Re: Playstation 2

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From: Cameron Barrett (cameron@collab.net)
Date: Fri Oct 27 2000 - 13:23:44 PDT


> Joseph S. Barrera III writes:
>> Is there a version of nethack for it?
>> (angband will do)
>
> You first have to sign an NDA with Sony, and buy a very expensive bit
> of devkit hardware (some 10 k$ at the time).
>
> Then you port a Linux to it, or port Angband to their proprietary OS.
>
> Then you send it to Sony, who will encrypt it with their proprietary
> crypto, and press a few disks.
>
> (I've been part of a PSX2 Beowulf thingy (the float performance of the
> Playstation is adequate for the price), but it never went anywhere,
> due to above reasons).
>
> Sony makes Microsoft look open. Bleh.

Don't underestimate the open source movement. A company called Indrema is
working on a Linux-based console that has almost identical specs to that of
Microsoft's Xbox. A Feed magazine article [1] says that where Sony charges a
$25,000 fee to game developers in order to develop games for the PS2,
Microsoft plans to charge no fee. It's a safe bet that since Indrema is an
open source company [2], that the game development specs will also be open
source, available to any developer who wants them. My bet is that the
2001-2002 gaming console market will be a tough fight between Microsoft and
a number of competitors, including Indrema, but not necessarily Sony.

[1] http://www.feedmag.com/feature/fr410_master.html
[2] http://idn.indrema.com/

--
Cameron Barrett
CollabNet - Transforming the Software Economy
http://www.collab.net (work)
http://www.camworld.com (play)


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