If it were that small then nobody would even think about re-releasing those old games even in bundles or making remakes/Remaster of such old games. And yet practically every week you hear about a new retro bundle, remake or remaster coming out. It's not the biggest market for sure, but much larger than you seem to believe.

Games have a short shelf life for people who play through one game and never look back at it ever again. But some old games have active communities to this day, some even get updates more than 10 years after their initial release due to their longevity.

Also, this.

Ok - so if you think there’s a huge market and money to be made, that’s fine. As I say - I think you are assuming waaay too much.

There is Antstream arcade who stream old games basically like this plan. I haven’t heard anyone talk about it on this forum. Make of that what you will, of course!

Did you have a good look at the games on the service? Most are pretty unknown games, and many of the others are actually freeware by now.

So unless you want to play the arcade versions, the service simply ain't worth it for most people. But again, most of those games are pretty obscure. Xbox owners actually have an advantage here, as they can buy a lifetime pass for $79.99, no need for further payments afterwards.

Many of those old games rely on quick reflexes by the player. Streaming incurs a delay (as do modern displays btw by a few milliseconds; CRTs didn't have that delay) which is deadly in many of those titles. So even if I like playing them, I'd rather not stream the games.

My understanding is that it streams ROMs to a locally installed emulator, and people say it is ok.

As you say, though “Most are pretty unknown games”

Which is my entire point. You don’t care about the old games I like (and they have NES SNES games on Antstream)…. So why do you think other people care about the old games that you like?

In any case, the service exists, and companies can already put their games there.

The thing is, I do care. If it streams the game (delay) to an emulator (delay) and gets played on a flatscreen (delay), then the delay is unacceptable for me on those arcade games.

Most other games I care about I already own (I kept a CRT with NES, SNES, Megadrive (Genesis for Muricans) and N64 connected to it, with my Gamecube (including Game Boy Player), Wii, Wii U and PS2 generally connected to a small flatscreen TV), but since there's a free version I'll try the service (hadn't heard about it until today) and see how those other games are.