Squeak on PlayStation? + (Squeak Games...)

Tim Moore moore at bricoworks.com
Thu Apr 13 03:21:07 UTC 2000


Bijan Parsia wrote:
> 
> On Wed, 12 Apr 2000, Russell Swan wrote:
> 
> > Sony doesn't have the only Playstation development tools.
> 
> I did say I knew nothing about it :) Thanks for the correction.
> 
> > Metrowerks sold
> > CodeWarrior for Playstation for a long time. Sony's business model on the
> > Playstation was that games could not carry the Playstation logo w/o Sony
> > taking a cut, so Sony lost money on hardware, but made its profits on
> > (other people's) games.
> 
> That sounds icky, but, uh, why not just forgo the the logo?

On the Playstation you can't do anything unless you're a licensed Sony
developer.  Even if Metrowerks would sell you CodeWarrior, you still
wouldn't have the libraries or the development hardware.  And,
practically speaking, there's no way that you can distribute a game for
the Playstation on any other medium than CDs that only Sony
manufactures.  So Sony retains complete control over all phases of
development, from game proposal to final QA.  (I know you can buy chips
over the internet that defeat some of the controls, but I said
"practically speaking").

I doubt that the Playstation II is going to be much different unless
Sony rapidly evolves away from its "winning" console game model.

> 
> > Playstation II is a different animal than Playstation. The machine uses
> > the Emotion Engine chip which is supposed to be a truly great graphics
> > chip. The machine also comes with a DVD drive and a FireWire (IEEE1394)
> > port (Sony calls it iLink - FireWire is the Apple name).
> 
> Ah. So a hard disk is possible. That's good. Ram?
> 
32 Meg.
> > I'd put my
> > money on Sony rather than Microsoft
> 
> Unless, of course, they charge you development fees :) If Sony's going to
> win big, why *not* give them a cut?
> 
I'm no fan of Microsoft, but Sony's fees are a lot more onerous than
anything Microsoft can come up with.





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