Every time there is a new device/platform released, an opportunity arises for old games to make comeback and money to be gained. Whether it's right or wrong to make money off it... I don't know.
But I can feel both sides.
For example my favourite all time PC game is Heroes of Might and Magic (2 and 3). There is a wonderful "inspired-by" version called PalmHeroes, and then some open source projects (freeheroes and others).
And then I won't mind paying for the latest version UbiSoft released for iPad's - and it seems that version was just the DOS version emulated on the iPad (okay, maybe not, but felt that way).
But I was satisfied nonetheless. Playing heroes on the iPad is great.
Ah well, I don't really have saying in such matters - maybe movies/books can help a bit in this direction.
.....
Now one thing that is possibly worrying - is how current games are going to be emulated in the future. It used to be that next-gen games were able to play previous games (PC, console) or emulate them, but PS3/Xbox360 are already hard to emulate on PC (especially PS3) - wondering with even newer consoles...
And then that's even minor, what's more worrying if the game relies on external assets/services (fully online games) - then nothing could be done really....
You make a very interesting point about emulation. For older consoles emulation was essentially guaranteed by Moore's law (and specifically the frequency scaling that went for a while). For a slowing down Moore's law, may we reach a point where real time emulation of a different architecture is just impossible? (and instead some kind of translation will need to be done, à la wine?)
An advantage is that architectures are converging anyway to PC-like instead of exotic stuff like Cell.
A lot of emulators work that way, and have for a long time. N64 on a Pentium II with only twice its clock rate, etc.
Real time emulation of specialized hardware with 100% coverage has never been straightforward. Massive amounts of extra computing power won't save you from having to do specific calculations with low latencies. I'd say it's been impossible to completely capture arbitrary machines for quite a while now. But in practice you can fudge the differences and emulate with similar amounts of power.
But I can feel both sides.
For example my favourite all time PC game is Heroes of Might and Magic (2 and 3). There is a wonderful "inspired-by" version called PalmHeroes, and then some open source projects (freeheroes and others).
And then I won't mind paying for the latest version UbiSoft released for iPad's - and it seems that version was just the DOS version emulated on the iPad (okay, maybe not, but felt that way).
But I was satisfied nonetheless. Playing heroes on the iPad is great.
Ah well, I don't really have saying in such matters - maybe movies/books can help a bit in this direction.
.....
Now one thing that is possibly worrying - is how current games are going to be emulated in the future. It used to be that next-gen games were able to play previous games (PC, console) or emulate them, but PS3/Xbox360 are already hard to emulate on PC (especially PS3) - wondering with even newer consoles...
And then that's even minor, what's more worrying if the game relies on external assets/services (fully online games) - then nothing could be done really....