The two mainstream ones are out of development. I live under rocks, but not so many rocks that I don’t know this.

I was hoping for either a backup of them as they were, or some fork(s) that continued development.

  • Snot Flickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    3 days ago

    It’s sad that Nintendo has so much money that these devs keep caving, when they legally have a right to develop an emulator as long as they’re not distributing them with title keys and such.

    I think a major reason they went so hard on this issue is the rumors that Switch 2 will have largely similar hardware and backward compatibility, including use of the same type of cartridges. As such emulating Switch 2 could easily just be a simple continuation of the work on the original Switch and it’s going to be a bad deal when their brand new system can be emulated on day one of release.

    Personal opinion, it’s the natural result of them keeping their systems so low-end for so long, emulation of them is just easier than emulation of a PS5 or an Xbox. (do you even have to emulate xbox? aren’t they technically UWP windows apps?)

    • CubitOom@infosec.pub
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      3 days ago

      Totally agree. I think another crazy thing is that Nintendo knows how easy it is to emulate their latest games when developers are doing it without source code legally.

      Like imagine if nintendo just saved the effort and money they otherwise would spend on R&D, manufacturing, shipping, and promotion, litigation on new consoles every so often and just released an official emulator instead. It would be so much better for the environment to let people use their own hardware and they could just focus mostly on making games.

      At minimum, they could do both and have an option to sell games to people that don’t want another device to play media that their current devices already are capable of. And slowly phase out the console.

      • realitista@lemm.ee
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        2 days ago

        The whole point of consoles is to have an easy to use out of the box experience. As soon as 3rd party hardware gets involved, that goes out the window. Look at the epic failure of steam boxes. Rumors are that the next iteration will be first party hardware for exactly this reason.

        • CubitOom@infosec.pub
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          2 days ago

          Some websites don’t immediately work on my computer because I use Firefox with noscript. Does that mean I should have a special device from lego so I can reliably view Lego.com?

          • realitista@lemm.ee
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            2 days ago

            You are clearly not in this target market, and that’s okay. You will be able to emulate most of this on your handheld of choice anyway.

            • CubitOom@infosec.pub
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              2 days ago

              I like Nintendo games but I won’t buy new hardware to play them.

              So that means om also not in Nintendo’s target market. Which means they loose my business. But, what if they just let me play their games on my hardware? Then I could like… Give them money for those games right? An official emulator would allow for that.

              If I can currently play nintendos newest and best games on my Linux PC using an open source emulator that was legally made without the help of Nintendo or its source code. It would be much simpler for Nintendo to make that emulator than random open source devs without any real resources, documentation, or source code.

              • realitista@lemm.ee
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                2 days ago

                I’m with you man, I’m all in favor of the idea. It’s just that I’m pretty sure that Nintendo looked at that market and decided that the risk to their core business was too great to take the plunge.

                If anything, I think they’d just release their first party titles on other platforms before releasing a first party emulator (though I’d welcome either).

                I don’t think I’d buy a Switch either if I could get the games easily and reliably elsewhere, like on the steamdeck.

          • Lesrid@lemm.ee
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            2 days ago

            If you use Firefox you’re already a part of an extreme minority.