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Video games built on consoles have this benefit in that they are locked to a hardware iteration, granted there may be some server communication now but historically arcades and consoles capture the hardware snapshot as well.

I prefer PC gaming as consoles are essentially locked in time in hardware but that does lend better to archival purposes.

What's the expected lifetime of a computer in storage? I'd think that bitrot sets in fairly quickly on storage medium.

That's data rot or disc rot. Bit rot is also known as software rot.

Shouldn't containers or VMs solve these problems?

No since the hardware changes over time, such as the video and audio hardware, and VMs don't prioritize emulating those anyway.

wouldn't that depend on which VM you are using?

I agree. They used to say there would never be an Amiga emulator because of all the custom chips it had.

But there are quite a few Amiga emulators now.