I heard about it but I don't know anything about how well it sold. However, I can assure you that the relation of cost and benefit is ridiculous in comparison to what GOG must be used to. People often react with complete awe to such success stories but forget how much time and effort must be put into such projects.

And even Windows 8 is a different beast. The x86 and x86_64 versions will be supported, but the ARM version(s) most likely won't (since it, of course, cannot run x86 applications without a third-party emulation solution).

Nope.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardware_abstraction#Microsoft_Windows

Win32 will still work the same way. I can go into more detail if you like.

Virtualisation largely relies on the underlying architecture being the same, e.g. an x86 guest OS running on an x86 host OS, which is how it can achieve such impressive performance. Emulating the CPU itself is much more demanding (just look at DOSBox), especially since ARM lacks the raw power of x86.

Some sort of solution will be developed sooner or later, but until that time gamers and others needing legacy software will be using x86 for some time yet.

HAL is for the OS itself; it does not translate running software which often relies on the underlying architecture (with some exceptions like .NET applications). While Microsoft could potentially implement some sort of compatibility layer themselves they have so far maintained that x86 software will need to be recompiled in order to run on ARM versions of Windows 8.

DOSBox is actually my primary example of success with virtualization. As for ARM power, it's catching up.

Running software is not architecture dependent. It's container dependent. The container is traditionally the OS. Modern alternatives include the Java and .Net virtual machines/environments.

When I am writing (non-driver level) windows code (I am a programmer) the only "architecture" related concern I have is how long a pointer is. (Well and if the system has enough memory for the data structure and caching scheme, if the CPU is fast/wide enough for the level of threading, how reliable/wide/latent the network connection is ...) These days that's 32 or 64 bits.

Take Microsoft's previous support of and [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Itanium#Software_support]Itanium. There was not a separate version of win16/32/64 for these processors. Nor did code need to be recompiled for these different processors.

These differences even exist between x86 chips from the same manufacture. I remember having to do a HAL swap on a lab full of machines after they got imaged from a machine using a different HAL. Both the source and the destination were Intel x86 machines, there was still enough of a difference between the processors that a different HAL was needed for Windows to start up.

x86 applications ran on Windows/Itanium only due to WOW, similar to how x86 applications on x86_64 runs - except the Itanium couldn't run x86 code natively but WOW had to be an emulation layer entirely in software, while WOW on x86_64 is a much thinner layer.

Windows/PPC didn't run x86 applications at all.

Windows/ARM won't contain WOW, and will, in that regard be similar to Windows/PPC, it won't run x86 applications. Code will have to be compiled for the architecture (unless, of course, it is interpreted through another layer, like the HTML/Javascript applications Microsoft is pushing for the Metro UI, or Java, or non-native .NET code.

(WOW is Windows On Windows, WOW64 is the relatively thin translation layer for running x86-applications on Windows/x86_64; Windows (32-bit) On Windows 64(-bit))

I didn't say GOG would necessarily do that work, but acting as a portal to sell said work is one of the things GOG does. Mobile is part of gaming (and has been for a long time actually, since the 90s and even before). If they had a sufficient catalog of games that worked on mobile, why not?

Your assertion is that mobile gamers are casual, and GOG shouldn't cater to people like that (because they're inferior, and clearly not real gamers, nor are any of there games any good, whatsoever, right?), and I'm going to call bullshit, Akalabeth is an obvious counterargument, but hardly the only one.

Twenty year veteran pc/mac indy game developer hooked on ipad after porting one game to it and seeing sales figures...
http://jeff-vogel.blogspot.com/2011/06/our-first-game-is-out-for-ipad-hooray.html

I'm not sure I like this world any more... (Nor am I sure I ever did...)

He's experienced and he learns (slowly by his own admission a few times). He's the only game developer who's blog I regularly read.

I can articulate. I hate Apple (you can likely guess my reasons). After over 2 years of carrying a support cell phone, I hate cell phones. I did some Java Mobile development years back and that was pretty easy (it didn't do that much by my standards but it was easy). Apple and Android have more or less killed Java Mobile. I hate Apple.

Android seems fine though. I've done a bit of coding for it in an emulator. I might get an android device sometime. Just need to find one I like the specs on and doesn't ring.

Well, Apple is hardly the only player in mobile, so if you hate Apple, sure fine, hating mobile as a concept is not quite the same.

As for Android, yeah there's a vibrate only mode for all of them. I'm pretty sure you could make them all go to voicemail/SMS (speech to text) if you really wanted to.

I was thinking a tablet.

A tablet has a different use than a phone, obviously. If it suits your needs/preferences better than a phone, go for it. I'd recommend finding one that runs Ice Cream Sandwhich and not Honeycomb, though.

Excuse me, at what point did I say that either group is better or worse? It's simply completely different businesses (although it's obvious that more time and effort must be put into games for hardcore gamers - anyone who does not agree with that is incredibly naive). And yeah, on mobile platforms hardcore gamers are a minority - it would be nice to provide them with some good stuff but as I said: I highly doubt that the relation of cost and benefit is good enough for any serious company to enter this area - and there is definitely a larger need for talented developers than publishers here. In my eyes "mobile hardcore gaming" is a terrain waiting for small new teams specializing in this.