In most cases, the release of yet another classic console emulator for the Switch wouldn’t be all that noteworthy. But experts tell Ars that a pair of Game Boy and Game Boy Advance emulators for the Switch that leaked online Monday show signs of being official products of Nintendo’s European Research & Development division (NERD). That has some industry watchers hopeful that Nintendo may be planning official support for some emulated classic portable games through the Nintendo Switch Online subscription service in the future.
It would be so much easier for everyone involved if companies like Nintendo embraced the classic gaming emulation scene instead of fighting it. Imagine if you could easily buy ROMs for classic NES, SNES, Game Boy, and so on, games, without having to resort to shady ROM sites.
I don’t like this gatekeeping. And for once, Microsoft seems to be doing the right thing.
Sony PlayStation 3: Removed back compat (they could run PS2 games), removed Linux. And recently they tried to remove PSN online store. Fortunately there was enough backlash to prevent it.
Again Sony PS Vita: Is not going to play some PS One games, even when you previously purchased them. There is no technical barriers, heck, once there was a “bit flip” by mistake, where lucky people downloaded them onto their consoles, fully functional.
Nintendo: This thing. They not only are capable of making a good emulator, they even try to block third party ones, or YouTube videos. It is quite possible to run Nintendo 64, Wii, Wii U, or even some Switch titles at 4K on a PC. But not on a new Nintendo console.
General: Many otherwise functional games are blocked due to expired licenses. I remember new owners of Dead Island even trying to pull down licenses people bought from Steam (https://www.reddit.com/r/Steam/comments/tmzt3/dead_island_pulled_from_steam_account/). Want to play a James Bond game? Nope, none of them are available anymore. X-Men origins? Nope. Jurassic Park? Only the latest game, not the good originals. Terminator? Same.
We have the technical capability to preserve all these games. And we already have the “bits” to replicate them. Yet, the publishers and platform holders are keeping them away from enjoyment of future generations.
I can’t blame Sony or any other company for removing back compact after the “Riiidge Raaaacer” incident. It sent a signal to corporate execs that back compact for consoles is not that important to consumers. So, why maintain such an expensive feature? Remember: Some variants of the PS3 had actual PS2 hardware in them, which increased the cost and thermal dissipation of the console.
Whether back compact is actually important, oh, that’s a whole other story. But it’s not easy to tell, because Steve Jobs has trained the public to cheer according to how good the presenter’s showmanship is, not according to how good the feature presented is (this, and DRM made into a “cool kids club” in the form of FairPlay/iTunes compatibility, is what I consider to be the two lasting legacies of Steve Jobs).
In any case, the general public may not have gotten what they wanted with regards to back compact in consoles, but they surely got what they deserved. Should have cheered during the “Riiidge Raaaacer” moment, even if the showmanship was subpar, idiots.
Forgot to say: This won’t prevent companies from releasing lazy ports running on software emulators, because of course.
kurkosdr,
Yes, there is the “profit” component. Companies can make more money by “re-releasing” existing games, as you said with lazy emulators. And they would lose money by doing the heavy lifting of a good generic emulator maintenance.
But these are short term outlooks. On the long term, having access to more games = more value for the new platform.
Especially when it was already there:
Sony had a software PS2 emulator, too:
https://www.eurogamer.net/digitalfoundry-vs-ps2-classics-on-ps3
And you could install it with CFW:
https://ps3.wonderhowto.com/how-to/play-ps2-games-your-playstation-3-without-any-extra-hardware-0138637/
That makes especially more hurtful.
> It would be so much easier for everyone involved if companies like Nintendo embraced the classic gaming emulation scene instead of fighting it. Imagine if you could easily buy ROMs for classic NES, SNES, Game Boy, and so on, games, without having to resort to shady ROM sites.
Amen to that. Given the interest in those machines they could even build new hardware ones – possibly with emulated hardware – and I’m pretty sure there would be a market for them.
With the cheapness and easy availability of FPGAs, there’s no reason that “real hardware” reimplementations of older consoles are impossible. Things like the ZX Spectrum Next and Mega65 show us that actual “real hardware” retro machines are very much in demand, and are a viable product.
Emulation, no matter how accurate, will never be 100% accurate when it’s running on commodity hardware such as x86 or ARM. Timings, hardware emulation etc will always be “off” to a certain extent, meaning that 100% compatibility with all of a platforms back catalogue is almost impossible. By re-engineering the exact hardware in an FPGA or custom chip negates all those issues, as for all intents and purposes, the hardware is identical to the original.
This is why i believe the approach made by the developers of the NES/SNES mini, Playstation mini, A500 mini are going about mini consoles the wrong way. Whereas other systems, like the ZX Spectrum Next, or to go more old school, the Commodore DTV (despite it’s design flaws and hardware faults), will always be a superior platform and experience.
The thing is that most people will gladly take a software emulator which can be had at no cost (and doesn’t take any more space under the TV) than pay for an FPGA (and have it take up more space under the TV). I don’t have any complaints from accurate emulators such as bsnes and BeetlePSX, so the real-world gains of FPGAs are not there. This makes FPGAs that re-create old systems a tiny market (you get zero or near-zero real-world accuracy gains and none of the “original” appeal), which means they tend to cost a lot, which further reduces audience, etcetera.
I am also not aware of any open-source FPGAs re-creating old hardware, and I doubt they will ever exist for anything after the Atari 2600, considering most open-source developers would rather make software emulators that can be iterated upon at zero cost than burn through FPGAs.
Also, FPGAs cannot be put inside consoles because it increases power requirements, heat dissipation and PCB area. if you want compatibility, better go for a clone chip or emulation. For example, when the original PS1 CPU (R3000A) stopped being produced, the PS2 started using a PowerPC 440 with an embedded software emulator as a replacement, not an FPGA. But even then, most customers don’t care, so corporate execs eventually realised chips from older consoles inside new consoles are wasted BoM, PCB area and R&D. The PS4 ditched all backwards compatibility and sold better than the Xbox One (which maintained partial compatibility). This dispelled any myths that backwards compatibility somehow plays a major role in the buying decisions of most people, and the resources are better spent elsewhere in the product. Sucks I know (if you want backwards compatibility in consoles), but what can you do?
Looks like the tweet providing evidence it can play more than one game is gone. It would be big news if Nintendo developed a general purpose emulator as the ones they currently ship are designed for individual games and the roms can’t usually be swapped out.
The thing is, so so many of those companies that published games for those old systems don’t exist anymore. It’d be impossible to track down the rights holders to get permission to re-release many of those games, and next to impossible for the majority of the rest. Even if they really wanted to, it wouldn’t be possible.