Listen... Did you hear that? That was the sound of the other shoe dropping. Ever since Connectix unveiled its remarkable "Virtual Game Station" Playstation emulator at the Macworld Expo a few weeks ago, Sony has made no attempt to mask its displeasure. After all, VGS was reportedly developed entirely without Sony's knowledge or involvement, there's no licensing agreement in place, and the emulator sells for less than half the price of a real Playstation console, so why wouldn't the nice folks at Sony be a little cheesed off at somebody cutting into their action? (Oh, sure, maybe Sony loses money on every Playstation they sell, and every unit of VGS that goes out there makes them money on games, but it's the principle of the thing, darnit.) Anyway, the upshot is that as of Wednesday, we've got yet another lawsuit to follow-- according to MacCentral, Sony has gone ahead and sued Connectix for violation of their copyrights and trade secrets.

No surprise there, though we strongly suspect that Sony doesn't have much of a chance of winning. Connectix claims that they created their emulator entirely through "clean room" reverse-engineering, so that it uses absolutely none of Sony's intellectual property. In addition, Sony alleges that VGS "circumvents" copy protection and regional lock-out technology built into every Playstation that prevents users from playing pirated games or ones restricted to a foreign market; however, Connectix made it clear when the product first surfaced that VGS does include those protections. (Some enterprising hackers have since figured out how to get around that protection in VGS, but by the same token, people have been bypassing the same technology in real Playstations for years.) Lastly, according to Sony's statement, they take issue with VGS' "inferior performance." Well, heck if you can sue someone just for releasing a product that you don't think is good enough, get out of our way-- we've got some Microsoft lawsuits to file.

Connectix's response to all this seems to indicate a profound sense of confidence, as they've just announced that they're shipping VGS 1.1, featuring better compatibility-- and improved protection against piracy. Let's see if they can get it out the door and onto store shelves before Sony can get an injunction halting the product. Actually, this may all work out for the best; if Sony's just angling for a licensing deal and one gets hammered out, then it's definitely possible that Sony would work with Connectix to improve the product in future versions. Imagine if VGS 2.0 features 100% Playstation compatibility and a 40% speed boost. Providing that the price of the product doesn't rise much beyond the current $49, Connectix's latest killer app might get even more vicious.