7 ms·

I'm starting to think leaking the code for an old console could be a pretty cost-effective way to get an emulator. I'm pretty sure I've heard of companies usin

by lawl 6y ago

I'm starting to think leaking the code for an old console could be a pretty cost-effective way to get an emulator. I'm pretty sure I've heard of companies using open source emulators for backwards compatibility with old consoles/selling 'classic games' before.

thiagocesar 6y ago
Microsoft already has a pretty sophisticated Xbox emulator, deployed to both Xbox360 and XboxOne.
- als0 6y ago
  It's a shame that they whitelisted such a small selection of titles (on 360).
  - caseyjones29142 6y ago
    I think that's more of a licensing things really. Some of those old games had really wierd diels especially for music rights.
    - CivBase 6y ago
      I never understood why music publishers care so much about licensing for old games. Are they worried people are going to put on GTA3 to avoid buying a couple songs? It makes more sense to me that playing old games would encourage those song sales.
    - als0 6y ago
      Before your comment I thought the more likely reason that Microsoft qualifies games is to reduce the amount of development and support effort needed for their emulator. Even Halo 1 struggled to get some good framerates, IIRC.
    - thiagocesar 6y ago
      That’s the reason why some games keep going in and out of Steam. Especially console ports such as Alan Wake.
  - Lammy 6y ago
    At least it’s easy to patch out if you have a homebrew-enabled 360.
    - als0 6y ago
      I'm curious to know how well unsupported titles work.
      - Lammy 6y ago
        Boom: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1uU9j4X-WK01UZuZzv6FuDkYakmkke2X9rB14j2n4YRw https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1uU9j4X-WK01UZuZzv6Fu...
        als0 6y ago
        Amazing, thanks! Seems like a rock solid emulator.
- deelowe 6y ago
  Is it actually an emulator or something more akin to WINE?
  - thiagocesar 6y ago
    Considering Xbox360 used a PowerPC CPU, some emulation had to be done. Not sure about the Xbox One - it might be just a different aspect on the hypervisor.
cdolan 6y ago
You may be thinking of Nintendo. They packaged up a Super Mario ROM from the internet and sold it on their classic games store. https://youtu.be/zR1uEwjx7VI https://youtu.be/zR1uEwjx7VI
- MaxBarraclough 6y ago
  I believe they wrote their own emulator though.
- nolok 6y ago
  Sony "PS Classic" is also an arm board running ePSXe.
- jsmith45 6y ago
  That proof is utter nonsense. Sure Nintendo might have just downloaded the rom, but they may have: 1) just concatenated the prg and chr roms and added an iNES header so they could validate in third party emulators. (Likely extra helpful for games where they were developing anti-epilepsy patches, since third party emulators have some really nice debugging tools.) or 2) Used a third party cart dumper that adds the iNES header, because it was faster and easier than setting up a 3.5 inch floppy drive to try read the original rom from the archive. (And much faster than retyping in hex dump printout from the archive).
  - thristian 6y ago
    or 3) hired one of the iNES developers to develop their emulator, who kept using the file-format they were familiar with. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22756156 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22756156
    - woodrowbarlow 6y ago
      great detective work there!
mrfredward 6y ago
The 20KB stripped down Windows kernel that shipped on the XBox isn't hard to emulate...emulators such as CXBX do this for many functions by calling the respective windows function on the host. Low-level emulators (XQemu) take the opposite approach by emulating well understood hardware (hdd, cdrom, usb) and then running a binary dump of the xbox firmware (which contains the kernel, it's not on disk) directly. To my understanding the hardest problem in XBox emulation is the GPU, and unfortunately this doesn't help with that.
woodrowbarlow 6y ago
a bunch of nintendo console code leaked earlier this month as well, including the code for the gamecube. any big emulator project that wants to maintain legitimacy is going to stay far away from these leaks. they'll send out messages on mailing lists warning developers NOT to look at the code and NOT to go fixing bugs based on the leaked code. an emulator is legal as long as it's a clean-room implementation. if an emulator suddenly gets way better after a leak, it's going to draw some legal attention. almost makes you wonder if it's a honeypot...
- badRNG 6y ago
  > an emulator is legal as long as it's a clean-room implementation And this is why it is often done on completely legitimate open source projects, and many projects don't shy away from doing so. Wine, ReactOS, and many more regularly do so completely legally. (of course there was that thing in '06... https://www.linux.com/news/reactos-suspends-development-source-code-review/ https://www.linux.com/news/reactos-suspends-development-sour...)
  - woodrowbarlow 6y ago
    that reactOS kerfuffle is just one of many, many examples of how a tainted clean-room design can completely derail an open-source project, and most stories have a nastier ending than that one. the dolphin emulator team (gamecube/wii emulator) made a statement on the nintendo leaks: https://twitter.com/Dolphin_Emu/status/1257051968045899776 https://twitter.com/Dolphin_Emu/status/1257051968045899776
- boudin 6y ago
  I don't think it is a honey pot, but you do make a valid point around the grey legal area to even read the code. The linux directx module that microsoft pushed earlier this week might not even get code reviewed because of the risk of reading patented interfaces that could taint the developers future work: https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Microsoft-DXGKRNL-Uphill-Battle https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Microsof...
Unklejoe 6y ago
> I'm pretty sure I've heard of companies using open source emulators for backwards compatibility with old consoles/selling 'classic games' before. I know at least Sony uses PCSX ReArmed for their "PlayStation Classic".

by lawl 6y ago

thiagocesar 6y ago

Microsoft already has a pretty sophisticated Xbox emulator, deployed to both Xbox360 and XboxOne.

als0 6y ago
It's a shame that they whitelisted such a small selection of titles (on 360).
- caseyjones29142 6y ago
  I think that's more of a licensing things really. Some of those old games had really wierd diels especially for music rights.
  - CivBase 6y ago
    I never understood why music publishers care so much about licensing for old games. Are they worried people are going to put on GTA3 to avoid buying a couple songs? It makes more sense to me that playing old games would encourage those song sales.
  - als0 6y ago
    Before your comment I thought the more likely reason that Microsoft qualifies games is to reduce the amount of development and support effort needed for their emulator. Even Halo 1 struggled to get some good framerates, IIRC.
  - thiagocesar 6y ago
    That’s the reason why some games keep going in and out of Steam. Especially console ports such as Alan Wake.
- Lammy 6y ago
  At least it’s easy to patch out if you have a homebrew-enabled 360.
  - als0 6y ago
    I'm curious to know how well unsupported titles work.
    - Lammy 6y ago
      Boom: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1uU9j4X-WK01UZuZzv6FuDkYakmkke2X9rB14j2n4YRw https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1uU9j4X-WK01UZuZzv6Fu...
      - als0 6y ago
        Amazing, thanks! Seems like a rock solid emulator.
deelowe 6y ago
Is it actually an emulator or something more akin to WINE?
- thiagocesar 6y ago
  Considering Xbox360 used a PowerPC CPU, some emulation had to be done. Not sure about the Xbox One - it might be just a different aspect on the hypervisor.

cdolan 6y ago

You may be thinking of Nintendo. They packaged up a Super Mario ROM from the internet and sold it on their classic games store. https://youtu.be/zR1uEwjx7VI https://youtu.be/zR1uEwjx7VI

MaxBarraclough 6y ago
I believe they wrote their own emulator though.
nolok 6y ago
Sony "PS Classic" is also an arm board running ePSXe.
jsmith45 6y ago
That proof is utter nonsense. Sure Nintendo might have just downloaded the rom, but they may have: 1) just concatenated the prg and chr roms and added an iNES header so they could validate in third party emulators. (Likely extra helpful for games where they were developing anti-epilepsy patches, since third party emulators have some really nice debugging tools.) or 2) Used a third party cart dumper that adds the iNES header, because it was faster and easier than setting up a 3.5 inch floppy drive to try read the original rom from the archive. (And much faster than retyping in hex dump printout from the archive).
- thristian 6y ago
  or 3) hired one of the iNES developers to develop their emulator, who kept using the file-format they were familiar with. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22756156 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22756156
  - woodrowbarlow 6y ago
    great detective work there!

mrfredward 6y ago

The 20KB stripped down Windows kernel that shipped on the XBox isn't hard to emulate...emulators such as CXBX do this for many functions by calling the respective windows function on the host. Low-level emulators (XQemu) take the opposite approach by emulating well understood hardware (hdd, cdrom, usb) and then running a binary dump of the xbox firmware (which contains the kernel, it's not on disk) directly. To my understanding the hardest problem in XBox emulation is the GPU, and unfortunately this doesn't help with that.

woodrowbarlow 6y ago

a bunch of nintendo console code leaked earlier this month as well, including the code for the gamecube. any big emulator project that wants to maintain legitimacy is going to stay far away from these leaks. they'll send out messages on mailing lists warning developers NOT to look at the code and NOT to go fixing bugs based on the leaked code. an emulator is legal as long as it's a clean-room implementation. if an emulator suddenly gets way better after a leak, it's going to draw some legal attention. almost makes you wonder if it's a honeypot...

badRNG 6y ago
> an emulator is legal as long as it's a clean-room implementation And this is why it is often done on completely legitimate open source projects, and many projects don't shy away from doing so. Wine, ReactOS, and many more regularly do so completely legally. (of course there was that thing in '06... https://www.linux.com/news/reactos-suspends-development-source-code-review/ https://www.linux.com/news/reactos-suspends-development-sour...)
- woodrowbarlow 6y ago
  that reactOS kerfuffle is just one of many, many examples of how a tainted clean-room design can completely derail an open-source project, and most stories have a nastier ending than that one. the dolphin emulator team (gamecube/wii emulator) made a statement on the nintendo leaks: https://twitter.com/Dolphin_Emu/status/1257051968045899776 https://twitter.com/Dolphin_Emu/status/1257051968045899776
boudin 6y ago
I don't think it is a honey pot, but you do make a valid point around the grey legal area to even read the code. The linux directx module that microsoft pushed earlier this week might not even get code reviewed because of the risk of reading patented interfaces that could taint the developers future work: https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Microsoft-DXGKRNL-Uphill-Battle https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Microsof...

Unklejoe 6y ago

> I'm pretty sure I've heard of companies using open source emulators for backwards compatibility with old consoles/selling 'classic games' before. I know at least Sony uses PCSX ReArmed for their "PlayStation Classic".