alt Hacker NewsEmulators always, without fail assume piracy. Let's say you bought a cartridge, dumped it and grabbed an emulator. You bought the game but "stole" the console sale.
Nintendo's business is not just games, they need HW sales as well for the whole thing to make sense. Since I have both the game and the console, I can feel justified, but it's not their TOS and that's enough for me. Game/book/music preservation is another story I guess.
Tangent, but the new Zelda Ocarina of Time runs butterfly smooth in insane melees on an S2. Got it on day 1 and we are both over 40, pathetic. Sucks for me, she usurped it and I don't watch next to her so that I can go through the story on my own. Just watched a few encounters to get the tasted. Great game so far, 1-2AM isn't unusual.
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> You bought the game but "stole" the console sale.
No? Virtually every game I've ever played under emulation, not counting emulators ported to consoles for official re-releases/collections, is for a console I've bought. Many of them are games and consoles I still have working copies of both of right now, and I play under emulation because I want save states or FPS unlocking patches or a more convenient cheats system or whatever. At the same time it's not at all unusual to use other original hardware (e.g., a Wiimote) with your emulator. So it doesn't prevent hardware sales in that sense either.
And even if you do have the hardware, it's perfectly legitimate to buy it used, or pick it up out of a dumpster! "Piracy" is deliberately a loaded word and we should probably avoid using it altogether. But regardless of the choice of words, the world doesn't revolve around forcing people to buy new hardware from the likes of Nintendo. No angel is stripped of its wings every time someone buys an FPGA-based, cartridge-compatible emulation device instead of buying a used SNES at a garage sale.
I thought they sell consoles at a loss? [1] So wouldn't you be saving them money by not buying one?
[1]: https://www.ft.com/content/a781c853-3fed-4dfc-b940-413754618...
> Emulators always, without fail assume piracy.
An emulator is a piece of software and can't make assumptions. I'm not sure who you're referring to doing the assuming in your sentence.
> You bought the game but "stole" the console sale.
Not buying something and then not getting it isn't stealing or piracy.
> they need HW sales as well for the whole thing to make sense.
Nintendo has no legal entitlement for their business plan to work financially.
It's not piracy to not give someone money just because they wanted your money.
> Let's say you bought a cartridge, dumped it and grabbed an emulator. You bought the game but "stole" the console sale.
Let's stop assuming stuff.
I own a switch 1, I own Zelda Breath Of The Wild, yet I have been playing it on Yuzu on my computer. First when the switch stopped working and needed a new battery, then I realized I could run it at better resolution on my computer, in any room with larger screen on my laptop thanks to moonlight and I don't have to actually look for it and find it abandonned and discharged by my daughters or that the joycons started drifting again and in need of a repair.
Did Nintendo lose a sale? No.