MacUpdate Weekend Sale

:This weekend MacUpdate has slashed prices on Painter 12 and Painter Lite. Painter 12 retails for $429, but has been reduced by 54% to $199. Painter Lite has seen a 58% price cut from $69 to $29. Hurry, because these deals are only available until May 19th 2013.

toggle

AAPL Stock: 433.26 ( -1.32 )

MacNN News

http://www.macnn.com/articles/01/03/15/sony,.connectix/

Sony, Connectix end VGS legal dispute

updated 09:35 am EST, Thu March 15, 2001

", 0, 0);

Ending a legal dispute between the two companies over Connectix's Virtual GameStation PlayStation emulator, Sony and Connectix announced a joint technology agreement in which the "companies proceed to define a series of development initiatives in the area of advanced emulation solutions." As part of the agreement, Sony will acquire all assets related to the VGS emulation technology; however, Connectix will continue to offer the current version of the CVGS for Macintosh and Windows until June 30, 2001 and will provide continuing support to existing users of the software: "all further emulation development for PlayStation after this date will proceed under the auspices of the joint agreement."

by MacNN Staff

Post tools:

TAGS :

industry

toggle

Comments

0

Joined:

0

03/15, 09:53am | report spam | close Reply | delete
PS2

Does this mean PS2 emulation for the Mac?

0

Joined:

0

03/15, 09:58am | report spam | close Reply | delete
Sony, Connectix and VGS

nope....
Just "If You can't beat 'em, Eat 'em!"

0

Joined:

0

03/15, 10:13am | report spam | close Reply | delete
Sony hates Macs

We all know how Sony hates the Mac... they took a perfectly Mac-compatible platform (Palm) and made their Clie palm-compatible NOT work with Macs out of the box.

I bet they take VGS and make it Windoze-only. Thanks, Connectix, so much for hopes for an OS X version.

0

Joined:

0

03/15, 10:30am | report spam | close Reply | delete
If anything

Sony will just kill it.

0

Joined:

0

03/15, 10:38am | report spam | close Reply | delete
there is potential

The potential for Sony to make VGS into an even cooler product is there. Since they obviously know the inner workings of the playstation they could improve upon Connectix work and make it compatible with all Playstation games. Then add some support for 3D hardware like Bleem has so games look even better and they'd have a great product that I'm sure would sell very well.

Maybe Sony really is going to do something with this?

0

Joined:

0

03/15, 10:39am | report spam | close Reply | delete
Bye bye VGS

Its all over. Sony will sit on it for months, promising development, and then quietly just kill it for good. b*******.

0

Joined:

0

03/15, 10:47am | report spam | close Reply | delete
"Oops"

June 30th, 2001

In other news today, Connectix was breached by unknown hackers and the sourcecode to the famous Virtual GameStation playstation emulation software was stolen. This included the code for both the Windows and Macintosh versions of the emulator, as well as the unreleased verion for Apple's newest operating system, Mac OSX. It is rumored that the source code is being distributed around the internet, and an unknown alliance of programmers have begun developement for extended features.

It is not known, however, whether or not Connectix LET THE SOURCE CODE FOR THEIR EMULATION SOFTWARE BE EASILY ATTAINED.

On speaking with the Connectix, the only offical comment released was a care-free..... "Oops".

0

Joined:

0

03/15, 11:25am | report spam | close Reply | delete
oops... i get it.

i must admit, that message confused me until i checked the date.

hint, hint, wink, wink...

0

Joined:

0

03/15, 11:47am | report spam | close Reply | delete
curious

I'm curious why Sony hates CVGS...they sell their PlayStation hardware below cost in order to drive sales of games, on which they make all of their profit. Therefore, isn't it a good thing if they don't have to lose money on the box but get to sell more games to Mac and Windows owners who didn't buy a Playstation box?

0

Joined:

0

03/15, 11:48am | report spam | close Reply | delete
Hmmm

All your emulators are belong to us!

You have no chance to survive... make your time

0

Joined:

0

03/15, 11:53am | report spam | close Reply | delete
Sony supports Mac.

Well, my Sony DSC-70 digital camera had Mac support out of the box so I don't see Sony as necessarily anti-Mac. Since Sony does make a line of PC compatibles, perhaps they would do well to include "virtual PlayStation" support with every VAIO as a way to make their PCs more attractive?

0

Joined:

0

03/15, 11:58am | report spam | close Reply | delete
Its Over

sony will kill this as soon as they get all the assets to it you can bet on that as soon as you see aquire that means money was involved probably enough so to make connectix sell-out...belive that.... remember napster!

0

Joined:

0

03/15, 12:01pm | report spam | close Reply | delete
Sony

Sony appears to be pro-Firewire, anti-USB. And I have heard rumors as such.

0

Joined:

0

03/15, 12:43pm | report spam | close Reply | delete
Sony

Sony is not "pro FireWire" -- they are pro IEEE-1394 (the standard that they and Apple co-developed) and call their version "iLink". iLink, just to confuse people, is IDENTICAL to FireWire in every technical respect EXCEPT that iLink does NOT provide bus power. The iLink connector is a smaller 4-pin connector that contains the data lines from a standard FireWire (IEEE-1394) port. As anyone who has purchased a G3, G4, or iMacDV knows, there are cables on the market that adapt between the two cable styles. However, why go through all this fuss and muss in the first place? Could it be that Sony is sore at Apple for branding "their" IEEE-1394 standard "FireWire" without involving them? hmmm ...

0

Joined:

0

03/15, 01:13pm | report spam | close Reply | delete
I agree, its over

It was a nice ride for commercial console emulation, but I think this is it folks. No more PSX on your Mac in the future. Forget about seeing PS2 on your Mac. Sony hates Apple, I;m sure even more after the big schpiel Steve made about the TiBook and the VAIO. Oh well. . .

0

Joined:

0

03/15, 01:22pm | report spam | close Reply | delete
Playstation 3

Well, if Sony need a Playstation emulation engine, it is clearly not aimed at the Mac/PC market... but more for their own uses.
The Playstation 2 is currently doing nearly hardware emulation (old PS chips are still in the Playstation 2), but Sony is probably going to try to get rid of this legacy hardware to only use the Emotion Engine or a newer/better release. And they will need software emulation if they still want to provide PS 1 emulation.

0

Joined:

0

03/15, 01:28pm | report spam | close Reply | delete
Good on 'em

Great move for Connectix; they get to unload a poorly-selling piece of software with no future whatsoever, probably get a minor boatload of cash for it, and come out looking legit. VGS never had a hope as a commercial product (though I imagine it's seen lots of electronic distribution, as have the PSX disc images that play on it).

They might even see some actual sales of the software as some people anticipate the June 30th deadline and expect the software to go away.

For their part, Sony'll either kill it or turn it into a Windows application for their VAIO line. There wasn't really much point in this for them either way (the PSX is essentially dead) but they're paranoid control freaks, so I can see why they felt the need to do it.

The only thing that would have been nicer would have been to see it open-sourced, but this would have been a slap in Sony's face, and you can imagine Connectix not really wanting to do that. But the *suggestion* that they might probably played a part in the negotiations. ;)

0

Joined:

0

03/15, 01:35pm | report spam | close Reply | delete
goodbye cvs

i bought a copy to play some of my PSX games while on the road. i have no hope that sony will continue the product they tried so hard to squash. they'll buy it and bury it..

0

Joined:

0

03/15, 02:42pm | report spam | close Reply | delete
Sony's revenge

I bet the next version of VGS on both platforms will be a POS, and then Sony will say "See, emulation is never even half as good as the real thing, and we've just proved it by releasing a crapware emulator of our console." Major conflict of interest!

0

Joined:

0

03/15, 03:32pm | report spam | close Reply | delete
This is why

I'm curious why Sony hates CVGS...

They don't like it because they don't control it. If CVGS was better than a real Playstation, Sony would look bad. If it was worse, Sony would look bad too,for different reasons; a crummy but popular emulator could tarnish the Sony reputation. That was part of their argument in court, I think. I can totally understand Sony's desire to squash emulation. It's all about control.

As a consumer I don't agree with Sony's attitude, but as a business owner I can understand it. However, in the end I think this is an unfortunate outcome for all of us. Choice is good.

0

Joined:

0

03/15, 03:34pm | report spam | close Reply | delete
I don't think that this.

....is such a bad thing!

With PS2 being the number one concern of Sony, PS1 hardware (as someone stated earlier) is sold at a loss......to drive up the software sales. Sony is not a stupid company.......alot of the hard work has been done by connectix........sony will take advantage of that and stamp a box with Sony and sell it (with minor tweaks such as 3D support etc).

With very little effort, Sony can take advantage of their situation and sell alot more PS1 games.

But thats only my opinion.

0

Joined:

0

03/15, 03:40pm | report spam | close Reply | delete
X-Box

Sony hired connectix to program an X-Box emulator for the playstation 2, doing an end-run around microsofts business motto of "copy all competitors".

0

Joined:

0

03/15, 10:19pm | report spam | close Reply | delete
What about VPC

Did Sony buy Virtual PC too? If they did then we are really F&*^#$. The probably want to put PC emulation in the PS2 and really don't care about VGS.
Which is worse...Sony or Microsoft? I bet Microsoft is kicking themselves for not thinking of it first ;-)

0

Joined:

0

03/15, 11:54pm | report spam | close Reply | delete
Disappointing Posts

So, what's life like inside of the bubble, lemmings?

Sony is a business that revolves around making money, not a grudge war. They just obtained yet another way to distribute their psx technology and make more money off of it (face it, not too many people are still buying psx's) plus they get more money off of game sales. This is common sense people, they are now in control of multiple ways to distribute one common item, therefor expanding their market and making more money. Stop being so ignorant people. There is a world much larger than the little pessimistic rumor bubble you live in.

Also, just because Sony has the rights to VGS does NOT mean they will drop Mac support. So Steve put down the VAIO, so what? It's called competition. Apple has filed multiple lawsuits against Microsoft, but MS still did a great job of making Office 2001 for the Mac. It's capitalism, it's all about making money. You can hate whoever you want and you can believe whatever rumor you hear, but in the end it all comes down to where the dollars will go.

0

Joined:

0

03/16, 04:15pm | report spam | close Reply | delete
Clueless...

Sony is not "pro FireWire" -- they are pro IEEE-1394 (the standard that they and Apple co-developed) and call their version "iLink". iLink, just to confuse people, is IDENTICAL to FireWire in every technical respect EXCEPT that iLink does NOT provide bus power. The iLink connector is a smaller 4-pin connector that contains the data lines from a standard FireWire (IEEE-1394) port. As anyone who has purchased a G3, G4, or iMacDV knows, there are cables on the market that adapt between the two cable styles. However, why go through all this fuss and muss in the first place? Could it be that Sony is sore at Apple for branding "their" IEEE-1394 standard "FireWire" without involving them? hmmm ...

You have no idea what you are talking about. Apple alone developed FireWire from head to toe, and later it was ratified by the IEEE to be a real standard -- 1394. Both 4 and 6 pin connectors (as Sony and Apple put in their computers, respectively) have always defined in the FireWire standard, Sony merely decided to use the 4 pin connector instead of the sturdier 6 pin connector, which, as you correctly implied, additionally provides power. Sony happens to love naming things, so they call it iLink.

tooki

0

Joined:

0

03/16, 06:23pm | report spam | close Reply | delete
Don't Worry

Don't Worry. Go to www.sourcemagazine.com and see the screenshots of Windows XP. You wil see that Wintel is destined to fail. If you read the article, you'll see the author reccomend that the name for XP should have been Windows X. Ha!!! "Because it squares nicely with Apples upcoming OS X." Gimme a break! Mac is awesome. Nice going Connectix.

0

Joined:

0

03/18, 11:19pm | report spam | close Reply | delete
Firewire

Apple was not the only company that developed Firewire.

Show More Comments

Login Here

toggle

Network Headlines

05/17	Mozilla delays plans to block third...
05/17	Yahoo schedules press event for May...
05/17	MacBook Air stock beginning to evaporate...
05/17	'iRadio' announcement may miss WWDC...
05/17	Apple devices officially OK'd for secure...

Show All

05/17	Mozilla delays plans to block third...
05/17	Yahoo schedules press event for May...
05/17	'iRadio' announcement may miss WWDC...
05/17	Apple devices officially OK'd for secure...
05/16	FTC starts sending COPPA letters to...

Show All

toggle

Sony, Connectix end VGS legal dispute

updated 09:35 am EST, Thu March 15, 2001

PS2

Sony, Connectix and VGS

Sony hates Macs

If anything

there is potential

Bye bye VGS

"Oops"

oops... i get it.

curious

Hmmm

Sony supports Mac.

Its Over

Sony

Sony

I agree, its over

Playstation 3

Good on 'em

goodbye cvs

Sony's revenge

This is why

I don't think that this.

X-Box

What about VPC

Disappointing Posts

Clueless...

Don't Worry

Firewire

Login Here

Register for our weekly email newsletter:

Connect tools:

Subscribe

to our RSS

Follow us

on Twitter

Most Read

10 Most Discussed

MacNN Marketplace

Sony, Connectix end VGS legal dispute

updated 09:35 am EST, Thu March 15, 2001

Related Articles

Recent Articles

PS2

Sony, Connectix and VGS

Sony hates Macs

If anything

there is potential

Bye bye VGS

"Oops"

oops... i get it.

curious

Hmmm

Sony supports Mac.

Its Over

Sony

Sony

I agree, its over

Playstation 3

Good on 'em

goodbye cvs

Sony's revenge

This is why

I don't think that this.

X-Box

What about VPC

Disappointing Posts

Clueless...

Don't Worry

Firewire

Login Here

Register for our weekly email newsletter:

Connect tools:

Subscribe

to our RSS

Follow us

on Twitter

Most Read

10 Most Discussed

MacNN Marketplace