Pay For Games On Pandora?

[Prometheus]

The problem with buying games on Wiiware or the Playstation Network is that, from what I understand they're non-transferable. Say you get another Wii, or you want to use them on a new console that's coming out by the manufacturer, it's at their discretion.

A shop where you buy the right, not just license some rights for particular circumstances would be desirable.

Fair point, and I quite agree.

(That said, for want of not getting into any debates, I'd like to clarify that I find a lot of emulation stuff to be an ethics matter, quite often. For me, I don't feel bad playing a game I paid for on a different machine, because it's just "system-shifting" from my perspective. )

ps, only nintendo software is non transferable, dirty bastards that they are ,psn stuff will follow you forever on psp ps3 and beyond.

You sure about that?

 

[WizardStan]

I will never pay for an emulator so if a cracked version is out somewhere then i would download and use it

1) Writing an emulator is actually very hard. I fail to understand why it gets some sort of special treatment from other applications.
2) If you really are morally opposed to purchasing something, why is piracy your next option? Why don't you just not use it?

 

[juniorm33]

Hehe dude i did not say writing an emulator is easy so where the hell did you get that from ? porting complete emulators from arm to arm via linux should not be soo hard however and i bet there will be plenty of opportunity for this in the near future so given that some might crack some payed for emulation it may well not be needed as there will only be more and more people willing to port emulators over in the coming months.

I got it from the fact that you was willing to pay for anything but them.
I would have to go back and reread your post then as I don't remember you saying anything about porting emu's, you just said emu's. Same can be said about app's, some will be ported, others may be written from scratch.
And even porting an emu, may require a whole new recompiler.
If your not prepared to pay the odd dollar then use the free one that will be there. Like I said, unless it truly distinguishes itself, whether it be game/app/emu it will be hard to charge, much less charge a lot for.

Like i said tho i don't have a problem with the store if it is fair ,i would love to see all types of software on the store free and paid for and i promote that ,but i don't think i could make payment over the store methods so i hope there are alternatives for payment and i also hope that emulation does not get hijacked for profit becase i think seeing n64 or psx on the pandora is a big wow factor and some might jump on that to make money but hey this is pure speculation now and i don't want to get into that anymore.

Again may be me but I don't remember you saying you don't have a problem using the store if it was fair, only that you didn't want to.So it sounded like you knew something I never regarding them making money from it which is what you said.

If you want, put it all down to my misunderstanding, although I still don't fully see the distinction between an emu, a game and an app written from scratch.

 

[Dead1nside]

Fair point, and I quite agree.

(That said, for want of not getting into any debates, I'd like to clarify that I find a lot of emulation stuff to be an ethics matter, quite often. For me, I don't feel bad playing a game I paid for on a different machine, because it's just "system-shifting" from my perspective. )

I'm with you on that too. I'm just becoming more acutely aware of the quite practical dangers of this form of licensing on Wii Ware for example.

 

[paddy]

Prometheus yes im sure psn stuff is totaly transferable between ps3 and psp systems using your username id.

WizardStan i have already explained my view on why i think software writen from the ground up should get special attention and i deem it worthy of forking out cash on and to add to that i beleve we should all promote and help mature those developers of new games and software in any way possible ,emulation on the other hand unless writen from the ground up for the said platform and endorsed by the original hardware developer i see very little justification for paying for such software.

That is my take on things ,i am not looking for an argument in anyway and i have the right to my opinion ,to answer your second question about piracy and why i would use a hacked emulator that is paid for software then i guess if it is say one of the top big three emulators and the option is right there in front of me then i will download and use it without paying for it, its really as simple as that ,i would however look for alternative to this in the form of free emulation of the same system but it really is no different to when emulation was a gray area and no one knew if emulation its self was even legal ,still many many people used those emulators and i would do the same.

This can really go off into the relms of piracy and legal obligation and all that but i am not interested in this at all ,i am an average joe and if its there to play io will play it but i do feel strongly about backing and supoporting software developers of games and apps that are justifiable and it's simply that i do not see emulation in the same way again my opinion.

 

[Prometheus]

I'm with you on that too. I'm just becoming more acutely aware of the quite practical dangers of this form of licensing on Wii Ware for example.

So am I. It feels, to me, like a compromise, as far as that goes (i.e., the games are available, but the licensing is not as practical as I would personally like, although I can see why it's fine for most people) - on the other side of the coin, at the very least, I know that the money is going to those who hold the rights to the software, which is something I'm happy enough with. As much as I like tracking down cartridges and discs, I do like to be sure that the money's gone where it should where it's possible to do so.

That's also why I'm happy about the Pandora app-store, really. If it makes it easy to get the money to those who earned it, then I can see myself making much use of it.

Prometheus yes im sure psn stuff is totaly transferable between ps3 and psp systems using your username id.

Thanks, but that isn't what I was asking. Your exact words, as quoted in my previous post, claimed that this will be the case "beyond" those systems, "forever". I was curious as to why this claim was made - it just sounded to me like an unusual clause for Sony to include, since they've got a recent history of removing features.

 

[paddy]

lol that is true hehe well if sony keeps up with the backward compatibility and your acount carries on to the next new system like xbox/xbox360 then it should be the case ,but hey you should not take all my words to literally ,pinch of salt paddy they call me,why do i get the feeling that everyone hates me ,also trying to trip me up with every word i write ?

im outa here ,got some sunshine to grab before it all goes away with my two year old.

 

[Prometheus]

No hate or tripping-up here - I was just curious as to the PlayStation Network terms, that's all.

Have some fun in the sun, padster.

 

[juniorm33]

lol that is true hehe well if sony keeps up with the backward compatibility and your acount carries on to the next new system like xbox/xbox360 then it should be the case ,but hey you should not take all my words to literally ,pinch of salt paddy they call me,why do i get the feeling that everyone hates me ,also trying to trip me up with every word i write ?

im outa here ,got some sunshine to grab before it all goes away with my two year old.

No hate from here mate. Some people do get overly excited on this forum towards people though,

I was just confused between the distinction of emu to app's, and why one was not worthy of a couple dollars from you.
From what I can tell, for you apps and games you consider to be written from scratch, emu's to be ports/recompiles.

Where as I see them all (app,game,emu) being the same, some are recompiled and just packaged up, some written from scratch, other inbetween where may need a lot of work to make it work well on the Pandora.

I think if OPT was making a lot of money from the app store, a lot of people will feel like you. I've just not seen any reason to believe this was the case. That's why I said I may have missed it when I wasn't about.

 

[Aninhumer]

This isn't entirely on-topic, but goodness me, was I ever happy when Pulseman was added to the Wii Virtual Console, since it meant I could finally buy the game for a reasonable price. (I own everything I emulate. Pulseman goes for crazy money, it must be said.)

I can't say I really understand the attitude of "I won't play it unless I can pay for it". You're only hurting yourself.

If the owners never get around to give you the option, you never get to play it, and if they do you pay for it then and they lose nothing.

 

[juniorm33]

This isn't entirely on-topic, but goodness me, was I ever happy when Pulseman was added to the Wii Virtual Console, since it meant I could finally buy the game for a reasonable price. (I own everything I emulate. Pulseman goes for crazy money, it must be said.)

I can't say I really understand the attitude of "I won't play it unless I can pay for it". You're only hurting yourself.

If the owners never get around to give you the option, you never get to play it, and if they do you pay for it then and they lose nothing.

She did have the option it was just very expensive.
I may have to look into this Wii Virtual Console thingy just out of curiosity.

 

[WizardStan]

WizardStan i have already explained my view on why i think software writen from the ground up should get special attention

No you didn't. You said you would pay for anything but an emulator. Emulators have to be written from scratch at some point as well, you know. The N64 emulator that Ari64, while based on existing code, is more or less a complete rewrite of the dynamic recompiler, arguably the most difficult part of an emulator. If Ari64 decided the months of work he put into the recompiler warranted a few dollars, would you still say it's not worth your money? Even if the recompiler doesn't need to be rewritten completely, there's still hours if not days of work to get things optimized for the hardware. And of course some emulators simply don't exist in any reasonable form. JayFoxRox was working on a PSP emulator that, to my knowledge, is completely written from scratch. If he finishes and decides he deserves some sort of compensation, are you going to argue that it's just an emulator?
On the flip side, a lot of apps are just simple ports. If the guy who did Cave Story did a quick recompile and started selling it, would you consider it worth your money? Even though it took him all of about 20 seconds to build?
Why does a game that took 20 seconds to port get money, but the emulator which took months of work to port get pirated?

 

[Prometheus]

I can't say I really understand the attitude of "I won't play it unless I can pay for it". You're only hurting yourself.

If the owners never get around to give you the option, you never get to play it, and if they do you pay for it then and they lose nothing.

No. It would hurt far more to take something I hadn't paid for.

If the game weren't available on the Virtual Console, I would be tracking down a cartridge. Some may well say that the developers get nothing this way, but on the other hand, I don't own the game if I don't buy it (even if second-hand), and I simply don't feel any sense of entitlement to play something I don't legally own (or otherwise have rights to use).

(Disclaimer: This is just the way I see things - I make no judgements on others' choices, for those are theirs to make. I'm happy with my own way, for me, though.)

 

[Exophase]

A lot of people on this site either do write complete emulators or substantially rewrite existing ones (see Picodrive, possibly more of it is notaz code than not at this point)

Devs for the platforms here aren't just a porting farm.

 

[Exophase]

As much as I like tracking down cartridges and discs, I do like to be sure that the money's gone where it should where it's possible to do so.

Why are the ones who own the rights necessarily where the money "should" go? In many cases the company who owns the rights to the game received them as a purchase from or of another company. Most of the time the current holder of the intellectual property has no connection to the original developers of the game, or at the very least the original developers do not benefit from the holding company's financial success.

There are probably firms that exist solely to buy and resell video game IP. This obviously isn't always the case, but for most given titles on Virtual Console you can't assume that they're anything more than a purely financial investment.

You could argue that by purchasing games on VC you're stimulating game development by helping fund game developers (this is not an argument of ethics, btw). You could also argue that you're encouraging the repackaging of old games instead of the creation of new games. Buying after-market, on the other hand, stimulates a portion of the game industry that won't significantly effect what new games are developed.

 

[Dunny]

WizardStan i have already explained my view on why i think software writen from the ground up should get special attention and i deem it worthy of forking out cash on and to add to that i beleve we should all promote and help mature those developers of new games and software in any way possible ,emulation on the other hand unless writen from the ground up for the said platform and endorsed by the original hardware developer i see very little justification for paying for such software.

So what you're saying is that you'd not pay for a port of an emulator (regardless of how much work it takes to get said port working - like Ari64's dedicated ARM dynarec, or someone porting an x86 core to ARM), but you'd pay for an emulator that someone wrote from scratch... That's your prerogative, of course, but sounds pretty dumb. An emulator written from scratch is likely not going to gain the accuracy and reliability of one that's been ported from a solid code base in a realistic timeframe, but hey, it's your funeral.

My own experiences of emulation have been spread over a period of about ten years of painstaking (completely legal) reverse engineering, testing on original hardware, fixing bugs, adding new features above and beyond the capabilities of the original machine... etc, etc, etc. Now, you're saying that if I for the sake of argument, based just one of the source files on a previously written OSS emulator (say, the sound-chip emulation) then I should not expect you to give any sort of monetary compensation for the enormous amount of time I spent on the rest of the emulator. Had I written the sound-chip emulation myself then you would be willing to pay, despite it being a couple of months of time versus several years on the rest of the emulation.

Yeah, when you put it like that, you sound like a dick.

D.

 

[Prometheus]

Why are the ones who own the rights necessarily where the money "should" go? In many cases the company who owns the rights to the game received them as a purchase from or of another company. Most of the time the current holder of the intellectual property has no connection to the original developers of the game, or at the very least the original developers do not benefit from the holding company's financial success.

Indeed, that's true, and that's one of the other reasons I find it to be a bit of a compromise. That said, the ones who own the rights own them, and if they're making the software available for a reasonable fee, I'm more likely to give them some coins rather than track the item down second-hand.

There are probably firms that exist solely to buy and resell video game IP. This obviously isn't always the case, but for most given titles on Virtual Console you can't assume that they're anything more than a purely financial investment.

There are such firms, yes. Data East's library springs immediately to mind here - although it's nice that some of it is being made available again. (I think it's a pity that people will probably still miss out on obscure greats like High Seas Havoc, though.)

You could argue that by purchasing games on VC you're stimulating game development by helping fund game developers (this is not an argument of ethics, btw).

Mm, indeed that is not an ethics argument. I'm more than happy to fund developers, myself (for whatever it's worth, I'm one of those folks who just cannot understand the sense of entitlement felt by those who won't; And my answer to not feeling a product is worth it is to go without, which often strikes me as being a lost art, of sorts. ). I can only get some things used, though, alas.

To clarify why I briefly mentioned ethics earlier, I was just referring to the use of software I've personally bought - i.e., if I buy a cartridge or a Virtual Console release, I really don't have any problem with "shifting" it to play a ROM image elsewhere, and I guess that's part of my ethics or code or what-have-you. Perhaps I am odd like that.

You could also argue that you're encouraging the repackaging of old games instead of the creation of new games. Buying after-market, on the other hand, stimulates a portion of the game industry that won't significantly effect what new games are developed.

That too. :lol: I honestly don't mind the repackaging of old games, myself, though - there's too much great stuff I've missed. A lot of modern stuff just doesn't cut it for me.

 

[pder]

WizardStan i have already explained my view on why i think software writen from the ground up should get special attention and i deem it worthy of forking out cash on and to add to that i beleve we should all promote and help mature those developers of new games and software in any way possible ,emulation on the other hand unless writen from the ground up for the said platform and endorsed by the original hardware developer i see very little justification for paying for such software.

So what you're saying is that you'd not pay for a port of an emulator (regardless of how much work it takes to get said port working - like Ari64's dedicated ARM dynarec, or someone porting an x86 core to ARM), but you'd pay for an emulator that someone wrote from scratch... That's your prerogative, of course, but sounds pretty dumb. An emulator written from scratch is likely not going to gain the accuracy and reliability of one that's been ported from a solid code base in a realistic timeframe, but hey, it's your funeral.

My own experiences of emulation have been spread over a period of about ten years of painstaking (completely legal) reverse engineering, testing on original hardware, fixing bugs, adding new features above and beyond the capabilities of the original machine... etc, etc, etc. Now, you're saying that if I for the sake of argument, based just one of the source files on a previously written OSS emulator (say, the sound-chip emulation) then I should not expect you to give any sort of monetary compensation for the enormous amount of time I spent on the rest of the emulator. Had I written the sound-chip emulation myself then you would be willing to pay, despite it being a couple of months of time versus several years on the rest of the emulation.

Yeah, when you put it like that, you sound like a dick.

D.

As been said before, its very difficult to expect to make money off of open source software, even if your project only includes a small amount of GPL code because anyone is free to redistribute the software. Really the best you can hope for is some donations.

I imagine most of the developers here work on projects because they enjoy working on them and find them useful, not for any sort of monetary gain.

 

[paddy]

When it comes to emulation i would rather donate than be obligated to pay for the software ,if the said software has taken the author alot of time effort,sweat and tears then i would be delighted in offering something in terms of a donation but i do not in anyway agree with anybody financially benefiting from the creation of a mass market games console computer emulator.

Ohh boy people get soo bitchy about anything i say ,what are you defending ? what am i actuly saying that is making you soo angry please tell me ?

 

[WizardStan]

what am i actuly saying that is making you soo angry please tell me ?

You are saying that there is something fundamental about the work that goes into making an emulator that somehow makes it worth less than any other piece of software. Not only would you not pay for an emulator, you've said you'd go so far as to pirate one where you would not do for any other piece of software. That, to me, sounds like a huge insult to the developers that spend a great deal of time and effort writing these emulators. You still haven't explained what it is that makes emulators so different from any other piece of software.