I'd rather have companies putting out emulator-friendly devices than re-charging for the same game every time a new hardware generation rolls around. The steam deck is just a computer at the end of the day, people are going to run emulators on it.

sure, but most other console makers actually sell at a loss and rely on selling and re-selling software to make profit. And users who buy consoles don't want to mess around with emulators anyway.

Valve didn't sell hardware for half its lifetime, and the hardware it sold were on small margins. Steam Deck is a success selling a few million, the vita was a bomb selling 10m (very conservative estimate. you'll see 15m when googling). Economies of scale

Did you accidentally respond to the wrong comment?

I don't believe so. I was just explaining that a console needs to justify every generational bump. And if remasters are valuable enough, they'll do it.

Oh, I see what you mean now. I had trouble figuring out the relevance to my comment before.

I think that's pretty reductive. They have a whole category of games that are great on Deck. I love playing Streets of Rage 4 and Katamari reroll on it.

Emulators are not illegal, nor are compatible clones of consoles. It's actually weird that there aren't many alternative implementations of consoles in current times. There were plenty in the NES days.

They are legally dubious enough that Steam had to take down Dolphin. I think that's the real kicker.

>It's actually weird that there aren't many alternative implementations of consoles in current times

where's the allure anymore? the PC and mobile hardware can do that just fine. those alt knockoff consoles came at a time where owning a PC was a huge premium.

That said, there are a few modern alt consoles to consider as a hobbyist:

https://play.date/

https://www.analogue.co/pocket

https://www.arduboy.com/

but they very intentionally aren't trying to compete with modern games.

I think "had" is too strong a word. I don't think a US court ever forced them to do it. As far as I know, they asked Nintendo what they thought about it, got the standard Nintendo "it's illegal" spiel and took it down of their own accord to play nice.

These things are "illegal" because these corporations can afford to turn the justice system into a legal bullying mechanism. They don't like what you do? They threaten to set your money on fire if you don't stop. Most people just obey because they don't really want to impoverish themselves fighting them.

There's no telling what would actually happen if it actually went to court though. I've read too many court cases where these game companies lost to just believe them when they say it's "illegal". The problem is always the fact they win in the end simply by having deeper pockets: the other party often gets bankrupted despite the victory. Bleem and Virtual Game Station come to mind. True justice would have been these alternative implementations of the consoles competing with the real thing on equal footing on day one.

> where's the allure anymore?

There weren't clones of any of the consoles of the previous generations though. Modern consoles are basically glorified PCs but a PS2 and NDS weren't. So I wonder why NES got clones but other consoles didn't.

Are there stats on what proportion of Deck use is piracy? I have a Deck, half my friends have Decks, none of them have mentioned piracy as a use case that I can recall.

A 40 year old with a twenty year back catalog of Steam titles gives me plenty of things to play.

You are aware that the vast majority of Steam games work on the Steam Deck? There are literally more games available on Steam that you can play on it then probably every console in existence.

By "real" console you mean a locked-down device that can only run software approved by the manufacturer and restricts running arbitrary user code?

Why would anyone ever want that? If you buy a device, you are supposed to be able to do anything you want with it, including running emulators or whatever.

Thankfully, even when vendors want to prevent people from doing that, they often screw it up and leave exploits that allow people to regain control. Even funnier when they then try suing random people for that to compensate for their engineering skill issue/make an example etc.

Nintendo make great games that I pay for. But the way they drip feed their back catalog and price gouge on N64 is a red line for me. The entire NES to N64 catalog (licensing permitting) should be a part of the base Nintendo Online subscription.

I'll give them a pass on Gamecube and later as that generation can still look pretty good.

I would probably subscribe if they got the back catalog right. But it's no bother to me really, it's trivial to emulate their games right up to the Wii U.

>The entire NES to N64 catalog (licensing permitting) should be a part of the base Nintendo Online subscription.

Why? no one expects all PS1 games on PS now, nor all OG Xbox games on gamepass.

If people still want to buy ports or subscriptions instead of figuring out emulation, that's their choice.

I don't have an Xbox or PS so not really bothered about what their services are. I guess a trickle rather than a drip feed is OK, it should be a lot faster than it is now though.

Knowing the majority of the NES > N64 Nintendo back catalog is coming at a reasonable pace would be a reason to subscribe to their online service, assuming it is all available at the base sub price.

Using an emulator does not make you a pirate.

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