I don’t see how this is going to end well with Nintendo’s infinite litigation money. Even if Analogue is saying they’re making a new FPGA to run the games “natively”, that still has the same problem as emulators: Nintendo still doesn’t want you to run your games on anything other than their own consoles, otherwise people will just keep buying (or pirate) old games and play them on new hardware will all the tweaks that we can do today: antialiasing, upscaling, custom shaders, bluetooth controllers etc…
Analogue is doing everything safe though. The products are marketed and intended for you to play your physical cartridges on new hardware. Nintendo isn’t even going after emulators, which despite the hoops we try to jump through, are really primarily used for piracy. That is because the emulation developers are avoiding any copywritten work. Even then, the only ROM sites that Nintendo has really gone after are the ones selling the games.
Short of a new law or precedent being set, Analogue is in the clear here.
The closest they’ve been in recent times is when Dolphin were announcing their step onto the Steam storefront, to which Valve asked Nintendo about it and all that happened. Dolphin is still free to do whatever, just not on Valve’s land.
AFAICT Analogue has been in the clear for their past FPGA consoles that specifically targeted Nintendo’s, can’t see it having isuses here.
Sold on the store front is a no no, but emulators run great in Valve land (Steam Deck).
I just booted Tears of The Kingdom on my Steam Deck the other day and that’s probably a much juicier target for a lawsuit / cease and desist.
They’re not even losing money though, I bought it on Switch.
But there’s such poor drawing distance and so much stuttering that I kinda gave up on it.
I haven’t played it much on the deck yet because I didn’t really feel like starting over, so I don’t know how glitchy it is or not.
Own a Steam Deck myself, can vouch for that. Haven’t messed with yuzu, though Dolphin and Yuzu are on Flathub anyway so it wasn’t like Steam Deck users are missing out from it not being on Steam.
I don’t see how this is going to end well with Nintendo’s infinite litigation money. Even if Analogue is saying they’re making a new FPGA to run the games “natively”, that still has the same problem as emulators: Nintendo still doesn’t want you to run your games on anything other than their own consoles, otherwise people will just keep buying (or pirate) old games and play them on new hardware will all the tweaks that we can do today: antialiasing, upscaling, custom shaders, bluetooth controllers etc…
Analogue released multiple FPGA based machines dedicated to running Nintendo games already.
Analogue is doing everything safe though. The products are marketed and intended for you to play your physical cartridges on new hardware. Nintendo isn’t even going after emulators, which despite the hoops we try to jump through, are really primarily used for piracy. That is because the emulation developers are avoiding any copywritten work. Even then, the only ROM sites that Nintendo has really gone after are the ones selling the games.
Short of a new law or precedent being set, Analogue is in the clear here.
The closest they’ve been in recent times is when Dolphin were announcing their step onto the Steam storefront, to which Valve asked Nintendo about it and all that happened. Dolphin is still free to do whatever, just not on Valve’s land.
AFAICT Analogue has been in the clear for their past FPGA consoles that specifically targeted Nintendo’s, can’t see it having isuses here.
Sold on the store front is a no no, but emulators run great in Valve land (Steam Deck).
I just booted Tears of The Kingdom on my Steam Deck the other day and that’s probably a much juicier target for a lawsuit / cease and desist.
They’re not even losing money though, I bought it on Switch.
But there’s such poor drawing distance and so much stuttering that I kinda gave up on it.
I haven’t played it much on the deck yet because I didn’t really feel like starting over, so I don’t know how glitchy it is or not.
Own a Steam Deck myself, can vouch for that. Haven’t messed with yuzu, though Dolphin and Yuzu are on Flathub anyway so it wasn’t like Steam Deck users are missing out from it not being on Steam.