Yes it is legal. Just because people use it illegally doesn't make it illegal.
And this is exactly why the "legal route" is BS. I spent quite a bit of money in the PS3 era then magically oh that was PS3 only. They want to sell the same things over and over.
Absolutely. I bought PSX and PSP games on my PS3 a long time ago, and it used to be possible to transfer them to a PS Vita to play them there. One day that just stopped working and Sony never bothered to fix it. The only way for me to play those fully legally acquired games is to pirate my Vita (which I have). Games work like a charm now.
I was wondering the same thing and then I found this from a dev on Reddit:
I’m pretty sure the PS3 is a big outlier because they used a really weird PowerPC based CPU called the Cell. If I remember correctly, it was kind of a big PITA to dev for and that’s partially why it’s sales were worse than other PS models because it didn’t have as many games and it was less powerful than the Xbox 360, which helped lead to the golden age of the Xbox in the 360 era. So getting it to run on other hardware is very difficult.
Not entirely correct. The XBox 360 was released a whole year before PS3, hence it dominated that generation. PS3 was actually more powerful but more difficult to develop for. In the end PS3 outsold XBox 360, but the total numbers were very close. Both consoles had the same PowerPC-based main processor architecture btw. Their main difference was in the GPU - ATI for the XBox and Nvidia for PS3.
They won’t do this because the newer generation of gamers will realize, graphics aside, how much better the old games were and how halfarsed they are now with endless micro transactions, woke content, etc. I agree with you completely, though…they’d make a ton of money if they actually just hosted the roms officially and sold them at steep discount.
100% this. But what really confuses me is how the companies that still own the IP to these old games can't seem to monetize them...??? How has Sony or Microsoft not acquired the entire SNK/NeoGeo library, for example, and don't make it available somehow? Include it with their subscriptions... Total missed opportunity, IMO. And it wouldn't cost them much. I mean these old game ROMs are kicking about earning nothing for their IP holders.
I personally would pick the emulator route even if somebody handed me every console and game which ever existed prior to 2005. It’s just easier and better in almost every way.
You can’t purchase them as of the Switch. The only legal way to play Super Mario Bros (NES, 1985) on modern hardware (and by that I mean the 7+ year-old Switch) is to pay Nintendo $4/month or $20/year (which also gets you SNES and Gameboy. I pay for the higher tier which includes N64, GBA, and Genesis, but I almost never use it. It’s nearly always more convenient and a better experience play on emulators.
