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To Sue or Not To Sue (1/14/99)
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As far as Connectix Virtual Game Station is concerned, we keep waiting for the other shoe to drop-- the legal shoe, that is. As you almost certainly are aware, there are rumors flying all over the place that Sony is preparing to sue Connectix for releasing this software that emulates a Playstation game console. The good news is that so far, those rumors are only rumors, and according to Wired News, no suit has yet been filed. And, in fact, we're a little fuzzy on just what Connectix could be sued for, assuming that Sony believes them when they say that they clean-room reverse-engineered their product and therefore didn't have access to any Sony trade secrets.
VGS itself is still not publicly available, though about three thousand copies were sold on the show floor at last week's Macworld Expo; Connectix claims the product will ship later this month, after some packaging issues are worked out. Our personal guess is that those "packaging issues" are things like, is Sony going to threaten to sue unless Connectix pays a licensing fee? And if a licensing deal is hammered out, then Connectix would be able to put the Playstation name and logo on the VGS box. That sounds like the win-win situation everybody would like to see come about.
As has been pointed out by many, Sony reportedly makes very little-- if any-- money on sales of its $129 consoles, instead raking in the profits on sales of its actual Playstation games. If that's true, then you'd expect Sony would be thrilled to see a product like VGS hit the market; suddenly, there will be thousands more people buying those games, and Sony doesn't have to lift a finger. The only reason we're still at all concerned about a lawsuit is that Sony may feel legally obligated to file suit if only to avoid setting a dangerous precedent that could come back to haunt them if someone really rips them off in the future; they'd have to deal with the "Yeah, but you never went after Connectix when VGS came out, so why are you attacking us now?" factor. We won't know for sure until VGS actually ships, hopefully in a few weeks, but for now it certainly looks like Sony is trying very hard not to file suit against Connectix. We're betting on a licensing deal, and we hope it all gets resolved soon-- we got to see VGS running on a rev. A iMac, and in at least the one game we saw (which was not on Connectix's list of "approved" games), performance was flawless.
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 | | The above scene was taken from the 1/14/99 episode: January 14, 1999: All it takes is one meanie to send Apple's stock price into a tailspin. Meanwhile, Apple prepares to lay a little science on the Best Buy sales staff, and Connectix still hasn't been slapped with a Sony lawsuit over its Virtual Game Station product...
Other scenes from that episode: 1268: Upstairs, Downstairs (1/14/99) Okay, we don't have the data right in front of us, and we're way too lazy to go dig it up just to make sure, but doesn't it seem like every time Apple posts a profit even bigger than Wall Street was expecting, their stock price plummets?... 1269: My Fair Best Buy (1/14/99) So from a Macintosh standpoint, you think the Best Buy sales experience generally leaves a lot to be desired, do you? Heck, we'll go further than that-- it stinks. Frankly, we're hard-pressed to see what all the fuss was about with Best Buy leaving the Mac market and then returning to sell the iMac; if anyone can tell us how, exactly, Best Buy of today is any better than Best Buy from the Performa days, we'd really like to know...
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