Emulation games going forward a thing of the past?

Jayinem

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Pretty bold to claim that everyone who disagrees with you judt didn't read your post.
Creating emulators for modern gen consoles is no easy feat. The Switch got a couple because it's low powered. The xbox one and ps4 are going to take a while, and it's going to take even longer for hardware good enough to emulate them to be affordable.
Given that their digital stores are still open, just buy the games

They're replying with shitty attitudes just like you, and I'm giving it back. The one I said that to didn't read the thread title he was talking about there being 200 million roms available already when in the thread title it says GOING FORWARD. What does that mean? THE FUTURE, so he didn't read it. Welcome to my ignore list. Thank you to Robert Newbie Catboy and others for participating in the thread in a normal fashion, which some of these immature children can't do.

I don't know what triggered some of you but if you look at some of the other replies they're just calm replies to the topic like normal people. I don't understand why my threads trigger some people. I don't want to fight with anyone but I'm not going to be treated like garbage. It's not starting with me on any of these, these guys are angry.
 

ItsAshleyFTW

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I think emulation will die on the same day as the heat death of the universe. That is, it's not going away.

It's true that Switch emulators are under legal scrutiny right now but that is because the Switch 2 will be released soon, and will very likely be backwards compatible with the first Switch. Emulators for the PS4 and Xbox One are in their really early stages but should progess further once MS and Sony drop support for those consoles. Though they would be mostly useful for games not on PC (like Bloodborne or Crash Nitro-Fueled). Switch had been a target from the get-go due to more exclusives and weaker hardware.

In addition, most emulation projects are open-source so it's always possible to fork and improve on them further. Stuff like NES, SNES, Genesis is pretty much complete, although they would likely still need updates for bugfixes and compatibility with future OSes/CPU architectures.

In short, while development of modern emulators seems to have slowed down, this is mainly because PCs of our era aren't powerful enough to properly emulate those systems. Once PCs become more powerful and systems are no longer supported, it will be much easier to emulate those consoles.
 

Jayinem

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I think emulation will die on the same day as the heat death of the universe. That is, it's not going away.

It's true that Switch emulators are under legal scrutiny right now but that is because the Switch 2 will be released soon, and will very likely be backwards compatible with the first Switch. Emulators for the PS4 and Xbox One are in their really early stages but should progess further once MS and Sony drop support for those consoles. Though they would be mostly useful for games not on PC (like Bloodborne or Crash Nitro-Fueled). Switch had been a target from the get-go due to more exclusives and weaker hardware.

In addition, most emulation projects are open-source so it's always possible to fork and improve on them further. Stuff like NES, SNES, Genesis is pretty much complete, although they would likely still need updates for bugfixes and compatibility with future OSes/CPU architectures.

In short, while development of modern emulators seems to have slowed down, this is mainly because PCs of our era aren't powerful enough to properly emulate those systems. Once PCs become more powerful and systems are no longer supported, it will be much easier to emulate those consoles.

It just seems like if they got a working PS4 emulator, it may not get a ton of use except for the guy who both pays a lot of money for a expensive computer and is into emulation. The majority of people buying PCs, even gaming specifically, do not have strong enough computers and even less are into emulation, and PS4 is a beast of a console to emulate. And many will spend a lot of money on a PC but aren't into emulation at all, and most PS4 games can be found on PC but you're right there are a few exceptions. So while they may exist part of what I meant by the topic was that they won't be as popular as emulators of the past. Just about any computer can run SNES roms for example.

Maybe one day though it will catch up because there was a time hardly anyone had a PC that could emulate something like RPCS3 or Cemu, and now most a good amount of computers can. It will just take time.
 
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JeepX87

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Hi, I'm kinda surprised about how fast is Switch emulators advance to run games well, despite Switch is current generation since PS3 emulator took many years, probably more than 1 decade to mature with nearly 70% games playable, and yeah, PS3 is difficult to emulate. I just wonder about how easy to run the Switch emulator when compared to PS3 emulator.

I do think that will take very long time for emulators based on previous generation (PS4 and Xbox One) to mature and some emulators like OG Xbox and Xbox 360 are not mature yet. Some people reported that Sega Saturn is not mature, despite about PS1 emulator became mature about decade ago, I think and yeah, Sega Saturn isn't easy to emulate. PS2, Dreamcast and GameCube emulators are mature with just fewer game incompatible with emulation.

I noticed one of PS4 emulator named PCSX4 is restrictive and they won't allow pirated contents to run and they mentioned about encryption on game discs that make difficult to pirate, but I don't understand about this.

I played several PS3 games with RPCS3 on my current gaming laptop and they run well. I noticed some bugs with inFamous. Tales games run very smooth. Run RPCS3 require very fast PC that most people don't have one and it need $1,500 gaming laptop to run this emulator.
 

Jayinem

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Hi, I'm kinda surprised about how fast is Switch emulators advance to run games well, despite Switch is current generation since PS3 emulator took many years, probably more than 1 decade to mature with nearly 70% games playable, and yeah, PS3 is difficult to emulate. I just wonder about how easy to run the Switch emulator when compared to PS3 emulator.

I do think that will take very long time for emulators based on previous generation (PS4 and Xbox One) to mature and some emulators like OG Xbox and Xbox 360 are not mature yet. Some people reported that Sega Saturn is not mature, despite about PS1 emulator became mature about decade ago, I think and yeah, Sega Saturn isn't easy to emulate. PS2, Dreamcast and GameCube emulators are mature with just fewer game incompatible with emulation.

I noticed one of PS4 emulator named PCSX4 is restrictive and they won't allow pirated contents to run and they mentioned about encryption on game discs that make difficult to pirate, but I don't understand about this.

I played several PS3 games with RPCS3 on my current gaming laptop and they run well. I noticed some bugs with inFamous. Tales games run very smooth. Run RPCS3 require very fast PC that most people don't have one and it need $1,500 gaming laptop to run this emulator.

I wouldn't say $1500 maybe 10 years ago that was true but I paid $900 for my laptop in 2020 and it plays most games and just about every emulator, probably couldn't handle PS4 but I'm playing Switch games, RPCS3, Cemu, Xenia at least the games that work etc... and most PC games too like Halo Infinite. Just not the very newest games that just came out mostly because I only have 4 gb of video ram and most require 6. I can mostly play the same games as anyone would want to but the difference is I can't necessarily put a newer game at 4K 60 fps like others can I have to use 1080p which is fine to me graphics aren't the most important thing to me. I still think 1080p looks fine and quite good.
 

ItsAshleyFTW

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Some people reported that Sega Saturn is not mature, despite about PS1 emulator became mature about decade ago, I think and yeah, Sega Saturn isn't easy to emulate.
Sega Saturn I would say is mature, the Beetle Saturn core is pretty stable and is optimized for even decently-powered PCs. Heck even the Raspberry Pi 5 can run it at full speed. YabaSanshiro is basically obsolete except for devices that aren't powerful enough for Beetle Saturn. OG Xbox I would agree isn't mature yet but it's pretty close, 85% of games are compatible which IIRC is more than Cemu or RPCS3.
 

aoimatsuri

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What is stopping you from creating your own emulator ?
This sad man.
medium-4d1cf554427cb76e06863de5fffe12e5.jpg


I bet someone spoiled their spaghetti.
And thats why they won't let anyone have fun.

So sad.
 
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JeepX87

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I wouldn't say $1500 maybe 10 years ago that was true but I paid $900 for my laptop in 2020
I means based on recommended system mentioned on RPCS3 website that where CPU part seems heavy.

I'm not good with determine the gaming laptop pricing - I have one with Core i7-12650H with GeForce RTX 3060 that is enough to run current PC games at high to max setting at 1080p.

I guess that laptops with just faster CPU and entry level GPU may be enough for RPCS3, likely less than $1,000 like you said.
 

Robert Newbie

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OG Xbox I would agree isn't mature yet but it's pretty close, 85% of games are compatible which IIRC is more than Cemu or RPCS3.
I'm always happy to see OG Xbox emulation gets recognized. The original Xbox did have some great exclusives, and some multi-platform games are best experienced on the Xbox. It's so surreal to see how long it's taken us to get even to this point, but that's what makes emulation such an event. PS3 emulation may excel at a fast rate while a previous-gen console struggles to reach the same heights as PCSX2.
 
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OilFreak

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I wouldn't be surprised if the leakage of Echoes of Wisdom had something to do with the takedown of Ryujinx
 

OilFreak

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  • Nintendo doesn't bother Ryujinx
  • Echoes of Wisdom leaks
  • Nintendo makes deal to take down Ryujinx
Seems plausable to me
 

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Nintendo tends to display its concerns and thinking in the next generation. Nintendo has always been, lets say vigilant, when it comes to fighting piracy.

Expect the Switch 2 to incorporate substantial design features to defeat or frustrate its emulation, at least in the way the Switch is currently being emulated. I expect the platform will look more like the Wii U to the scene, in that we have a backwards compatibility mode that's familiar and fairly easily cracked/utilized, but a main current generation mode that takes until... well about now from the Wii U's launch to be cracked/utilized on real hardware.
 

Taleweaver

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Look at it from another perspective: people pay for current geen emulation, and if you play your odds right, Nintendo wil pay you for your work.
So... Why would emulation be a thing of the past exactly?
 

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I personally have shied away from playing on emulators recently, now that FPGA retro gaming has gained a lot of traction lately. Things like the Analogue Pocket, the MisTer project, the ModRetro Chromatic, The Sipeed TangNano 25K, and the FPGBC from Funnyplaying are all affordable ways to get your feet wet if you've never tried it.

But for modern consoles beyond PS1 and N64, you'll be waiting a long time. We're barely scratching the surface of simulating Dreamcast in FPGA at the moment, and powerful FPGA chips don't come cheap.
But even with that said, I do believe FPGA is the future for retro gaming preservation.
 

OilFreak

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Yeah, MiSTer!!!!!!! I have one of those and I love it!
And fortunatley for gamecube and wii, wii's are very cheap, and if you really need HDMI Wii U exists
 

The Real Jdbye

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Now that Ryujinx has agreed to stop with their emulator I was thinking about it, we not only have no Switch emulators that are actively being worked on, but emulation as a whole may be dead all together. There was some news recently that Xbox One had 6 games working or at least playable, but to me the interest will not be high for that because Microsoft started putting all of their exclusives on PC where the emulator would be working anyway, the only exceptions were Halo 5 and 1 or 2 other decent exclusives like Rare Replay (which Rare Replay is a collection of older games you play on other emulators right now)

If I'm a dev am I going to put in all of the work for a Switch emulator just to possibly be sued by Nintendo? And same would go for Switch 2. However both Yuzu and Ryujinx were profiting off their emulators with patreons so who knows, maybe someone would be up for the task and do it non-profit.

Maybe one day in the future we will get a working PS4 emulator. But as it stands right now emulation in gaming as a whole looks very bleak.

I wish you could edit thread titles like you can posts, I'd like to correct it to emulating games not emulation games. Oh well.
Emulation of current consoles may be a thing of the past, then again that has never been a given considering how difficult it can be to emulate current consoles, we've been rather lucky to have GameCube, Wii, Wii U and Switch emulation while those consoles were still current, as the same is not always true with Sony and M$.

I think Switch emulation is likely to pick back up at some point after the Switch 2 is out, and the Switch sees a resurgence of popularity by developers for some reason, similar to what happened with the Wii U which had little interest while it was current and for years after, but eventually saw new exploits and a wave of new homebrew. At that point Nintendo will have little care for what people do with it emulation, hacking and homebrew wise.

Patreon is a rather new thing that was just not around when emulators of previous consoles were being made, it might have contributed to emulators being taken down. If you're going to break the law, the rule of thumb is not to profit from it, because the moment you profit it makes you liable for a lot more. That being said I'm not sure either Yuzu or Ryujinx were breaking the law so they might be in their right but they would still have to fight Nintendo to prove it and that can get expensive.
 
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spinal_cord

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The vast majority of emulator devs aren't doing it for piracy, they're doing it for preservation. Do you honestly think these devs are putting hundreds and thousands of hours into a piece of software just so they can play some free games?

I would argue that the majority of emulator developers do it for the problem solving aspect rather than preservation. If preservation was the main reason, there would be no need for emulators, just being able to back up the games accuratly on different media is more than enough to preserve them.
 

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