C64_Critic wrote:VideoGameCritic wrote:One trend I find alarming is how these "classic" consoles are becoming more and more expensive. I'm wondering how long it will be before we get a full-featured model packed with games for the same price as a modern console?
I also really dislike how they are 1) almost certainly emulator, not hardware-based, and 2) intentionally neutered so that they're locked down to the addition of other games in the future. The reason I especially hate #2 is I'm sure it's only because they want to launch yet
another 'classic' collection in the future at higher profit margins than if they just released the classic with the ability to purchase additional games in the future via some online service. I don't want to shell out $100 for 20 games, a probable mixed bag of good and mediocre games, just so that 1 year from now they can try to hit me again for another $100 mix of an additional 20 games, also a mixed bag of good/decent.
It does seem like we've gone through some transitions in emulation. We've had hardware backwards compatibility, famiclones which could have been entire boards, to Systems-on-a-Chip, to FPGA tech, to using basically any old chip to run an emulator.
One reason to intentionally neuter a system is, yes, to lock in market for the next redesign. Another could be to cross their legal T's and dot their I's, but seriously, just adding an SD slot for 'save states' is enough cover.(The legal argument is also weak because I suspect they didn't build their emulator from scratch but appropriated one)
A third reason *could* be that, they can tinker with the code of the included games to make sure they actually work and work well on the chosen emulator. We've seen companies piecemeal release backwards compatible games supposedly because they needed to tinker with the code to make sure they ran well. For these consoles, I doubt they tinkered with the code - they just got the rights to a suite of games, and those are the games they put on the consoles.