As far as the requirement to own a Switch, it mostly has to do with being able to decrypt games to play them and system OS apps for services they provide to games. If they were to ship these keys or firmware blobs, they'd be at risk of litigation from Nintendo versus providing documentation on how to obtain the keys and firmware legally. Some of the firmware files might be able to be reimplemented in the future depending on patents and the like.

As a side note, the files required to play _can_ be found online, probably by searching the firmware version plus the filename from Yuzu/Ryujinx docs. (The keys are firmware version specific, and I think tools like RyuSAK let you get both keys and firmware, but this definitely isn't the legal way to go about it )

This has not been necessarily the case for years.

> Your Switch keys and either your dumped firmware or recent game cartridge untrimmed XCI

> Your dumped Nintendo Switch games or homebrew

You don't need a hacked switch if you can find the homebrew apps / games / firmware on the internet and if you can find a donor set of keys. But that enters questionable territory