GP32 vs The big N

[pubjoe]

Ok this cropped up here and I just wondered what other peoples opinion might be, especially those 'in the know', maybe studying law.

In various forms: this augument has been round the block so many times that its now recieving sponsorship from durex.

Please check the end of the thread linked above for a little bit of background info.

 

[Tobriand]

I don't reckon they will have grounds to, but they might well try to do so in order to bankrupt Gamepark. Hope not - its a skanky tactic.

Well, if they do at least, I hope Gamepark are successful in applying for Ninty to pay their legal fees (heheheh).

 

[Evil_Cartman]

They wont. 'cos the system is capable of running emu's. It is the ROM Image that nintendo can sue for.

 

[pubjoe]

I might be wrong but if Nintendo had no grounds to sue, would this even ever go to court and require Gamepark to hire some lawyers in?

 

[Rico]

People, this is ridiculous. Both the XBox, the PC and even the GBA itself could be 'sued' on the game grounds for allowing emulators. The GP32 is only as easy to make emus for as the PC (in fact there are rumours that certain things have been removed from the GP32's maximum spec to prevent certain emulator techniques from working, but never mind). So the paranoia is pointless.

 

[pubjoe]

I totally agree, but I wanted to make the poll unbiased.

But... I've heard rumors that Gamepark made claims that it's machine will play GBA games even before release.

I don't think that Nintendo would have a case, but would they have enough grounds to take it to court and therefore ruin Gamepark financially.

 

[RoboJoe32]

Read my post on the LAST messageboard..... If this happens, we all get off of our asses and give Nintendo what for.

 

[Swiss_Cheeseman]

Emulators themselves are NOT ILLEGAL. Nintendo has tried many, many times to shut down emulator development, and have failed miserably every time.

Hell, SEGA embrace emulator development. Gens, KGen and GiriGiri (Saturn emulator) have all been used by sega commercially, with money going towards the authors of the emulators.

 

[pubjoe]

Hey, Swiss_Cheeseman that avatar reminds me of a Gameboy color amature dev thing (Bung contest or something) am I right?

 

[Swiss_Cheeseman]

Its alleycat, an old DOS game, and Atari 800 I beleive. The game still runs perfectly unassisted under all versions of windows, quite a feat =)

 

[NiN^_^NiN]

Like i said befor on the last post

They might not have a case but im sure they will make gamepark bankrupt.
They have enough things to make a case by saying that the gp32 was made for emulators, as they stated a GBA emulator when they were first getting ready to bring it out.

I dont know if they can but im sure they have enough infomation to get it into court. Its like how they did it with lik-sang its the same kinda situation.


h34r:

 

[Swiss_Cheeseman]

But it doesnt matter if it was made for emulators, because emulators are not illegal. It won't even go to court.

Do you think the author of ZSnes had any money? Or the guys who work on SCUMMVM? No, they don't.

Also, the fact that Gamepark are located in Korea would make it even more difficult.

 

[pubjoe]

Its alleycat, an old DOS game, and Atari 800 I beleive. The game still runs perfectly unassisted under all versions of windows, quite a feat =)

Hey, I remember playing that at a friends errr a looong time ago. Some bung entrant must have copied it.

Ha Ha! has anyone here ever made a bung entry. :blink:

[edit]
...Sorry

(that joke's probably been done before)

 

[pip]

For them to go to court Gamepark would have to do something illegal, which they don't (as far as we know). Sueing them because they _can_ run emulators is about as likely as the banks sueing the government because the roads can be used by bank robbers, or Nintendo sueing ibm because their harddrives can be used to store illegal data.

Emulator are not illegal here in Sweden, running an emulator with © roms that you don't own originally is not illegal here either. Since we have a law allowing people to share their media with friends and family (a friend could be just about anyone). Unfortunately, due to EU directives, that law will change in the beginning of the next year.

 

[pubjoe]

This is kind of a pointless discussion since we pretty much all agree. just for the record, I agree that Nintendo don't have a case, my original post said it would be like suing Bill Gates for running emulators within windows

Just wanted to see other peoples opinions.

right, I'm going to bed (it's now midday and I still haven't slept - supposed to be at the beach at 2.30!)

P.S. I'm still interested if anyone has any evidence of those 'GBA emulation' claims made by Game Park though. Probably just a misquoted news item.

 

[ralp99]

what's the story here, has someone heard that nintendo is interested in going after gamepark? That would surprise me, as the GP32 is so small that no one's even heard of it anyway .. well your average consumer shmoe, anyway...

I don't think they'd have any grounds to sue either, unless of course gamepark insinuated at some point in their advertising for the thing that it would be possible to emulate and play games from older systems on the unit. that might be kind of a good foothold to build a case off of, I would assume (I'm no lawyer..) Otherwise if they just advertised it as a commercial gaming unit/ MP3 device I doubt they would have much to fear.

at least if Nintendo did start some noticeable legal trouble for Gamepark, ti would get more public attention and more people would certainly start investigating the thing. Ever since that slashdot article, it's been pretty quiet around here as far as new recruits, wouldn't you say?

 

[pubjoe]

just a theoretical question

 

[moora101]

the problem at the moment with the gamepark is that the ONLY selling point at the moment are the emulators. At least with the arguement of emulators of GBA/DC/Xbox is that you have to carry out some additional modification or at least have to go out of your way to run emu's on them, whereas the gamepark is ready to run any emulator s/w out of the box (which is the problem of having semi-open source hardware).

I fear that Nintendo will come down on Gamepark, who in turn will have to begin a form of licensing system for the gp32 in order to prevent more emulators being made. So all that happens is that evey gp32 game has to be made with the official dev kit and has to go through a strict licensing procedure (like every other console).

Now you can say that "how can they stop unlicensed games being made"? There's a few techniques that can be done with the biggest being a new version of firmware. They can persuade people into upgrading the firmware by offering a newer, better and free version of MoviePark with the flash upgrade, or maybe a better MP3 player etc.... and in the process you can't launch unapproved games!!

 

[SatanClaus]

Allowing to run free software is not illegal. They can't sue Gamepark for this.
The biggest problem would be Nintendo sueing emulator authors.

 

[NeoAP]

They got no grounds because Gamepark itself do not support emulators on the GP32. They only support people to create their own programs and games to the machine. Yes, the GP32 is easy to make emulators for, but then they have to sue the computer companies too, for making computers!? If Nintendo wants to hang somebody they should hunt down the emulator creators...