Path: chuka.playstation.co.uk!news From: Mark Green Newsgroups: scee.yaroze.freetalk.english Subject: Re: Import Gaming Date: Thu, 18 Mar 1999 16:17:20 +0000 Organization: PlayStation Net Yaroze (SCEE) Lines: 38 Message-ID: <36F12710.29B27D8C@reading.ac.uk> References: <01be6f35$d91f2780$0a3ddec2@sonia> <7ckb4r$fu96@chuka.playstation.co.uk> <01be6ff8$6ec48ce0$0a3ddec2@sonia> <36EF8EF0.D4CF5BF0@reading.ac.uk> <7con71$fu911@chuka.playstation.co.uk> <36F0195A.3B7D@antelope.demon.co.uk> <7cphn4$fu913@chuka.playstation.co.uk> <36F108B2.95EDF900@reading.ac.uk> <7cr2tq$fu916@chuka.playstation.co.uk> NNTP-Posting-Host: ssfmse3.rdg.ac.uk Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.5 [en] (WinNT; I) X-Accept-Language: en George Bain wrote: > Hi Mark, > I'll give my 2 cents worth... > First of all I think SCE would be liable if someone's t.v was to get > damaged by switching modes. It's one in a million but it could > happen.... > When games are released in Japan and later in Europe it's more > then a simple "SetVideMode(MODE_PAL)" that has to be changed. > Lots of work has to go into issues such as animation timing, > FMV timing, frame buffer issues, marketing, disc duplication, etc... Yea, exactly. What I was saying was that all the work necessary for the NTSC version already exists - in the shape of the USA executable. By doing all the necessary timing/switching to produce the PAL executable, but then including *both* the PAL and the NTSC executable on the disk, both versions would be available. Since I think they tend to use the same data files, they would not need to be duplicated (although this might be a problem with streaming FMV). This compound version could be marketed and duplicated exactly as the European version would be. I remember somebody suggested that you could include both NTSC and PAL cds in the box, but that would cause a major problem because people would give their "unwanted" CD to somebody else and halve sales. In practice I think a fair amount of data is unchanged between the versions (that's the USA and UK versions, of course - lots of data usually changes in the Japan/USA transition), and very few CDs don't have space for another copy of the executable. So you could just put both the PXEs on and offer the choice that way. As for Sony being responsible if somebody's TV blew up on the mode switch, it's true they might be (unless they explicitly disclaimed it). Actually, an alternative idea might be: make it use the PAL executables on European machines by default, but then provide a parallel port cartridge which signals it to use the NTSC version instead and sell it seperately as an adaptor. This would make it absolutely clear that it was a hardware-critical change and should only be used on TVs that support it, and would also give SCEE an extra opportunity to make some cash on the adapters, as well as publicising the NTSC/PAL switchability of Sony's TV sets.