PSone games have been available on the Sony PlayStation Network for some time now but with the imminent arrival of PSone games on the PlayStation Suite, Sony has decided to let us all know just what it takes to develop a PSone game from disc to store.
In a blog, Sony reveals the rather laborious process of PSone emulation, explaining: "We make sure we've got a good copy of the original disc (or discs if there are localised versions), then the game is cleared for publish by our legal department.
"They check there are no issues with any of the content in the game being under an expired license, or any confusion over ownership of the publishing rights.
"Then we make a record for the game as it will appear on the Store, including the image and all the description text in the eight Store languages."
When it comes to the time it takes to emulate a game, Sony is saying that "the whole process can sometimes take several months" and that there are a number of stumbling blocks between emulating a game and publishing it.
Bug problem
Alongside legal issues with expired rights, Sony has to go through a massive de-bug of the games.
"I have seen a lot of PSone QA [quality assurance] reports with some weird and wonderful errors – menu screens with upside down text, explosions that kill your character at random after watching a cut scene, games that continue to slow down the longer you play them, or music that sounds like it's coming from the bottom of a well… the list goes on," says Sony's Ross McGrath.
"If a bug makes the game completely unplayable or otherwise ruins your experience then that's a fail and the game cannot be published."
Considering all this time and effort is taken to ensure PSone games are decent enough to play on the PSP and PS3, Sony has a massive job on its hands porting its PSone titles to the upcoming PlayStation Suite for use of Android 2.3 handsets like the Sony Ericsson Xperia Play.
Via Bit-tech
