I’m absolutely a fan of engineering feats like these being made more accessible for educational purposes. Even in college, I built a NES emulator on an FPGA.
But to argue that it’s primary motive is not to facilitate (and potentially profit from) piracy is not grounded in reality.
Much on the contrary, I'd say piracy is a console emulators most common use. But it's still fine. All that matters is there's a possibility they're being used for good things.
If someone does something bad he's responsible for it, not the creator of the tools he used. Even if you don't like what most people use something for, just the possibility of one person doing it right is much more than enough reason for it to built. We call this individual freedom, and it's much more important than (game publisher's financial) security.
About piracy, when I think about it, piracy is big part of my computer childhood, otherwise, I wouldn't afford to do anything with computers.
As a marketer, I can even see the benefits of "free distribution of content" to people that wouldn't buy it anyway, and you're still building your brand on those people - they will, eventually down the line, buy your IP if they had good experiences with it.
I became a GTA fan thanks to it, and to modding, when started to be able to afford games I bought into the series.
If I haven't developed the emotional relationship with the game, nowadays I wouldn't care less about it.