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Forums - Gaming - Emulation and modding are about to be revolutionized

DekutheEvilClown 9 hours ago

Weren’t all the big Switch games available to emulate on PC on basically day one? It had no visible affect on hardware or software sales.



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HoloDust 8 hours ago
DekutheEvilClown said:

Weren’t all the big Switch games available to emulate on PC on basically day one? It had no visible affect on hardware or software sales.

Not quite, but yeah, it didn't move the needle much in the long run.



Norion 5 hours ago
HoloDust said:
Norion said:

I don't know if they can do anything to avoid their business models getting disrupted in the coming years since it'll be very hard to beat the service of freely downloading a native port of their first party games on a platform you already own versus having to buy their hardware and the game on it. I personally don't really care about companies like Nintendo, Sony and so on getting harmed by these developments but it's gonna hit the gaming industry hard. 

I think ultimately it all boils down to convenience - most people just want to play game and not to worry about whether that game will glitch/crash/perform poorly due to being recomp, and also have access to patches, cloud saves, achievements and other stuff that legal copy gives you. Otherwise, Steam would collapse right away, given that everything released on it is cracked right away (if it relies on its DRM)...not to mention some being bold as folks behind Dawn of Bloodwalker and putting it on GOG as well right away, with no DRM at all.

And sure, there will be some impact from recomps, but it's not like industry never had problem with piracy on consoles (PS1, PS2 and DS come to mind) and still managed to be profitable and go on, though yes, this is much earlier in the cycle. But then again, TotK launched on PC before Switch, and that haven't really impacted sales that much.

To be clear I don't think Playstation and Switch sales will collapse overnight from this or anything like that but it will be increasingly disruptive over time. Nintendo in particular is at risk due to how reliant they are in first party games. The convenience of pirating them is gonna be by far the highest it's ever been basically so they could lose a lot of software sales in the coming years. Even just people playing their games for free on a hacked Switch 2's will hurt. 
DekutheEvilClown said:

Weren’t all the big Switch games available to emulate on PC on basically day one? It had no visible affect on hardware or software sales.

Aside from just how much more accessible this is gonna be compared to that a big difference is it won't just be on PC. People are already starting to get Switch 2 games running on PS5 for example so some time in the next few months or so it could become possible to play most Switch 2 exclusives on a hacked PS5. I also saw someone supposedly getting Mario Kart World running on the iPhone 18 so the floodgates are opening big time.