Sony needs to sell me a PS1 Classic with these features

[potato_hamster]

Turkish said:

potato_hamster said:

See here's the part you still fail to get, that upscaling technology that framemeister or whoeever they are is utilizing might be patented. Which means if Sony wants to use it, or develop their own using the methodology described in the patent they'd have to come to a licencing agreement with the patent holder. Or, they can use their existing upscaling technology that they own the patents to, that they use in playstations and DVD and blu ray players, and on their smart TVs that's good enough for pretty much every one of their customers. Huh... I wonder which one they're going to use.

It shouldn't cost more than $129 to make? Based on what exactly? Because the PSone sold for $99 a decade ago? Did that PSone have upscaling technology? Did that PSone connect to PSN? No? Well I'm pretty sure that developers were utilizing morsel of processing power the PSone could muster, so it looks like they're going to have to come up with some supplementary processing that plays well with the existing PS1 architecture, which isn't arbitrary. Furthermore the PSone featured some propreitary chips. Those might actually be impossible to reproduce today without some considerable expense. Considering how technology has advanced, and these chip manufacturers have upgraded their facilities, it's entirely plausible they don't have the means of downgrading their production lines to produce chips of that nature any more. Thus, if Sony were to actually reproduce these chips, (which is the only way to guarantee perfect compatibility with literally every PS1 game) it might be more expensive per chip to produce them today than it was ten years ago. Why do you think Nintendo opted to use a modern processor that was total overkill in the NES classic? Because it was more than capable of doing a good enough job emulating the 30 games that they were including in the box, and because they were only emulating 30 games, they only had to make sure that the system emulated those 30 games well enough.

My point being, this is not nearly as simple as you're making it out to be. Adding a PS1 disc reading and/or memory card compatibility adds a tremendous amount of complexity and expense to the development, QA and production of such a device. It's so needlessly complicated when a simple box that emulates built in games would make the primary market for such a device more than happy. You speculations on price and consumer interest in paying that much for a device are almost completely baseless.

This is clearly another case of a gamer selfishing thinking "I want a device, therefore there's no reason for not to make it for me". Sorry man, but your love of Japanese PS1 games as a north american gamer makes you niche as fuck. Sony can't make any money off of catering to people like you. You need to accept that.

Finally, source that "retro games" are a $1 billion a year industry? Based on the NES classic, which grossed Nintendo 3.2 million X $60 = $192 million, and well we have the atari flashback and at games genesis at less than $8million in sales between them. Where is the other $800 million coming from, and more importantly, if you're talking about the increased value and reselling of 20-30 year old games, how on earth can Sony, Nintendo or whoever actually profit off of that?

"that upscaling technology that framemeister or whoeever they are is utilizing might be patented"

There is never 1 solution to anything in tech, Sony themselves hold millions of patents, some of them to upscalers they already have. Like I said, they have some of the best upscalers in their TV and DVD/Blurays. They only need to take retro gaming upscaling serious to put out something incredible. Hell, they can start from the upscaler they have and update it, that alone could be better or on par with the Framemeister.

Your whole "this thing is gonna be expensive" is based on nothing. Sony can make this thing cheap with their resources. The PS1 Classic I propose will cost $99-$149 tops, which is a decent price.

This is getting silly. Sure there is no one solution to anything in tech, that doesn't mean that the critical part of achieving that level of upscaling isn't someone's intellectual property. Let me give you an example. Do you know why most loading screens are boring practically static screens and not mini-games except for a handful of Bandai Namco titles? It's becausethey patented the concept of adding a mini-game to a loading screen. You can't just get around that by making your own loading screen mini-game solution because the concept itself is patented, not the means of achieving it.

But let's assume you're right on your baseless assumption that Sony owns the IP necessary to achieve the level of upscaling that framemeister has. On what basis can you claim they can use their existing upscaler and "update it"? In order to achieve that, they Sony might have to approach upscaling in a fundamentally different way, using different hardware components, and process the image in way that is unlike any upscaler Sony has ever developed. The could very well have to start completely from scratch, and it wouldn't surpise me at all if they did. This is yet another completely baseless claim. It's kinda like saying "I see you ported a PS2 game to the Wii. You should be able to update that code to port a PS4 game to the Switch, right?"

But even then, why would they take retro gaming upscaling seriously? How is that honestly going to make them more money? Do you think anyone is going to think "well here's an SNES classic at $99, and here's PSone classic at $149, but the PSone classic has a better upscaler, so I'll get that one". Better yet, do you think anyone stumbled upon an NES Classic on a store shelf (it did happen) and thought "well I like the idea of the NES classic, but it's upscaliing isn't as good as a framemeister, so it's a hard pass". Not a fucking chance. As long as it looks decent at 1080p, it's going to be "good enough", and it's not going to be worth Sony's or anyone elses time to improve anything beyond "good enough". The investment by Sony is just going to add cost to the device that the vast majority (and I mean about 99%) of the potential market will not care about at all.

The same goes for disc drives.
The same goes for the ability to play imports.

No one gives a shit about these features. Well besides you, and a handful of people that love importing NTSC-J PS1 games and playing them on HDTVs that probably already have modded consoles, and already have things like framemeisters.

My whole "this thing could easily cost Sony more than you're imagining" is not based on nothing, It's based on knowledge of the nuances of hardware and software development, which you love to just gloss over. Making a device such as a PS1 classic does not work the way you think it does. That's an objective fact. I've demonstrated a handful of completely things that you either have failed to consider of continue to ignore mostly out of ignorance and a desire to be right.

Let me put it to you this way. Let's say Sony announces two PS1 classics, and is capable of supplying stores in such a way that everyone who wants one can walk into a store in their community and purchase one when they want. No supply restraints. No scalping necessary. Everyone that wants one will have to be able to choose at the store which one they want.
- The PS1 classic costs $60 with 30 of the most popular PS1 games built in. Crash Bandicoot, Metal Gear Solid, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater, Gran Turismo, Final Fantasy VII-IX, Tomb Raider, etc. All the games that people bought PS1s for. Standard upscaler. No PSN connection. No ability to play PS1 discs. No ability to play PS1 imports.
- The PS1 classic Pro costs $150. No built in games. Better upscaler, ability to play PS1 discs from any region, and play PS1 classics downloaded from PSN.

I guarantee you the classic model outsells the classic pro model by a margin of at least 20 to 1, if not higher, which would make the PS1 Classic Pro a waste of shelf space.

Face it. You just want it to happen for you because you'd love to have one, so you can't see how unrealistic your ask is. As a result,  you have blinders on about it.