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[Fahdis]

It's really beyond my comprehension. To think there are talented people out there doing godly miracle work. And then you get shitty emulators from actual companies e.g. the PS2 emulator comes to my mind, yes its as basic as it gets. Then there's RPCS3, holy shit, this thing is absolutely bonkers, we could have PS3 games now, but companies are just braindead. Why not just hire these people? It's a win win for everyone.

 

[Skyfox]

I’ve deleted this comment because it was a little too simplistic.

 

[Cyberpunkd]

Because hobbists doing emulation are not held in such a high regard as salaried employees with much lower technical competences.

 

[Cyberpunkd]

Because they break the law

They don't.

 

[mrmeh]

Don't they already have day jobs?

 

[atyourservice]

It's really beyond my comprehension. To think there are talented people out there doing godly miracle work. And then you get shitty emulators from actual companies e.g. the PS2 emulator comes to my mind, yes its as basic as it gets. Then there's RPCS3, holy shit, this thing is absolutely bonkers, we could have PS3 games now, but companies are just braindead. Why not just hire these people? It's a win win for everyone.

I'd guess the answer is that these companies are still organizations filled with people who have different priorities and career ambitions and workplace interplay. They are not a monolith.

You don't want to be the guy who fires half of his department who have the on-paper qualifications and backgrounds, just to gamble and hire people who may or may not have the full prerequisites, all for the sake of one (maybe) 2-year project because they *might* be able to get it done to a slightly higher standard if they even fit into the workplace structure at all.

This assumes the one department head is even the one able to make that decision on his own. Most of the time, if you want to overhaul your department, you might need to convince higherups, draft presentations, carry out adverstising/interviews/hiring/payroll increases when hiring new (more qualified) staff. It's all bureaucratic.
This also assumes the higherups even care about delivering a slightly better product at higher cost when the minimum viable product is "fine enough".
These are just my assumptions, of course

 

[Wildebeest]

The games industry wouldn't want to pay them what they are worth.

 

[RaduN]

Because they break the law

How?

Reverse engineering is perfectly legal.

 

[Esparadrapo]

It's really beyond my comprehension. To think there are talented people out there doing godly miracle work. And then you get shitty emulators from actual companies e.g. the PS2 emulator comes to my mind, yes its as basic as it gets. Then there's RPCS3, holy shit, this thing is absolutely bonkers, we could have PS3 games now, but companies are just braindead. Why not just hire these people? It's a win win for everyone.

Because companies always focus on the highest return for any given work. It doesn't matter if something is profitable if it isn't profitable enough. That's why you see franchises and IP killed off or stored in the garden shed if they don't see the potential for real high returns.

 

[Bojji]

They just don't care about BC.

 

[calistan]

I would guess that it's because these projects are open source, whereas Sony would want a proprietary emulator. They can't just hire a few contributors to RPCS3 and take the thing closed source, and they can't leave it open because that means part of their console OS is available to anyone who wants to take a look.

Also, maybe they don't really care about emulators.

 

[Cyberpunkd]

I'd guess the answer is that these companies are still organizations filled with people who have different priorities and career ambitions and workplace interplay. They are not a monolith.

You don't want to be the guy who fires half of his department who have the on-paper qualifications and backgrounds, just to gamble and hire people who may or may not have the full prerequisites, all for the sake of one (maybe) 2-year project because they *might* be able to get it done to a slightly higher standard if they even fit into the workplace structure at all.

This assumes the one department head is even the one able to make that decision on his own. Most of the time, if you want to overhaul your department, you might need to convince higherups, draft presentations, carry out adverstising/interviews/hiring/payroll increases when hiring new (more qualified) staff. It's all bureaucratic.
This also assumes the higherups even care about delivering a slightly better product at higher cost when the minimum viable product is "fine enough".
These are just my assumptions, of course

OP, this is the correct answer taking into account business reality.

 

[Morrie’s wig shop]

That be to easy…

 

[Fahdis]

OP, this is the correct answer taking into account business reality.

I mean sure atyourservice is correct. Seeing how I do have some experience in the IT sector but not exactly in gaming. Firstly, WFH has made things alot easier and many people have 2 or even 3 jobs that pay quite well. This would he no different. Secondly, if there is a good Project Manager/Core Dev Management with an absolutely timeframe, work can absolutely get done with all the budgets and permissions approved. The bureaucracy and no desire to better market BC software is the problem as aptly put.

 

[RagnarokIV]

They don't need to.

PlayStation themselves had talented people and actually cared at one point, they've made various PS2 emulators and had solid emulation in the past.
They had great emulation on the PLAYSTATION 3. The original full backwards compatible model was using software emulation for the original PlayStation and full hardware for PS2.

The revised model used hybrid emulation for the PS2 (software emulated Emotion Engine and Rambus with hardware Graphics Synthesizer) which also gave amazing results.

The second emulator they built was used for the PS2 Classics releases on PSN and again was a fantastic emulator, requiring no hardware and fully software based. With a jailbroken PS3 slim/super slim you can package any PS2 game as a classic and play it on the console.

PS1 emulation has been great on PSP, Ps Vita, PS3. Which is why the PlayStation Classic was such a let down. The main issue is Sony stopped caring with the PS4.

The new solution is just a quick lazy way to pad out their subscription service.

 

[yurinka]

Why don't companies just hire the teams/individuals who make Emulators?

Because companies who make game hire people who knows to make games, and the skillset and knowledge required to make games is different than the one to make emulators.

When companies make emulators then they hire people who make emulators. As an example, the PS4 and PS5 emulators that run PS1/PS2/PSP classics are made by an external team that comes from the PCSX2 team.

 

[RCX]

Because then they can't charge you for remakes

 

[ScHlAuChi]

It's really beyond my comprehension. To think there are talented people out there doing godly miracle work. And then you get shitty emulators from actual companies e.g. the PS2 emulator comes to my mind, yes its as basic as it gets.

As someone who is involved with re-releasing emulated older games on modern systems, I can answer that.
Here are some of the reasons:
- BIOS files are copyrighted and cant be used - your emulator has to work without it!
- You often cant use existing emulators for licence reasons (GPL code or similar problems)
- The emulator is using a codebase or library that cant be used on console.
- Coding for PC is different than coding for a console (cant use JIT for example)
- Writing a new good emulator from scratch that works well on console is very hard, very few people in the world have the skill to do that.

Then there's RPCS3, holy shit, this thing is absolutely bonkers, we could have PS3 games now, but companies are just braindead. Why not just hire these people? It's a win win for everyone.

Those emulators are team efforts that often rely on existing codebases or libraries, basically work others have done - and in most cases that isnt licenceable.

 

[Fahdis]

As someone who is involved with re-releasing emulated older games on modern systems, I can answer that.
Here are some of the reasons:
- BIOS files are copyrighted and cant be used - your emulator has to work without it!
- You often cant use existing emulators for licence reasons (GPL code or similar problems)
- The emulator is using a codebase or library that cant be used on console.
- Coding for PC is different than coding for a console (cant use JIT for example)
- Writing a new good emulator from scratch that works well on console is very hard, very few people in the world have the skill to do that.


Those emulators are team efforts that often rely on existing codebases or libraries, basically work others have done - and in most cases that isnt licenceable.

I believe that answers most of my questions. But I have some more.

- What are licensing issues mainly? I mean they could actually just buy the emulation company or pay off the individuals to own the product?
- I was sure that the coding aspect would come in for consoles vs. PC, but that could be mitigated by throwing some money officially?

I mean throw money and problems get fixed. I was just thinking instead of the 400 Million that PS threw at Concord, that could have gone into a proper BC Program. But then again, profits. I guess I'm just being idealistic.

 

[Comandr]

I believe that answers most of my questions. But I have some more.

- What are licensing issues mainly? I mean they could actually just buy the emulation company or pay off the individuals to own the product?
- I was sure that the coding aspect would come in for consoles vs. PC, but that could be mitigated by throwing some money officially?

I mean throw money and problems get fixed. I was just thinking instead of the 400 Million that PS threw at Concord, that could have gone into a proper BC Program. But then again, profits. I guess I'm just being idealistic.

Maybe it is idealistic, but I think it's a question worth asking. I'm sure millions of dollars would help the right group of people figure out how to get ps 1, 2, and 3 disc games to play on ps5. And that would certainly be a better selling feature than Concord was. The "mandatory" disc drive add on being capable of reading every PlayStation game would go a long way to ease frustration surrounding it, I feel.

 

[ScHlAuChi]

I believe that answers most of my questions. But I have some more.

- What are licensing issues mainly? I mean they could actually just buy the emulation company or pay off the individuals to own the product?

As mentioned, if an emulator uses libraries or code that is under GPL then it cant be used on console, as GPL says source code has to be shared/released, not doing so would break the GPL licence.
But sharing your code would mean you break the licence of the platform holder, as you cant release their copyrighted code.
Same goes for the BIOS files, they cant obviously be licenced as they contain copyrighted code - yet most emulators rely on those to work correctly.

- I was sure that the coding aspect would come in for consoles vs. PC, but that could be mitigated by throwing some money officially?
I mean throw money and problems get fixed. I was just thinking instead of the 400 Million that PS threw at Concord, that could have gone into a proper BC Program. But then again, profits. I guess I'm just being idealistic.

Money doesnt really solve the problem, as without JIT it will be very hard to get good performance.
So what you need is programming cracks that can do everything in assembly code to get emulation to run well.
Those people are very very rare nowadays or already work for companies specialized in emulation.
Here´s one of such companies that works with the big platform holders: https://www.implicitconversions.com/
https://www.timeextension.com/featu...assic-games-to-switch-ps5-and-xbox-by-mistake

 

[Natsuko]

The games industry is not known for paying well. And skilled people in this field are also needed elsewhere. Including in industries that pay top salaries. Maybe they don't want to work in the games industry? Why do you think Microsoft, for example, does so much with external people? It costs less. Which is not to say that it doesn't exist in other industries. If these people are really that competent, they don't need a job in the gaming industry.

But when I look at the work of these people and large companies next to them - do they even have a suitable philosophy? Hierarchies in large companies can be a nightmare. No creativity, no skill is of any use if everything has to be painstakingly pitched and perhaps something is achieved because a suit thinks he knows what is needed.

 

[genesisblock]

The developers who are responsible for emulators could get a much better job in Nvidia or AMD and is more likely to get an astronomically higher pay than what they'll get in the console space. I believe I read somewhere that the technical skills for game programmers is much higher than that of your everyday tech company but get a much lower pay.

 

[rabbity-thing]

Modern Vintage Gamer works for legit game companies. Does that count?