Thumbs up for emulation

by Robin Sevakis

The recent release of Playstation emulators on store shelves such as Bleem and Virtual Gamestation has forced the gaming community to look over whether emulation is legal, moral, or overall beneficial to the gaming world. Let me tell you, its all of these.

With the exception of cartridge console emulation, where illegal ROM images are required to play, the new programs that require you to buy the actual game are, in reality, helping companies like Sony and the game developers. Sony itself makes very little money on console sales, and recieves the majority of their profit from games. In the meantime, Sony has been throwing all sorts of lawsuits at the developers of these emulators. So tell me, how does an emulator that creates more game sales hurt a big company like Sony?

I think the large gaming companies need to rethink their politics when it comes to game importing and emulation. When will they realize that their strict protection of their low-profit consoles is only hurting themselves and their audience? Ziff-Davis's Electronic Gaming Monthly has unfortunetely trying to sway their readers to support Sony in these copyright battles, but this is only because EGM is the biggest corporate butt-kissing, biased magazine I've ever seen.

Anyways, if people like Sony could just unclench and face the facts, the gaming world would be a better place.