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In the future, will people want to emulate todays games?

Danknugz

Member
I know there's a thing about emulating old systems for the sake of preserving gaming or just as a challenge, but this question is more about those who wish to emulate games to re-experience a game they cherished from the past that they would like to play again years later when they no longer have the hardware to do it. For example people love to emulate mario and zelda games. What games / franchises from recent generations do you think people will want to emulate in the future?
 

Clear

CliffyB's Cock Holster
Yes, people will and it'll be just as niche as it is today because it'll always be more effort to play old games than new ones!
 

Eimran

Member
If the future is all digital and you can lose acces to your library for saying stfu....
breaking bad series GIF
 
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DonkeyPunchJr

World’s Biggest Weeb
it’ll be a much smaller niche IMO. Nowadays we have:

- most games are on PC
- backwards compatible consoles
- nearly every halfway decent game gets a remaster, remake, or definitive edition on newer hardware
 

Fbh

Member
There's probably always going to be a desire for emulation and a niche community that's in there for the challenge of getting it to work.

That said I think current gen consoles are going to be a bit less appealing simply because almost everything seems to release on PC these days. All major third parties, every MS exclusive and increasingly more Sony games too.
Back in the Ps3/360 era it made more sense as there were tons of games unplayable on PC, want to play Lost Odyssey? or Killzone 2? or Uncharted1-3? Or Ninja Gaiden 2? On PC? You better hope someone gets an emulator working.

The number of console only games this gen is really small, and it's probably going to be smaller in 5 years.
 
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People will try to emulate older games as long as they have access to the game files and hardware powerful enough to develop and run an emulator on.

By that I mean emulation will be around until gaming inevitably starts moving to the cloud.
 

Mownoc

Member
Of course, if there isn't another way to play them. A lot of emulation appeal is nostalgia to play the games we grew up with. There are people younger than most of us whose first console was a PS4/Switch etc. They will have childhood nostalgia for these titles.
 
With MS being practically all in on PC and Sony barely less, both controllers being supported, only Nintendo keeping their games locked to their plattform (VR2 too I suppose), the actual neccessity for some game preservation argument is quite low. Even if some PC ports are releasing in a questionable quality, mostly those are the best version. Windows 12/14/15 etc might struggle to offer eternal compatibility, but I would assume games that are actually worth to preserve will get remasters just to be sold again and again.
I guess Sony will emulate their PS3 also officially, instead of having to offer actual PS3s for way too long. Might be easier to do, than replacing and maintaining the required but probably already very limited numbers of Cells for PS Plus streaming.
 
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LakeOf9

Member
There's probably always going to be a desire for emulation and a niche community that's in there for the challenge of getting it to work.

That said I think current gen consoles are going to be a bit less appealing simply because almost everything seems to release on PC these days. All major third parties, every MS exclusive and increasingly more Sony games too.
Back in the Ps3/360 era it made more sense as there were tons of games unplayable on PC, want to play Lost Odyssey? or Killzone 2? or Uncharted1-3? Or Ninja Gaiden 2? On PC? You better hope someone gets an emulator working.

The number of console only games this gen is really small, and it's probably going to be smaller in 5 years.
Nintendo games aren't on PC, I assume that is why it remains the most popular emulation scene
 

Schmick

Member
They wont need to emulate games in the future they'll just play the 'remastered remastered remastered remastered' version.
 
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Damigos

Member
Explain further.
I ve met almost exclusively people that want to either emulate relatively new games because its a cheaper (and maybe better) way to play the latest eg switch games or the emulate old games because of nostalgia. Eg SNES or PS1 era. I ve met no one that actively emulates from the X1 / PS4 era for example.
I know that all exceptions may be inside this forum, i am just talking about my personal experience with people that emulate
 

Fabieter

Member
People wont make new ps and xbox emulators. The main reason people did was because in the past those consoles had so many games not available on pc. That's not the case anymore. People only cared to preserve exclusive games. So it makes sense that people will still emuluate switch 2 games.
 
Always. There will be people that want to play today's games in the future.

Although with the way systems are designed backwards compatibility is likely to be something taken forward in the future so we may not need to emulate until backwards compatibility is no longer an option.
 

killatopak

Gold Member
Most games, yes.

Some games I will play natively, warts and all. It might sound crazy but some techincal shortcoming can be seen as added charm.
 

Ev1L AuRoN

Member
I think will be less necessity thanks to improve backwards compatibility in the console space, also the tendency of console exclusives to get a PC release. But I think it's still important to the preservation of games, especially games being delisted or not compatible with modern hardware.
 

Holammer

Member
098.gif


I'm already emulating today's games... Today.
Of course people will be playing them emulated or via backcompat. Kids growing up now will be nostalgic about the current gen stuff 10-20 years from now. I expect Live service games to get resurrected with community run stuff like Project 1999.
 

SHA

Member
20 yrs from now, the entire online service will be an soc to serve emulators, no one should be stopped from playing from old catalogs.
 

SaintALia

Member
We'll probably have like 5 Switch2 emulators in the future and two barely working emulators for PS5 and one for XB that can only emulate the Series S, but only for a couple games.

I have no idea where the future of these current games consoles will be tbh. Most of them require some sort of Day 1 patch to be decent and I don't know if people are actually trying to preserve various versions(day 1 release or fully patched end version).
 

A.Romero

Member
Yes but I suspect it won't be as popular as we are seeing a big divergence from classic gaming to what is popular now (GaaS and such).

Kids these days are not that interested in what, for example, PS2 had to offer. Once the generation born in the 80's dies popularity of these games will plummet.
 

WitchHunter

Banned
I know there's a thing about emulating old systems for the sake of preserving gaming or just as a challenge, but this question is more about those who wish to emulate games to re-experience a game they cherished from the past that they would like to play again years later when they no longer have the hardware to do it. For example people love to emulate mario and zelda games. What games / franchises from recent generations do you think people will want to emulate in the future?
You'll have no say what you gonna play. The virtuaverse will say this platformer is good to your synapses and you must play it for good behaviour coins.
 
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