Just as the industry has begun campaigns to stop piracy and emulation (while trying not to step on the toes of retrogaming), a product like this is announced commercially. This announcement opens a large can of worms. GameSpot News contacted SCEA today, but at press time the company had no comment on the matter. Plus, since it is not likely to have region protection or lockout, the Virtual Game Station could, theoretically, play pirated game discs as well - not something that Sony would care to promote. But since such an emulator is not designed by Sony or endorsed by them, it could be a compatibility nightmare. It is true that you would have to play PlayStation games, not 'ROMs'? Games would most likely have to be read directly off of the game CD. At the bottom of the Connectix press release for the product, it reads: 'This product is not affiliated with, nor authorized, endorsed or licensed in any way by Sony Corporation, its affiliates or subsidiaries.' So is such a product legal? So what's the problem? Connectix does not seem to have the blessing of Sony Computer Entertainment, who owns the PlayStation format. On Tuesday, during the opening day of MacWorld in San Francisco, Connectix announced its Virtual Game Station, which is basically software that can emulate the PlayStation to play games on a G3-powered Macintosh computer. This is by no means a group of hobbyists creating an emulator from scratch. But most emulators are available free of charge on the Internet, and even the legality of those has been called into question by the Interactive Digital Software Association.Įnter Connectix - a company known for the QuickCam PC camera, RAM Doubler software, and PC emulation software for the Macintosh. With PCs getting faster and more able to handle the complex computations required to 'emulate' a video game system, it has become much easier to produce stable emulators.

Emulation is a hotly contested topic in the video game industry right now.

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