RetroArch will be Steam’s biggest emulation launch yet, coming July 30

[tthurman]

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2019/07/retroarch-the-worlds-largest-emulation-front-end-coming-to-steam-july-30/

 

Kudos to skeetbud for the news!

[hansolo77]

Oh goodie.  Let's make a "grey area" program be officially supported by one of the leading gaming companies in the world!  But don't talk about emulation in the forums, because that's "piracy" talk and will get you banned.  That also means don't ask for help, because we won't offer any.  Oh, and now that you've installed RetroArch, you can't do anything with it unless you have ROMS, which you cannot discuss in forums either.  I imagine the first hour it goes live, Nintendo will shut them down.  Sure, the program itself is legal.  But the first time you go to load it up, realize there's no games, and go download something, you're busted.  UNLESS Steam is able to work out a micromart of some sort to offer buying ROMS... that would be interesting.  But even at $1 a game, I wouldn't bother.  Still, it is interesting that Steam is willing to do this, publicly.  Now we just Xbox and Sony to follow suit, without us having to mod the crap out of the console.

[tthurman]

Yep, this one is done before it starts....

I didn't think about it myself, but many have posted how interesting it will be with Steam collecting user data to see what you're running.

 

 

 

[hansolo77]

It would be cool though if Atari offered RetroArch on the VCS.  Would eliminate the need to go into sandbox mode to do what I want.  But still, like you said, Steam has a user database that collects all personal data for micro-transactions of everything you want to play.  So there is definitely some tracking going on.  There are a few games that are open source, fan created, etc games for various cores on RetroArch.  So they could, in theory, provide those with the software.  But once you open up the ability to run emulation of systems like Nintendo or Sega, you have to be willing to support the user demand for those games.  If you don't provide a service to acquire them, but offer the service to play them, people will have to download illegally, which they will be able to track.  At least on Retropie, the only tracking you're exposing yourself to is if you use the RetroAchievements site, which for the most part is safe because you're not BUYING anything.  The only user data it tracks is a username/password/email.  What I just love is that Steam has always had a tight-lipped, no discussion policy about emulation on their forums, now they're going to offer a program that does just that.  It'll be funny to check in after it launches to see how the forums' rules change.

[RIP-Felix]

If emulation starts gaining traction on major 1st party platforms and allows you to play a Switch game on PS4, then you better believe Nintendo is going to try and bury the attempt in legal fees, just like SONY did with Bleemcast. Even though Bleemcast won, they couldn't continue to conduct business because of the legal fees. It was awesome to Play Metal Gear Solid with upgraded graphics on the Dreamcast, but SONY didn't think so. Mainly because backwards compatibility with the PS2 was a major selling point and it didn't improve graphics. Bleamcast was superior, but didn't sell PS2's, it sold Dreamcast's instead. Right now 1st parties are not going after fans, they're going after egregious infringers. So don't go selling hacked SNES classics with 1000's of games on e-bay. That's the kind of thing for profit companies tend to dislike.

I just want to keep playing my old games in new and exciting ways (filters, shaders, pretty fronts ends, run ahead latency reduction, save states, rewind/FF, rom hacks, netplay, Retro Achievments and etc). Whether that comes free from the enthusiast emulation scene or sold by 1st parties, I think there's room for both to exist. As long as enthusiast emulation stays in the background creating, and doesn't threaten to undercut profits, like SONY vs Bleemcast, then there's no incentive for 1st parties to get involved.