#20016 - DiscoStew - Fri Apr 30, 2004 2:28 am
I just saw this article at PlanetGamecube, and I was just shocked. They own GBA emulation now, so what is going to happen to us? US patent shown here
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#20018 - zazery - Fri Apr 30, 2004 2:45 am
Hmm, I think this is great for Nintendo. It definitely will reduce piracy issues. However at the same time it prevents us from developing our own games. I don't think Nintendo will be too concerned about us creating our own game. I believe this move by Nintendo was to keep the GBA alive. I remember reading that the Nintendo DS will act as a third pillar to the GCN and GBA, not replace them.
It's interesting, but shouldn't concern us too much. Nintendo can clearly see that we are in no way promoting emulating commercial games.
#20019 - DiscoStew - Fri Apr 30, 2004 3:15 am
I do agree with you. It is probably more for piracy than homebrew development. I still remember when the first working GBA emulator was out, and that at the same time (if not earlier) that the actual GBA came out. Perhaps that must be the reason why they got the patent. Anyways...
I guess that GBA emulators will not be updated anymore, but what about development tools, such as HAM, or even DevkitAdvance?
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#20020 - Miked0801 - Fri Apr 30, 2004 3:59 am
And yet, this hurt licensed developers as well. The official Nintendo stuff quite often isn't as good as the emulators for debugging. Oh well.
#20024 - tepples - Fri Apr 30, 2004 6:09 am
I read the independent claims 1 and 8 of the patent, and in order for an emulator to infringe, it has to include the step of "analyzing, with said software program, said stored binary image to detect whether said binary image constitutes a predetermined video game title" in claim 1 and wording along similar lines in claim 8. Thus, Nintendo has patented not emulation of handheld systems but rather high-level emulation of handheld systems switching features based on matching the ROM contents against a database. To not infringe this patent, just don't automatically turn on speed hacks based on a game's CRC.
And yeah, speed hacks typically help l33chers more than they help developers.
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#20039 - FluBBa - Fri Apr 30, 2004 9:09 am
Old news...
People listen to the hype and don't read the hard facts.
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#24804 - phrax - Wed Aug 11, 2004 8:52 pm
Homebrew development will continue, regardless, if this forces sites like this one to shutdown, four more will reappear somewhere - or we'll end up going further under Nintendo's radar.
#24806 - isildur - Wed Aug 11, 2004 9:04 pm
I think this was done mainly to prevent other types of hanheld devices to emulate the GBA. The homebrew community is not a threat, but other handheld devices capable of playing gba roms is surely a serious threat to them.