Hello, i doubt this could succeed, but just in case i thought about that. I play almost exclusively on pc and i am unlikely to ever get a console again(lack of backward compatibility, lack of respect of the customers-imo-,etc).


There are however a bunch of consoles games that could be welcome on pc. I know 1st party titles will never come but some games, like Vanquish. Do you think it could work to have a system where people would vote for console games from the past they would like to see ported on pc.Of course i am aware of the costs and sometimes copyrights issues, so there would be limits.

While we do get a few emulated games here, its a minefield. They would need consoles permission, game permissions plus build an emulator. Search for the console you want and emulation - note it is illegal unless you own the console and the game - but most older ones are there other than xbox and ps3.

And who, mind you, will take on the development and take a financial risk by porting these games?

This is going to happen at some point if not with GOG then steam is going to go with it. The question is when and how.

if the feedback is positive enought it could encourage developers to take the risk.Dars Souls was a decent success after getting ported on pc for example.
It would require a high number of votes but i believe there is a market for those games, especially in a community where a lot of players like to get...good old games.

I don't think it is necessarily up to the devs as much as up to the rights holders, and if the rights are split, good luck with that. Also, Dark Souls was an isolated incident because From Software held all the rights to the game and they have a history of releasing games on PC as well, so I wouldn't hold my breath and have that as a prime example.

Just get yourself a bunch of emulators and roms... Some people will call you a pirate, though... Even if there are games with 30 years old + expired copyrights, that are nowhere to be seen, let alone sold and that they are sure as hell never becoming commercial, ever again...

Dark souls os a very good example of it done badly, so badly.

There aren't, except games which have deliberately been placed in the public domain by their original rights holders.

It is illegal if you do not own both elements - the bios which you can copy from your console, and the game. It isn't illegal to emulate it, but owning something you have not legally purchased is.

It may seem hard to believe, but i played it without any mod or fix, not even the 60 fps fix, and enjoyed it a lot.

It's quite difficult, for sure. From my experience, emulators are mostly clumsy and unreliable, to say nothing of the hardware that they require to run some really quite old games. I'm not against the idea, honestly, but I can see why it wouldn't necessarily make much sense from a business point of view.

People have to hold me down at the mere mention of the game, and you played it through without anything and enjoyed it? Nah, your kidding me surely :o)

I think we'll cross that bridge when we come to it, and If there's a problem we'll get over it. Let's tell the truth and get it over with - it's very problematic and probably not really on the table right now. But I'm sure our love (of games) will see us through.

Let's try to rationalize this scenario in a way that is somewhat realistic.

As far as I know, there are two ways you can go about console emulation: either you use the original code/info from the console or you completely recreate the environment in which these games will run. Practical example: the Mega Man Legacy collection doesn't run on a typical NES emulator, but rather a software created specifically for the game which does not use Nintendo copyrighted code. This is how they were able to release NES Mega Man games on PS4 and Xbox One. It's likely that Nintendo would have to be compensated otherwise and possibly even be able to veto the release entirely.

Most emulators use some copyrighted stuff to run, either a BIOS or something else. Because of this, for GOG to get publishing deals for console games running on emulators, they would need to either strike deals with companies who owned the original platform (Nintendo, Sega, Atari, Sony, Microsoft, SNK, etc.), or develop emulation solutions from the ground up which somehow bypass the need to use copyrighted code for the emulation. Beyond this point, there is still all the trouble and legalese that any old game would demand.

So, does either possibility sound likely? I don't know, probably not.

What I would expect is for emulated games from defunct consoles to make their way to GOG. Atari games, Amiga games, Commodore 64 games, 3DO games, NeoGeo games, TurboGrafx-16 games, etc., these are the ones I would think could be easier (or at least cheaper) to get, in the sense that the defunct-ness of the platform and lack of perceived value of the software could somehow facilitate negotiations. I might be completely wrong on this one, I'm certainly no expert. I wonder if this topic has ever come up during GOG staff meetings.