Topic: Nintendo Patents GBA Emulation

[vudu]

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Well this isn't Japan and the games I use emulation for are 99% of the time the American versions which Nintendo does NOT make money off of used sales from.  

maybe so, but what about japanese kids?  do you think they download the american versions or japanese versions?  just because nintendo can't make any money off of used games you might buy, doesn't mean they can't make any money off of used games japanese kids buy.

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Plus in my opinion getting a cut from used sales is total bullsh!t anyway.

if you read the article you'd know that used sales are killing profits for lots of japanese companies.

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It is difficult to analyze precisely what percentage of the overall market is taken up by used sales. One study said that it was 20 percent. Another actually had used sales at about 30 percent of all game sales.

[JonLeung]

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Originally posted by: Ian Sane
If someone made a device that allowed you to play physical GBA carts on your cell phone it would not affect Nintendo's profits because if it played real GBA carts the games sales wouldn't be affected and that's where the money is.

I was actually thinking about this earlier today...emulators of console systems (that use some kind of disc) on the PC you'd think would be encouraged by hardware makers.  They wouldn't lose the money that they apparently lose on every console produced if people didn't have to buy them (assuming that they forsee this lack of demand and don't make more than necessary, of course), and if the people using the emulators are buying the actual game discs then they're making money without that initial "loss".  Plus, with encouragement to emulate, they'd be tapping into the PC gamer market, for those people that see it as apparently a distinct market (I don't, myself, at least not totally distinct, but that's just my opinion).  It might lead to the point where hardware makers might just give up and go for the PC (since everyone has one) and release proprietary emulators to read their proprietary game discs.  (Hope I'm spelling and using the word "proprietary" correctly...)

But for the GBA, which uses cartridges, emulation requiring a "dump" of the game ROM...yeah, I can see why that's illegal.  But I also see that strange point...would any device that lets you play GBA games on something other than a GBA/GBA SP/GBP become absolutely illegal?  I can understand the possibility of authorities busting down doors of mega-pirates, but who's really going to care if you had some third-party GBA game player?

Basically, what I'm saying is, you can make laws, but who's going to enforce them?  

[Cowboy Bebop]

1) The USPTO is overworked and underfunded, and puts out patents it shouldn't all the time.

2) There are plenty of examples of prier art.   You can't patent something that's already been invented.  You also can't patent things which are obvious.  This patent would be overturned if brought to court.  That is if someone has the money to go up against Nintendo in court.

3) Reverse engineering is legal.  The courts have also upheld many times in the past that hardware emulation is legal. (Bleem as a recent example. http://www.theregister.co.uk/1999/04/12/bleem_beats_sony/)



This will be overturned if it's ever brought to trial.  

[KDR_11k]

1. Emulation is legal on the reason that there's no reason it shouldn't be. If there was a copy protection on the devices and the emulators don't honor it, that's a case for the DMCA, but those old systems don't have that. That's the reason N had to get a patent in first place, so the other emus would actually violate a law.
2. Modding is illegal on the reason that it circumvents a copy protection mechanism and thus violates the DMCA. Cube region mods are exempted because the region code isn't a copy protection scheme.
3. This patent specifically covers emulating on handhelds (low capacity machines). PCs or consoles running them aren't affected.
4. There's no real reason to develop for the GBA. You have a PC you can code for, if you want it portable use a GP32, PDA or cell phone, all of which have openly available SDKs (and much more power).
5. You could patent a word processor. If the first word processor wasn't made before software patents were legal it would have been patented. Hell, if you can patent using cookies to store a customer's login information (non-obvious? new? Hello???), you can patent word processing. Such a patent wouldn't be valid outside the US, of course, since no other legislation (except maybe Japan) is as stupid as to accept patents that violate all three basic rules of patenting.
6. Therefore, that emulator could still be sold in Europe.

[Cowboy Bebop]

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PCs or consoles running them aren't affected.

Images included with the patent include a picture of someone playing a game on the PC with a gamepad.

Click on the drawings section, then skip to the third picture (Image 1C).  So, this patent is intended to cover PC emulation as well.  Of which there is plenty of prier art.

[jasongst]

I think you guys (PGC) sort of misreported this one. It's still a BS patent, but it's more specific than you think. The patent reads, "A software emulator for emulating a handheld video game platform such as GAME BOY.RTM., GAME BOY COLOR.RTM. and/or GAME BOY ADVANCE.RTM. on a low-capability target platform (e.g., a seat-back display for airline or train use, a personal digital assistant, a cell phone) uses a number of features and optimizations to provide high quality graphics and sound that nearly duplicates the game playing experience on the native platform."

You'll notice it's referring to emulating ANY handheld game (this actually extends BEYOND Gameboy and into the realm of NGPC, Game Gear, etc.), but only on a "low-capability target platform (e.g., a seat-back display for airline or train use, a personal digital assistant, a cell phone)." So emulating handheld games on a "high-capability" platform (Gamecube, PC, etc.) would still be legal, although the "low-capability" definition is FAR too subjective and should never have been allowed through the patent process.

You'll also notice this patent was filed back in 2000, so while it conveniently applies to emulators on the Zodiac, it was good foresight on Nintendo's part, not hindsight, that allowed that to happen.

[Bloodworth]

I've been looking over it, and there is a paragraph that mentions PCs as one platform:

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Personal computers have also proliferated throughout the world and are now available at relatively low cost. A trend has shifted some entertainment from the home television set to the home personal computer, where children and adults can view interesting web pages and play downloaded video games and other applications. In some circumstances, it may be desirable to allow users to play GAME BOY.RTM. video games on their home personal computers (see FIG. 1C).

[KDR_11k]

Desirable? If you threw a lawyer at that he could probably claim Ninteno encourages emulating games on PC...

[Bloodworth]

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Emulator 100 is designed to operate on a target platform of the type shown in FIG. 1B above, but could run on any desired platform including, for example, the target platforms shown in FIGS. 1C and 1D.

1B is the seatback airline display. 1C is a personal computer, and 1D is the cell phone/PDA.  From this quote, I think it's clear that PCs are included.

[Bloodworth]

Basically, my take on it is that this patent covers the major areas needed to run an effective Game Boy emulator, and any emulator that falls into these criteria can be found in violation.  Without a better technical knowledge though, I couldn't tell you whether it would be possible to design an emulator that doesn't fall under this patent.

[Ian Sane]

What if instead of a GBA emulator you made a GB Player emulator?  Say you made it so you could connect a legitimate GB Player to your PC and use it to play GBA games.  I'll bet technically the patent doesn't take that into account.

[vudu]

wouldn't that necessitate a gamecube emulator, which i'm pretty sure is also illegal?

[Ian Sane]

Does the GB Player actually need the Cube hardware?  Isn't it just GBA hardware?  I figure you could make a program that interfaces with the GB Player that allows it to play on a computer monitor and use the keyboard for input.  I think all you would need is a cable to connect the GB Player to the PC and a program to tell it would screen to output to and how to receive input.  That program might not have to be a Cube emulator.  Now I'm just taking a wild guess here.  I don't know the details beyond that the Player itself is a GBA.

[Bill Aurion]

You need to use the GC to use the GB Player, so I assume that it would be considered a "GC emulator"...just with GB games... :\

[KDR_11k]

Bloodworth: The point here is designed for. They just want to say you're not exempted if your emulator runs on other systems as well.

[Nephilim]

highly doubt nintendo is huge into stopping gba emulation, as evoX & UnleashX are still being updated for xbox
kinda stange both nintendo and microsoft allow a "skin", to be released which is really only used for snes, nes, n64, gba, xbox and genesis roms

[KDR_11k]

This patent only covers emulating the GBA on a limited capability portable system. The Xbox isn't exactly portable now is it?