... and offer the emulator as a free download. Not only considering the neogeo releases on gog. What about genesis/megadive (I know, we have pier solar but more would be cool) pcengine or atari?

No chance. Firstly most roms are freely available widely. Secondly, it is a rights nightmare. Thirdly they want to install galaxy on all machines. So very little financial gain, lots of work, and not inline with future plans = no chance.

Do note that the only reason these are here now is because someone else did the work (badly) and they have been available elsewhere for quite some time, hence this removes the effort.

I would love this also, but it will likely never happen. I can't think of any company that has ever sold a bare rom.

Because licencing is a bit complicated, especially if you need a bootloader/rom file.

Well, I don´t know much about the license issue but I think people would still buy them. A lot of SNK fans who use emulators want to be able to do it legally and for a reasonable price. Neogeo-gaming is expensive. The hardware is realy old and often not in a good shape. (My old machine is broken at the moment, too. One day, the sound became a noisy mess...)

Except emulators are not legal, at least if you ask console makers and console game devs. Basically if they sold roms that could only be ran on third party emulators, they'd acknowledging that they are legal. On the other hand selling them bumbled with their own homebrew emulators they're saying that those are the only legal method of running their roms and no one else but they are legally allowed to emulate consoles they've made (ie. the technology and software that was used to make the consoles are theirs and theirs alone. Whether they still use them or not does not matter. They own them forever.). Add to this that rights and licencing issues are way more complicated than on PC and you get a mess no one in their right mind wants to get involved in.

From average customer point of view this would require too much work (average customer wants everything to work straight out of the box without any fiddling or installing third party applications). It's download and play or refund.

From GOG's standpoint it would be a support nightmare as they'd have to test roms on all kinds of emulators to ensure they worked on them and provide support for all of them. They'd have to explain in detail to people who barely know how to start a computer (console generation ftw!) how to install and setup emulators and how to run roms in them and then troubleshoot any million problems that may occur in dozens different emulators and their derivatives. This is basically why GOG bundles DOS games with DOSBox and only provides support for their own installations. You can in most cases extract the game files and try to run them with something else but don't ask GOG for means to do so or support in case anything bad happens.

Unlikely as it is, it would be awesome if they sold these kind of games here. I would love to have several NES and SNES titles in my GOG collection. Emulators would be integrated to the games, the way they do with ScummVM and DOSBox. And speaking of games needing emulators, I would be so happy if we could get Commodore 64 games here too. Ah, one can always dream. :)

Which is illegal, and when you purchase it, its legal. Big difference.

I agree, but the subset of people who know what an emulator is, where to get one and how to use it and actually care about the legality of ROMs is probably pretty small.

To most people I would imagine buying a ROM that isn't actually playable in the format you get it in would just be frustrating and annoying.

That being said, I would totally be up for buying ROMs if it could be done legally.

It's pretty much happening already, the DRM free humble neo geo set, are just zipped roms with their own emulator. I carried some over to final burn and using them there. So there's a precedent for it already.

Yeah, but they come with an emulator. As I imagine pretty much any ROM being sold is likely too. That means that people who just want to play it can and that those who maybe want better quality or other features can use their own emulators.

Selling ROMs as is without an emulator is a different proposition. It's not like a music file where practically every computer will have the means to play it.

I'd love it if Nintendo particularly suddenly got on board with selling old ROMs for legal use on PC, but I can't really see that happening.

Yeah I don't see nintendo jumping on board, ever. But I could see SNK, or something not so AAA tier do it for the hell of it. Extra form of cash. Maybe someone like sega.

Publishers (and by now somewhat also GOG) consider the average customer to be too dumb to use an installer and you want them to use an emulator? Good luck!

I'd totally be in for legal bare roms and bios files for a fair prize but won't ever bet on seeing something like this.

Well, THAT sounds quite awesome. :)