>Yuzu impacts their bottom line in a way that Dolphin doesn’t.
Dolphin could emulate nearly all commercial Wii games by April 2009.
That was sooner into the console's lifespan than where we are now with the switch. (29 months since the Wii's release vs 83 months since the Switch's release)
Maybe more people have gaming-grade computers sitting around now than they did 15 years ago?
You don't need a very powerful computer to emulate a Switch. My M1 Mac Mini w/ 8GB of RAM (~$400) has been able to play every Switch game I've been interested in with equal or slightly better performance than the actual console.
> That was sooner into the console's lifespan than where we are now with the switch.
I don't have any insight into why they didn't go after Dolphin in 2009, but I do think it explains why they're going after Yuzu now.
Contrast that to the Switch where most system sellers can be played on a standard controller without a gyroscope, the threat to their bottom line is much higher.
Personally, I paid for a copy of Tears of the Kingdom when it came out, but only because I had a Switch I could borrow from someone to play it on - if I hadn't had that option, I wouldn't have bought a Switch just to play one game, and I just wouldn't have bought the game at all.
Had they released the game on PC as well as Switch, I would have bought it for PC, but that's not an option. As it stands, either you have to own an overpriced and underpowered console, even if you only want to play one Nintendo game, or you can pirate the game and play it on PC, and have a much better experience than on a real Switch. Nintendo is somewhat bringing this upon itself in my opinion and I don't feel much sympathy for their lost profits, real or imagined.
Considering that the Steam Deck is more expensive than the Switch, arguably every SD player using Yuzu is several lost sales for Nintendo.
Nintendo is somewhat bringing this upon itself in my opinion and I don't feel much sympathy for their lost profits, real or imagined.
This is why they are going after Yuzu in the first place...Because Yuzu makes it easy to pirate Switch games and the pirates feel entitled to play those games on a more expensive device than the device they claim is too expensive.
And Nintendo is okay with that. If you're never going to be a paying customer, they don't care what you think.
Regardless of that particular commenter, many paying customers of Nintendo have the same attitude that they will only emulate switch games.
I think “many” is probably a bit much.
Given this discussion started around whether to boycott Nintendo or not, it seems that you're not a Nintendo customer at all. So I'm not really sure what you would be boycotting?
As for releasing games on PC, I don't see any reason why they would? Developing for PC is much more difficult than a single console, when it comes to handling the variety of hardware, anti-cheat, etc. TOTK and their Mario games are system sellers, with the former even releasing alongside a special edition console and pro controller. Delaying the release of these games to add dev time for a PC port is never going to be worth it.
I have nothing against a Switch emulator existing at all, but making it conveniently easy for the masses to pirate games, condoning it in private spaces you manage, and profiting off the demand for the emulator due to that piracy are all against the ideas of preservation.
If you include DRM circumvention with the emulator, then there's an argument that it's developed specifically with piracy in mind.
Nintendo themselves don't disdain historical preservation. They preserve their code, assets, games, etc themselves.