What do you think is the future of emulation?

[Kovlak]

The future of emulation is AI filters trying to wipe it out of the web.

 

[MajesticSiN]

The future is the same but even more systems emulated.
Also lower specs needed as the tech gets better

 

[Dreamcast_best_VN_console]

Nintendo finding a legal loophole to make emulators themselves illegal (like they did with Yuzu, kinda) and making all future emulators much more scarce and their distribution much more tricky.


Or it might get more popular, since companies (ahem ahem Nintendo ahem) hate reselling their old games on new platforms for some reason. Creating a higher demand for both ROMs and emulators, but also more pushback from the publishers (and maybe even leading to the first outcome I said).

 

[Badseed Badseed]

The most recent board meeting at The Big N...

 

[Ikagura]

Or it might get more popular, since companies (ahem ahem Nintendo ahem) hate reselling their old games on new platforms for some reason.

Some people complains that there are too many ports/remasters/remakes around but I agree that not being able to have older game legally is another issue.

 

[stinkerdoo]

I hope future emulators continue to push for lower input and audio latency. It was only a couple years ago that emulators for PS2, PS1, and N64 felt entirely unplayable to me due to latency with buffered frames and high latency audio backends. But nowadays I literally can't tell the difference between playing on emulator and playing on hardware (aside from all of the wonderful benefits of playing my favorite games at higher resolutions, widescreen, and with patches to make the games even better :>). It's seriously mind-boggling to me. My mind has been boggled.

I can see things like shader compilation being a big problem for emulators in the future. Everybody loved projects like Yuzu and Ryujinx, but waiting for shaders to compile was agonizing for me (at least on my computer at the time, when both were still being actively developed). I could either wait an hour for the game to load everything before I started playing, or play with the worst 1% lows known to man. Maybe we'll have better technology for shader compilation down the line, but I think it will be an uphill battle.

 

[Ikagura]

A way to play 4:3 games in non-stretched wide-screen without having to modify the ROM/ISO itself.

Being able to emulate motion and touch control effectively with a gamepad.

 

[dkpopman]

Nintendo finding a legal loophole to make emulators themselves illegal (like they did with Yuzu, kinda)

iirc, the issue with Yuzu was that they were pay walling stuff, and playing too loose with the piracy side. it was hubris of the dev team that took them down. N was overly hungry to take action, but there's a reason that happened, and has barely happened since, and not all the blame can be put solely on N.

That being said, where there's a will, there's a way. I don't see anything but a bright future for emulation OR the piracy side of the internet. Things are constantly getting easier to access, as long as youre willing to relocate from time to time. The most harmful things that happen are stupid memes under Nintendo tweets about "the 3DS is super easy to mod" those type of posts are so incredibly damaging. Wish people knew how to keep a low profile.

Also, this might be pot stirring, but if a game was intended to be in 4:3, you should be playing it in 4:3.

 

[Ikagura]

iirc, the issue with Yuzu was that they were pay walling stuff, and playing too loose with the piracy side. it was hubris of the dev team that took them down. N was overly hungry to take action, but there's a reason that happened, and has barely happened since, and not all the blame can be put solely on N.

I've read something regarding the ability to run TotK or Echoes of Wisdom (unless that was for Ryujinx) before it came out.

The most harmful things that happen are stupid memes under Nintendo tweets about "the 3DS is super easy to mod" those type of posts are so incredibly damaging. Wish people knew how to keep a low profile.

I always facepalm each time a video game journalist site posts an article of the "this Zelda under Unreal Engine looks gorgeous and is what fans always wanted to play".

The 3DS is quite old but this is stupid to talk publicly about a rom site on Facebook as well.

 

[extermist]

I'm not sure if my input has any meaning or weight in the matter, but in all my years of piracy and internet surffing, the best practice is to never centralize anything.

We have multiple sites and resources for a reason.
As long as places to get games from never die at the same time, they will always keep coming back.

 

[DragonMals]

how long will the remaining ROM sharing websites stay alive for?

Nothing can get rid of on the internet. It's just impossible. Companies might make it hard to get, but nothing will truly be lost on the internet. There will be at least one person who has a copy fo such and if they have the tools, they can back it up and whatnot. If not, then the other person could do it.

 

[Tonberry]

Nothing can get rid of on the internet. It's just impossible. Companies might make it hard to get, but nothing will truly be lost on the internet. There will be at least one person who has a copy fo such and if they have the tools, they can back it up and whatnot. If not, then the other person could do it.

This unfortunately isn't as true as people claim, in general.
A pretty good example is Youtube, as there are countless Youtube series and videos (not just old ones at that) that are just wiped from the face of the earth because people didn't back them up before they were taken down for various reasons.

Granted, we're talking about video games and I would assume it's probably a bit more well-tended area than random Youtube videos, but still.

 

[Ikagura]

the best practice is to never centralize anything.

Great advice and not just for roms.

 

[extermist]

This unfortunately isn't as true as people claim, in general.
A pretty good example is Youtube, as there are countless Youtube series and videos (not just old ones at that) that are just wiped from the face of the earth because people didn't back them up before they were taken down for various reasons.

Granted, we're talking about video games and I would assume it's probably a bit more well-tended area than random Youtube videos, but still.

This is a great example of not having things centralized, if those videos were uploaded to other places then purging them wouldn't be an issue because there'd always be backups somewhere else.

Great advice and not just for roms.

It's the best realization I've had from seeing site after site, service after service get axed.
You can stop on this flower and kill it now, but it's seeds have already spread to other places, you can't kill everything all at once now can you?

But in all seriousness the absolute kill to all of this is if government steps in and demands ISPs to nuke or quarantine parts of the web, it's never happened before I think, so I don't know any counter to that if it were to happen..