do you think emulators are going to disappear?

So I was just looking at Dolphin and it occurred to me that with the new more PC based consoles, there is going to be even more precedent for games to come to the PC. I could see a reason to make a ps3 and 360 emulator considering they had many games that will never see a PC release. But if we can expect most games to be ported, then is there any point to making one? Anyone have any insight on this based on how previous generations played out?

Btw, I expect Nintendo devices to be the exception to the rule.

And please keep the bullshit about whether this is legal or illegal out of this, like with most things, it depends on the user.

No.

Games not being ported to the PC had very little to do with the technical aspect.

no

nope.

no

There will always be things about the system that differ from a standard PC configuration that will need to be emulated. So, no.

Many groups who create emulators and rip ROMs do so out of a sense of archiving gaming history. Sad though it may be, there's going to be a time not to far from now when all the original classic game hardware (Atari, Intellivision, etc.) just stops working. Same for the disks/cartridges with the games themselves. Emulators are really the only things reliably keeping those games alive.

The physical media is of course far more robust now, so say your GTA V disk from today will last a crazy long time compared to your pong cart from 1975, but it's not unthinkable that even the next gen consoles to play those games on might be hard to find a century from now (if the human race even lasts that long). So even though there might be many more PC ports, folks still have the urge to keep those console versions playable on other hardware.

So yeah, no.

Maybe one day, but only because it seems progressively more complicated to emulate newer consoles. Absolutely rock-solid, reliable emulators aren't really available after the PS1, and even that's debatable. There's still no N64 emulator that runs every game with sound, full speed, and full compatibility like you can find for any NES or SNES game.

As consoles have more purpose built components, they seem to become harder to emulate and/or need significantly more computer power to virtualize all the components. Eventually it seems that people hit something they can't reverse engineer, or the idea just loses interest. Can you imagine trying to RE and emulate something like the Cell processor? And this is before we've even gotten into whatever security measures newer consoles might have.

nope.

Lol no

You already know.

Nah, how else would players play their old games?

Let's assume you were pointing to new console emulators, eventually, yes. They're getting too hard to emulate. I would say, emulations will still exist but only with the old consoles.

Oh hell no. The most reliable Saturn emulator is still a complete pain to deal with. And that's with a relatively well-known system. The more esoteric the system, the spottier the emulation.

nope

@grantheaslip:

Esoteric from a gamer's point of view, although I don't think I'd ever acknowledged that there was much of a difference. Besides, I'd say there's at least some interest in Saturn emulation, what with Princess Crown on the verge of finally being fan translated and all.

Yes.

Haha! TWIST

Fuck no. Some of us can't afford a DS.

Nope. Legal grey areas (and straight up piracy in many cases) aside, emulators are essential for archivists. No console (or legacy PC build) will be around forever, and there will always be games that don't see ports. Not because of tech, either.

Also, if there's even the slightest difference in versions of a game, it should be archived as well. Admittedly, I'm a bit crazy about preservation, but yeah.

They'll outlive the internet.

Have you been on the internet before? The fucking Space Jam website is still online. None of this will disappear. And as time moves on console we consider a generation old will be emulated on our iPhone 10s.

Same with the Atari Jaguar. Even less interest, but also esoteric from a developer view. The 68k was supposed to send requests to the two Tom and Jerry chips to do the actual rendering. I don't think anyone's been able to fully RE the blitter, and/or exactly emulate those chips and that network. (In short, there still aren't any good Jag emulators, and that fucker's from 1994).