relying on artisans to make things by hand, slowly, that goes right out the window(hence my mention of the McIntosh amps previously).

Master_shake_ said:
So it's a raspberry pi with a Sony PlayStation shell and emulator.

Probably cheaper to buy the pi
Click to expand...
Probably, but the average Joe has probably never even heard of a raspberry pi, and even if they did even less would want to bother with such a project.
 
Merc1138 said:
No, it's not just a $350,000 per unit cost. Why? Because my costs above don't even cover the packaging and relies on a laughably low salary for an incredibly small team to get a product from design to manufacturing. $350k is not even close to realistic. Even $500k isn't close to realistic, and there's no way Sony is managing that sort of margin to be able to get these to market for $100/unit.
Click to expand...
Nobu said:
350,000 ÷ 10,000 = $35 per unit cost
Then you figure the cost of production/distribution/sales and assumed losses. Everything else sounds about right though, (of course) assuming those numbers. Obviously, the actual cost to build and sell this thing will be different.
Click to expand...
Did i miss anything?
 
Tak Ne said:
New in 2019: Sony vs GNU General Public License v2.0
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Link to where it says you cannot sell software based on GNU licensed software? My quick search suggests it's fine as long as you don't lie about it and say it's your original work 100% or steal logos or something...
 
Merc1138 said:
And if they did torrent a BIOS ROM, so what? It was theirs to begin with. Again, you expect a custom solution when one isn't required just to suit some odd fantasy you have about the design and production of low end consumer electronics. This isn't a $5,000 McIntosh amp that gets a production run of 50 a year, and ends up paired with a $5,000 turn table, and $20k set of speakers sitting on a $2000 table, with another $500+ in cabling behind it so some guy with a metric fuckton of disposable income can sit in his $10k chair and listen to vinyl knowing that his electronics were hand crafted by magical leprechauns who have farted a magic substance into the air to displace any oxygen from the environment while soldering to prevent even a hint of oxidization. It's a $100 box any idiot can connect in 10 seconds and play games while eating pizza rolls and drinking mt dew on a saturday night so they can pretend they're 15 again.
Click to expand...
It's obvious it makes business sense to do what they're doing. It's just seeing how corporations operate can still shock some not used to it. Here's the progression:

1. Sony sues people making a Playstation emulator, loses.
2. People reverse engineer the Playstation and make an emulator for free.
3. Sony, which has access to the source code, original schematics, and is the only entity that could make a better emulator, doesn't, and instead uses the free one, which will no doubt mean cents on the dollar for production costs. We're probably talking 95% profit ratios or more.

So, in other words, they fought people from doing all the work for them, much more inefficiently, for free, then turn around and use their work to make essentially pure profit. It would be like if the RIAA made an official music client using Napster for distribution. It's a trifecta of short-sightedness, laziness, and being part of the problem, but still making maximum profit. It's a capitalist dream.

M76 said:
Even if it was comparable to piracy, no company has ever went after individual people using pirated software, they only sue people facilitating the sharing of software. But I emphasize, emulation is not piracy.
Click to expand...
That's not true, CD Projekt went after individuals pirating The Witcher 2:

https://torrentfreak.com/drm-free-witcher-2-cashes-in-on-bittorrent-pirates-111207/

I want to say other companies have done this also, but I'm drawing a blank.
 
Nobu said:
Did i miss anything?
Click to expand...
Yes, you did. Namely the part where I pointed out that the figure I stopped bothering with at 350k for a 5 person group working on it requires everyone working on it to be working for a joke of a salary(stated multiple times). The 350k figure was only to show that the "couple hundred thousand" that chaos4u came up with, is such a bullshit low number and requires lowballing everything to such an extreme it wasn't worth continuing with, so I flipped it the other way around.
 
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