John O'Conner's Blog

Developing Java apps for the Playstation, X-Box, or Wii

A business associate recently asked me about the availability of a JRE on the Playstation, X-Box, and Wii. He wants to run his Java media jukebox software on those systems. I told him I'd look into it over the weekend.

Web searches for various combinations of java playstation or java wii produced little substantial information from the Playstation, X-Box, or Wii official sites or vendors. Forums and chat rooms have lots of speculation, confusion, and probably lots of misinformation. My weekend of casual searching produced no reliable information. I still don't know whether any of the shipping Playstations, X-Boxes, or Wii systems contain a JRE.

I do recall announcements at JavaOne in the last several years -- those announcements hinted that a JRE existed and would be available for the Playstation. But I haven't been able to confirm that. So, what is the state of the Java platform on those systems? Anyone know? And if a JRE does exist for Playstation, where is it? And why is it not readily visible and available? If it is, I've certainly missed it.

Comments

• Java ME on the PlayStation 2 was demoed at the JavaOne 2001 keynote, but it doesn't exist as a user-visible technology and I'm not aware of anyone ever licensing it for use in a game. Three years later, Sony was gone and the keynote actually had an announcement of Java on the Infinium, the phantom console that never actually launched. With Infinium's low regard in the gamer community, Sun was probably lucky that nobody really picked up on that announcement. By the way, where's the outrage? Sony and Sun get a pass on announcing but not shipping a PlayStation 2 JDK, while Steve Jobs promises the Mac will be the best Java delivery platform at the prior JavaOne and he's public enemy number one for not keeping up with that seven years later? Seriously, guys, where's the hate?

  Posted by: invalidname on November 05, 2007 at 09:48 AM

• And what about Semplice project that promised to run VB apps on JRE?

  Posted by: kirillcool on November 05, 2007 at 12:38 PM

• I've not heard of these being available on the xbox, 360 or ps2 at the least. In terms of possibility certainly there's a number of hackers out there who've got Linux onto their xboxes. Checkout lifehacker who've run a couple of articles on re-purposing original xbox models as mythtv media centers. Most of these rely on various hardware or software hacks or mods however, Microsoft takes a pretty dim view of these and they'd likely disable your live accounts if they think you're running one of these machines. The software hacks sound quite interesting, part of the technique depends on getting certain games that have some kind of delay or prompt in their boot sequence that allows the hacker a chance to pull the game DVD from the drive and substitute a linux installation disc to start the installation. Certainly that sounds like it ought to be possible to boot another os given bootstrap/driver support. The grey area is all the discussion I've seen fitting a certain make & model of optical drive and flashing the dvd drive bios which may well be a pre-requisite ~ hardly something for the faint-hearted. For the ps3 I've read about Sony's media center device that allows for recording of digital tv and playing your music library (dont know what online services drives this). I've also heard about sgi and those large number crunching seti-screensavers things making use of the ps3s raw computing power. The ps3 sounds more open than the other platforms in this respect - or maybe thats down to official Sony support via the SDK.. I know far less about that machine. Would like to find out more. Even when you've got your software installed they typical gamer will only have the controllers as input devices and be sat at a greater distance from the screen, so default 8pt tahoma won't be workable. That might prove trickier to overcome.

  Posted by: osbald on November 05, 2007 at 02:04 PM

• I think the Playstation 3 support you heard of for Java would only be as a side-effect of Blu-Ray spec support for Java. I don't know if that ever happened. I agree, it's a shame that Java support on consoles isn't there. A typical reasoning is that the hardware sells at a loss, and the games make the profit, so having an open hardware platform sucks the profits away. I seem to recall hearing that Wii is the only one not sold at a loss, but it's pretty close to cost. A typical SDK for consoles costs more than most people's car, too. This problem of lock-in and lack of user-focused or inexpensive dev tools/platform for joe blow is prevalent in the mobile phone industry, too. Running Java on a PSP or even better a Nintendo DS would open up tons of new applications. I think it would be worthwhile for console makers to consider selling an "unlocked" version of their hardware that makes up for the "selling at a loss" problem and builds in a little profit, then allow the public to go to town. Having a small resale royalty fee would also make it worth their while. If you ever get the info you were looking for, please post it in another blog entry so I'll see it!

  Posted by: gerryg on November 05, 2007 at 03:59 PM

• playstation 3 allows you to install one of a number of linux varients. Once this is done then you simply install a java linux version. Not a nice solution though. I would also be very keen to see a version on ps3 without the need for installing linux

  Posted by: buzzheavyyear on November 06, 2007 at 06:29 AM

• While there is no jvm for the wii, you can use the wiimotes as input devices. Someone has written a library, wiimotej, that uses JSR-82 and provides an API for interacting with the wiimotes. I've tried it, and it is pretty cool.

  Posted by: wsnyder6 on November 06, 2007 at 06:36 AM

• As noted, Java is provided in the firmware of each Playstation 3 courtesy of the BD-J, the programmable component of the Blu-Ray spec. Whether this JRE is available to developers in general, or only to Blu-ray developers, is anybody's guess.

  The Playstations have always been Linux based, AFAIK. Sony has its own internal Linux flavour which it uses as the basis of the Playstation OS. Basic development kits were released to the public for the PS1 and PS2. Be warned, none of the current generation of consoles use x86 processors: the 360 and Wii are PowerPC based, while the PS3 has a PowerPC variant core with seven Cell "Synergistic Processing Elements" (eight in reality) grouped around it.

  As ever, Wikipedia has a few interesting articles: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_Yaroze http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_for_PlayStation_2 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_3_Linux

  Posted by: javakiddy on November 06, 2007 at 09:11 AM

• The makers of these platforms are not interested in the average hacker creating content for these devices. It would open up the floodgates to content that would be out of the control of the device manufacturer. These companies are focused on locking down there consoles with as much DRM and "anti-piracy" measures as possible. Why would they want to include a JVM that could lead to "unauthorized" games or services? I would love to have a jvm + jogl for the playstation, but I'm just a codemonkey and Sony wants $$$ to develop for there platform.

  Posted by: aberrant on November 06, 2007 at 10:38 AM

• C# is already on the XBox 360 in the form of XNA Developer Studio. Microsoft seems more than interested in the average hacker creating content and even promotes the best work through Xbox Live Arcade. IMO Sony are missing out on an important wave of user created content by not giving us access to tools for hobbyist game development.

  Posted by: jc on November 07, 2007 at 03:27 AM

• To be fair (and as I understand the process) you also have to pay to develop/host XNA Developer Studio games on the XBox 360/XBox Live. Not including the cost Visual Studio which you'd no doubt need (not sure how much mileage you can get out of express edition here). I think Microsoft can be quite sniffy about the content, especially the notation of free content they seem to find abhorrent (games not patches that is.. going by forum accusations). They don't even have a browser so it's doubtful they'd be happy about giving a Java platform free rein to pull resources over the net/Intranet. Actually I've yet to get my 360 talking to my local network (not MCE). Can extend my other MCE box, but not pull tracks from its local drive/mediaplayer db? nor backup my profile/saves the other way around. Very much locked down.

  Posted by: osbald on November 07, 2007 at 05:38 AM

• According to the XNA FAQ, the developer tools are free and the XNA creators club subscriptions are either $99 or $150 per year. I haven't checked what you get for your subscription, but if that's the price of entry to Xbox 360 development I'd say it's pretty much open to all. The only snag seems to be that your target audience must also be subscribers to XNA Creators Club because your game is distributed as source for end users to compile on their PC before upload to their 360. There is also talk of a Pro version of XNA which will allow binary distribution straight to Xbox in future. Now in theory you can do home-brew development for PS3 by coding to Linux but then your end users must have Linux installed and you don't get access to the PS3 graphics hardware (no drivers). I would love it if Sony released a Java based system equivalent to XNA but we all know that's not going to happen.

  Posted by: jc on November 07, 2007 at 07:46 AM

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