> 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.