So what was teased yesterday has now been announced, and it looks hideous. From their website:
Quote: Featuring a pair of competition class Sanwa JLF-TP-8YT sticks with 8-way GT-Y directional gates and OBSF buttons for the finest precision, response times and durability. The 16 pre-installed games are from the original Capcom CPS1 and CPS2 arcade ROMs with emulation provided by FB Alpha, delivering an authentic & accurate arcade experience exclusively for the Capcom Home Arcade.
Break some high scores in single player, team up with a friend in co-op multiplayer or destroy them in a head-to-head battle. Then upload your best scores via the Capcom Home Arcade's onboard WiFi to a Worldwide High Score Leaderboard to see how you match up against other players across the globe.
16 games with this for £199.99/€229.99- can't really say it's a definite bad deal considering the prices of pre-built arcade stick units like this, but seriously? Shaped like Capcom's logo?
> So what was teased yesterday has now been announced, and it looks hideous. From their > website: > Featuring a pair of competition class Sanwa JLF-TP-8YT sticks with 8-way GT-Y > directional gates and OBSF buttons for the finest precision, response times and > durability. The 16 pre-installed games are from the original Capcom CPS1 and CPS2 > arcade ROMs with emulation provided by FB Alpha, delivering an authentic & accurate > arcade experience exclusively for the Capcom Home Arcade. > > Break some high scores in single player, team up with a friend in co-op multiplayer > or destroy them in a head-to-head battle. Then upload your best scores via the Capcom > Home Arcade's onboard WiFi to a Worldwide High Score Leaderboard to see how you match > up against other players across the globe. > > 16 games with this for £199.99/€229.99- can't really say it's a definite bad deal > considering the prices of pre-built arcade stick units like this, but seriously? > Shaped like Capcom's logo? > > > source: nintendolife.com
and of course, the FBA devs haven't given permission for it (they can't really anyway, FBA is under a non-commercial license, and relicensing it would take a massive effort just as it did for MAME)
Hint, MAME 0.172 and newer are GPL licensed, and can be used. One of the reasons it was relicensed was so that products like this COULD be done in a legal way, so to see bootlegs like this is kinda insulting considering how much effort was put in to doing that whole re-licensing process which was meant to benefit them.
I suspect the hardware they are using is too weak to run modern MAME at high enough performance. That or FBA had specific features/support they wanted for their project.
> I suspect the hardware they are using is too weak to run modern MAME at high enough > performance. > That or FBA had specific features/support they wanted for their project.
CPS emulation isn't especially demanding, also, it's no excuse.
The situation seems confusing anyway, it appears one of the FBA devs has 'provided a license to the software' without any knowledge or consent of the other devs and anybody who has contributed. That really isn't how licensing works.
There is a reason MAME had to go through a long drawn out process to get where we are.
> I suspect the hardware they are using is too weak to run modern MAME at high enough > performance. > That or FBA had specific features/support they wanted for their project.
Even a cheapy Raspberry Pi or a clone can run MAME... it just has to be a really old-ass version. (See: Arcade 1Up.)
They probably went with FBA because it's easier to modify its user interface and add features, like that "upload high scores" deal they're bragging about. That, and it's much less intensive than MAME.
> > I suspect the hardware they are using is too weak to run modern MAME at high enough > > performance. > > That or FBA had specific features/support they wanted for their project. > > Even a cheapy Raspberry Pi or a clone can run MAME... it just has to be a really > old-ass version. (See: Arcade 1Up.) >
Which wasn't licensed properly.
> That, and it's > much less intensive than MAME.
In part because it's based on older code, which can't be offered under a commercial license.
I think a Pi3 can actually (just) run CPS2 at full speed in recent versions as it's a relatively simple system and a Pi3 is not a good benchmark, it's ultra-cheap hardware and given the price point of the product, you'd expect something better anyway. It's more that they'll reduce their costs as far as possible because they think these older versions are an option.
> > I suspect the hardware they are using is too weak to run modern MAME at high enough > > performance. > > That or FBA had specific features/support they wanted for their project. > > CPS emulation isn't especially demanding, also, it's no excuse. > > The situation seems confusing anyway, it appears one of the FBA devs has 'provided a > license to the software' without any knowledge or consent of the other devs and > anybody who has contributed. That really isn't how licensing works. > > There is a reason MAME had to go through a long drawn out process to get where we > are.
> and of course, the FBA devs haven't given permission for it (they can't really > anyway, FBA is under a non-commercial license, and relicensing it would take a > massive effort just as it did for MAME) > > http://neo-source.com/index.php?topic=3344.msg26661#new > > so it's a £200 bootleg product. > > Hint, MAME 0.172 and newer are GPL licensed, and can be used. One of the reasons it > was relicensed was so that products like this COULD be done in a legal way, so to see > bootlegs like this is kinda insulting considering how much effort was put in to doing > that whole re-licensing process which was meant to benefit them.
So, Modern Vintage Gamer released a video about this just a couple hours ago:
> and of course, the FBA devs haven't given permission for it (they can't really > anyway, FBA is under a non-commercial license, and relicensing it would take a > massive effort just as it did for MAME) > > http://neo-source.com/index.php?topic=3344.msg26661#new > > so it's a £200 bootleg product. > > Hint, MAME 0.172 and newer are GPL licensed, and can be used. One of the reasons it > was relicensed was so that products like this COULD be done in a legal way, so to see > bootlegs like this is kinda insulting considering how much effort was put in to doing > that whole re-licensing process which was meant to benefit them.
So let me see if I can lay this out right. The clauses added in to help give the emulation teams some legal recourse of 'see we do not allow that' has basically made it so the people they did not want to piss off cant use the code at all. Interesting conundrum. Guess back then the idea of the companies would use this code was not floated. Crazy...
But yeah, use something GPL, MIT, or BSD based. Should make everything nice and legal and much easier.
> Politics and all that aside *only* 16 games is complete bullshit. I'm not tempted by > this in the slightest even if it was discounted to 50 bucks.
Given how lax they've been with the emulator licensing I'm not even sure I'd trust that the rest is 100% properly licensed and they haven't just assumed that they can use anything with a Capcom copyright on it that runs on CPS1/2.
> > and of course, the FBA devs haven't given permission for it (they can't really > > anyway, FBA is under a non-commercial license, and relicensing it would take a > > massive effort just as it did for MAME) > > > > http://neo-source.com/index.php?topic=3344.msg26661#new > > > > so it's a £200 bootleg product. > > > > Hint, MAME 0.172 and newer are GPL licensed, and can be used. One of the reasons it > > was relicensed was so that products like this COULD be done in a legal way, so to > see > > bootlegs like this is kinda insulting considering how much effort was put in to > doing > > that whole re-licensing process which was meant to benefit them. > > So let me see if I can lay this out right. The clauses added in to help give the > emulation teams some legal recourse of 'see we do not allow that' has basically made > it so the people they did not want to piss off cant use the code at all. Interesting > conundrum. Guess back then the idea of the companies would use this code was not > floated. Crazy... >
There were many reasons back then.
Ironically one of them is that the emulation wasn't considered mature enough, and it would have resulted in shoddy products if they'd simply taken our code and used it for their own products.
Ironic, because now instead of taking the code we're happy with, that is available for them to use, for free, in a perfectly legal way, they're instead still illegally using the code we weren't happy with and producing the shoddy products we were hoping would be avoided.
Once MAME was considered mature enough, we went through all the steps needed to offer it under a true FOSS license.
You also have to consider just how old MAME is, OSS licensing has come a long way in that time.
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