Connectix(R) Corporation announced that it was temporarily suspending current shipments of Virtual Game Station in compliance with a San Francisco Federal District Court decision.
This order does not apply to the tens of thousands of units that Connectix has already shipped, which will still be widely available for resale while supplies last. Connectix will continue to offer support to customers who have already bought CVGS or who may buy units that are now in stores.
Updaters to older versions are still available at www.connectix.com, and Connectix will support sales of existing inventory through marketing programs that are already in place. Development activity of improved versions of the Macintosh product and the forthcoming Windows version is not affected by this decision and will go forward as planned.
"This is just the first stage of a lengthy process of discovery of facts and finding of law. We are confident that we will be able to resume shipments once this matter has received further review at the appellate level," stated Roy McDonald, President of Connectix Corporation. "Early customer response to the new Version 1.2 has been overwhelmingly positive, and we are looking forward to resuming our shipments in the near future."
Connectix denies Sony Corporation's charges and intends to defend itself vigorously. "We do not believe that we have violated any intellectual property rights in the creation or marketing of Connectix Virtual Game Station," McDonald added.
"This brief pause in no way diminishes our plans for aggressive marketing and sales of Connectix Virtual Game Station. We look forward to restocking our Mac resellers as soon as this preliminary injunction is reviewed. We hope that in the longer run we will find a solution for both Sony and Connectix that allows us to cooperate in bringing enhanced consumer choice to the Macintosh and PlayStation communities," concluded McDonald.
Connectix Virtual Game Station, which won the coveted MacWorld "Best of Show" award at the recent Macworld Expo in San Francisco, enables many popular Sony(R) PlayStation(R) games to run on iMacs(tm) and other Apple's G3 Macintosh computers. This new software-only emulation product builds on the company's success with Connectix Virtual PC software that enables Macintosh users to run Windows applications.
"Connectix Virtual Game Station has been the best-selling product Connectix has ever offered in its own online store, showing the high level of consumer interest in software that expands the number of titles they can run," stated McDonald.
This is a very interesting case and we are watching to see the outcome as it will affect emulation software development for years to come. Connectix's main stance is that consumers have a right to choice, while Sony feels they have a right to control the user experience for their own products.
It seems it would be in Sony's best interest to allow PlayStation emulation as it will result in an increase in the royalty payments they receive on each PlayStation game sold.