Classic and mini versions of retro game systems have become popular to release onto the market, including the recently announced PlayStation Classic. With a very basic UI, and the chosen lineup of 20 games, many fans were disappointed and claimed that Sony's attempt at a plug and play throwback console was low effort. Complaints only furthered when it was revealed that Sony wasn't creating or reusing their own PlayStation 1 emulator for the Classic, like they had done with the PSP's POPS emulator, or with the PSP emulator that was found within the PlayStation 4 remaster of Parappa, or the emulated PlayStation 2 classic titles on the PlayStation 4 as well. Instead, Sony has opted use an emulator made by the public: PCSX ReARMed. At an event showing off the upcoming hardware, previewers were able to try out the PlayStation Classic, and found a menu listing stating that it uses open-source software, including PCSX ReARMed.

Source

 

[Juggalo Debo]

I have 1 preordered just not sure if Imma be able to keep it and afford it..... ehhh dust of the pstv I guess

 

[SLiV3R]

This is just sick!

 

[Deleted User]

People are mad at Sony for taking the easy way out? It's easy money and they'd be stupid to actually put effort into it. Corporations don't care what you think as long as people eat this shit up and give them money for it.

 

[Jonna]

People are mad at Sony for taking the easy way out? It's easy money and they'd be stupid to actually put effort into it. Corporations don't care what you think as long as people eat this shit up and give them money for it.

I think you answered your own question.

 

[Tigran]

My biggest complaint about medafan and because I don't keep up with all the emulators, is that it doesn't uprez like EpsxE does.

Of course I realize it's not going to, striving for accuracy.

 

[NoNAND]

 

[Localhorst86]

anyone complaining they violated the GPL License: Did they?
As far as I can see, they are using a GPL licensed emulator. The license allows commercial use of the software under certain circumstances. One of those circumstances is the provision of the source code of the modified software.

Here's the catch: The source code does not need to be provided along with the console, nor does it actually have to be "publicly" available. They only need to be able to provide the changed source code upon request. So, unless people have tried to contact SONY to receive the sourcecode and they refused sending you a copy (either via a storage medium like a disc or a USB stick or via a download), they did adhere to the license. All that needs to be done to adhere to the license is to provide a written copy of the GPL2 License alongside the binary (console) and possibly contact information on where to receive a copy of the source. Arguably the console is not yet released, so they might only need to provide the source once the console is released publically (not sure about that part, though).

What confuses me is: Why did they not use their own emulation software? With POPS, they already implemented rather excellent PS1 Emulation on PSP, PS3 and PSVita.

 

[Kolyasisan]

How in the world using FreeBSD is alright but using an open-source emulator is stealing and being lazy?

Nah, sorry, guess I'm being dumb.

 

[TheDarkGreninja]

So, not only did they steal every one of Nintendo's ideas up to this point, they wholesale stole open source work to make a commercial product.

Is it any wonder, that i have such an axe to grind with Sony when they continue to be financially successful in spite of doing such blatantly unethical shit like this?

They didn't steal it, they did at least credit them unlike some other Devs.

 

[Essasetic]

They didn't steal it, they did at least credit them unlike some other Devs.

Looking at you TX.

 

[eyeliner]

At least, we know that PCSX Rearmed is the emulator Sony uses. It's approved by them!

 

[CORE]

So who is gonna sue Sony or Boycott for using Free OpenSource Code just like all the controversy at Retron 5 using Code or better still look at Bleem back in the day quite hypocritical although understandably it was for Dreamcast Sonys Direct Competitor until Microsoft and eventually Nintendo.

Speaking of which give credit where it is due they seem to have used their own original Code or have they?

At any rate the Software contained in the Classic Library I guess would have some Royalties to the individual Companies Namco , Capcom , Konami etc. I would like to think some Money be donated towards the Code used in the PCSX Reloaded aswell... Obviously not!

@eyeliner Yes Sony approves the use of PCSX Reloaded so we now know what Emulator to use instead of wasting money on Shit Station Classic the cost could get you a half decent PC and you could Emulate the whole Library and beyond.

 

[shinrukus]

Ok I gotta play devils advocate... Lets look at this.

People right now pay upwards of 150-200 dollars to get a Raspberry Pi'd Playstation thats 3D Printed, or like me, in the shell of a PS1.
People have paid scalper prices just to own an NES/SNES Classic which is arguably less capable then a Raspberry Pi 3 at doing the same thing, but its in a pretty box.
People will hack the PS1 classic, if any of us (I pre-ordered one) buys it, we are most certainly gonna use whatever hakchi equivalent on it. Because how many of us dont have gigs of pbps lying around in either a flash drive, hard drive, or just in your computer? I have like 10 ps1 games right now that im gonna pull out just to play cause I haven't played them in a while.

We act like Sony is "the devil" for giving us a pretty box with an emulator and base games in it. 100 bucks for a pretty box that will play the games we want, and eventually even more thanks to the community is not a bad deal, and if I were Sony looking at the climate and how many people pay hundreds more to play software designed for my hardware, i'd monetize that too

 

[KHEOPS]

$100 for a plastic box, with pcsx rearmed? It's a joke....
No analog on the controllers?
Another good joke....
Games pal 50 hz interpole 50 hz in 60hz?
No scart output rvb? The only thing that could have been interesting, from that plastic shit branch on a good crt tv, it's the only thing that would make me want to... Be ecological this plastic box will pollute the planet, the fish will eat this thing and die...
They didn't even take the time to make an adequate shader, to avoid playing games on hdmi that looked like lama vomit, they stole pcsx reamed, the least they could do is work a little, to improve native 240p games on hdmi tv, they didn't even do it, money first of all for sony, like their memory stick duo from 1gb to 300$ ( hardly exagerated here)

Stop defending sony, after the regression of the retocompatibility of ps3 phat 60 which could play ps2 ,ps1 games, maintaining this thing? Sony has died for me since they stopped producing the best tv crt in the world.
I'll pass.
merry christmas sony

 

[darkriku2000]

This is fascinating. The fact they'd repackage an open source emulator when they already have their own running on 3 systems is just so impressively incompetent that I can't even be upset

 

[Cylent1]

Just maybe some hacking benefits come out from using the open source software, they could have locked it down like the all the playstations fw's. just thinking!

 

[Zaphod77]

AS near as I can tell, Sony did NOT violate the GPL here, and HAVE made their changed source available.

https://doc.dl.playstation.net/doc/content/dam/corporate/eula/psclassic-oss/pcsx_rearmed_custom.zip

So they are actually compliant.

Did they use an underpowered arm CPU that can't handle some games well? yes.

Did they use PAL when they should have used NTSC? yes.

Did they leave out stuff with analog sticks? Yes.

But did they violate licenses? No.

And oddly enough, they DID lock the system down pretty well, requiring a password for root access.

Note that there are pirate products that are essentially the same thing as this except they let you add isos.

 

[TheDukeOfNukem]

I fired up my old Xperia Play the other day, downloaded the built-in (download required, though) copy of Crash Bandicoot. Read the game's digital manual, and I forgot, it's just a PSP copy of the game, the manual straight up displays the PSP controls, labelled as such, which I mean, I guess makes sense, the XP and PSP have the same layout really, aside from the thumb pads, but the point is, even back in 2010, Sony were cutting corners with PS1 emulation on devices.

They developed an emulator for PSP. Then ported that, seemingly, over to Android for the Xperia Play.

And now it's come full circle, with them using someone else's emulator to make a emulation box which was someone else's idea.