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Comment by ApolloFortyNine | Hacker News Reader

Emulating consoles that are no longer sold makes some sense.

Emulating a console that already exists just feels wrong. Even if technically in the right.

And it's hard to ignore, even when the emulator is in the right, 100% legal, 99.99% of people will simply be pirating their roms.

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Well if we're going to dive into morality, requiring me to produce additional pollution and e-waste to run your program when I have a perfectly capable turing machine already is unconscionable.

Nintendo: Put your games on steam. Let me buy them without killing the planet.

Apple: License your damn operating system for running on non-apple hardware. Hell, just let me legally run it in an virtual machine so I can test my scripts on your OS without killing the planet.

Nintendo's primary competitive advantage in the gaming space is it's expertise in hardware and tight integration of self-published games. Nintendo would have to fundamentally change it's business model and alter the design of their games (and consequently the unique appeal of them) in order to fit your demand.

You are right about Apple though, simply allowing people to install their OS on other hardware for personal use would not impact their market strategy in any significant way.

I'd argue the success of the switch emulators proves their games can be successful without changes in the PC space. I'd certainly agree with you when it came to Wii-era games since that had the unusual controller[0] but the switch is a pretty standard controller.

[0] Which they could have sold as first-party PC accessories, further capitalizing on the PC market

> the success of the switch emulators

you mean the success of a decade of unpaid labor which has the free time to reverse engineer and iterate on the tech with no regards for regulation, business demands, and a higher quality bar compared to some FOSS-ish tech?

I'd hope a forum like this would understand that the things and time you get for hobby projects is far different from working for a business. It couldn't work because Nintendo has a much larger target on its head for the tech being used compared to a small group of hackers with little to no money to sue for.

> Nintendo would have to fundamentally change it's business model and alter the design of their games

it's all C++, dude. Most of the time it's all based on engines that already run on Windows. So what are you telling me, programmers are unable to port minor amounts code over to a different, vastly more powerful architecture? This sounds like some sort of incompetence olympics.

You don't seem to understand what I'm saying because obviously it's technically feasible for Nintendo to port their games. The fact that they own the hardware platform their games are run on though, fundamentally changes Nintendo's approach to designing games. And considering how successful the buissness is, clearly people like what Nintendo is making. It has nothing to do with incompetence and everything to do with the fact that they have found a niche in the gaming market, which means they can't and shouldn't try using the same business strategies as a normal game studio.

yes, i'm sure you're privy to the internal business dealings and strategy at nintendo and can speak authoratitavely as to how and why they make certain internal choices.

It's not that, it's that the experience wouldn't be the same or of the same quality so it would hurt Nintendo's image.

You can run a Wii game on not a Wii. But if you're not standing in your living room with a Wii remote, then you're not playing the game as it was intended. You might have a shitty experience and that reflects badly on Nintendo.

Same for something like a DS. Yes, you can emulate a DS on something that is not "dual screen". But the form factor, dual screen, and stylus is integral to the game's experience.

Nintendo isn't like Microsoft or Sony. Thier games really lean into the hardware and rely on it, and it does genuinely allow for a unique experience.

I am not an Apple fan at all but I would say that Apple tries to run their business similar to Nintendo, a tightly polished OS tied to hardware. I say tries as it appears to me that their quality has dropped since the death of Steve.

To your parent; >Well if we're going to dive into morality, requiring me to produce additional pollution and e-waste to run your program when I have a perfectly capable turing machine already is unconscionable.

No one is requiring you to buy Apple OS or Nintendo games.

> Well if we're going to dive into morality, requiring me to produce additional pollution and e-waste to run your program when I have a perfectly capable turing machine already is unconscionable.

This is not obvious to me - I would be interested in reading more about the ethical considerations here, if you or anyone else has any good links.

Links for what? The environmental damage of producing electronics?

- Apple has a report for the environmental impact of an iphone, 81% of the carbon emissions is from the production of the device [0]

- In addition to the whole global warming thing, there's the health impact [1].

So here I am, typing this message out on a perfectly capable universal turing machine. But in order to run <nintendo game> I have to incur that 81% carbon emissions again to buy a different universal turing machine from Nintendo. One that will, after a few years, get thrown into the back of a closet where it will accumulate dust until one day I haul it down to electronics recycling where it can continue its journey poisoning the children.

Its a simple matter of 1 device is less bad than 2.

    [0] https://www.apple.com/environment/pdf/products/iphone/iPhone_13_PER_Sept2021.pdf
    [1] https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/electronic-waste-(e-waste)

I was hoping for a more holistic analysis about nintendos business model, the environmental impact, and how the purchasers choice to not buy Nintendos hardware and software fits in. But it is interesting food for thought nonetheless.

> requiring me to produce additional pollution and e-waste to run your program when I have a perfectly capable turing machine already is unconscionable

The waste of all 150m Nintendo Switches in production isn't eve a fraction of the actual worst environmental impacts of current society.

>Nintendo: Put your games on steam.

Why is it only now that it's "consiousable" to tell a business how to operate? Especially in conjunction to yet another, private, business?

If I don't like a business or their model, I simply don't deal with them. As I have with Apple for all my life. Neither Nintendo nor Apple are monopolies in their respective markets.

It's not only now. Product tying has been considered a bad thing for a long time. Console "exclusives" are pretty much the definition of tying. Why are businesses suddenly given unlimited leeway with anticompetitive practices (e.g. preventing anyone from offering a switch-compatible device with better frame rates/resolution) once copyright is involved? Emulators demonstrate that it's not a technology constraint causing market failures.

You should be able to buy a switch compatible device from e.g. Asus if you're not satisfied with Nintendo's hardware. Tying media to the device is just as absurd as requiring Sony speakers to listen to music from artists that signed with them or requiring a Disney television to watch sports.

I disagree. In my case I want to play some of my legally acquired games in ways that were not possible on the original hardware. High FPS, widescreen support, VR, mods. I also want to play my games in a way that's convenient for me, like not having to hook up my console over its own dedicated HDMI. There's more to emulation than just piracy, it opens up a whole field of possibilities for the software.

> In my case I want to play some of my legally acquired games in ways that were not possible on the original hardware.

And I want Sony to not ignore its entire back catalog that made them successful in the first place instead of seeing one IP bomb and saying "well we have no IPs". But I don't have anymore control over that than you do.

Life is all about compromises. That's why multiple teams of ex-Sony devs chose to make their own IP instead of playing hardball with Sony

I'd say it's morally more important for me to be able to run my games at framerates that don't make me nauseous and/or give me epilepsy as opposed to some overbearing company taking away my basic ownership rights in order to squeeze another nickel out of me.

Even so, there is no difference between games from the 80s and games released last week from the perspective of copyright law, which usually works in Nintendo's favor.

>Emulating a console that already exists just feels wrong.

feelings aren't real, you can do whatever you want in this life! :)

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