News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Xbox goes down. You can't play games you own on disc. Parent comment

Re:Xbox goes down. You can't play games you own on disc by goda90 on Tuesday August 04, 2026 @09:11AM (#49168448)
Someday that GameCube will break and so will all the others. And someday that PC capable of running open source emulators will also break. And all that will be left is corporation controlled hardware running corporation controlled software. Maybe we'll be lucky and be allowed to rent a few of the old games.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Xbox goes down. You can't play games you own on disc by imhoguy on Tuesday August 04, 2026 @12:31PM (#49171217)
I believe there will be still data horders alive who will have a running copy of any game you want. Until the Sun burns the Earth.

Greetings to /r/datahorder bunch :)

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Xbox goes down. You can't play games you own on disc by chrisco255 on Tuesday August 04, 2026 @12:46PM (#49171430)
There are already perfect FPGA emulators of N64 out, why not GameCube.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Xbox goes down. You can't play games you own on disc by pezezin on Tuesday August 04, 2026 @08:48PM (#49177265)
The MiSTer is already struggling to fit the N64 core, and the GameCube is more than 10 times more complex than the N64. Just the CPU cache and the GPU embedded RAM would be prohibitively expensive to implement on an FPGA, it would require one of the very top of the line FPGAs in the market to even attempt it.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Xbox goes down. You can't play games you own on disc by chrisco255 on Wednesday August 05, 2026 @03:22AM (#49179613)
FPGAs are improving exponentially so it is only a matter of time.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Xbox goes down. You can't play games you own on disc by pezezin on Wednesday August 05, 2026 @09:09AM (#49182375)
Time will tell, but I don't think big enough FPGAs will be affordable any time soon.

And in any case, software emulation is already incredibly advanced, with emulators like Dolphin and PCSX2 arguably being superior to original hardware (4k rendering, anti-aliasing, high resolution textures, etc). Honestly I can't see the benefits of FPGA emulation for 6 gen consoles and onwards.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Xbox goes down. You can't play games you own on disc by pezezin on Tuesday August 04, 2026 @08:42PM (#49177219)
This. My old GameCube is already broken, the optical drive decided to die. Fortunately some Swiss magic still allows it to run games, otherwise it would just be an expensive paperweight.
[ Parent | on HN ]