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Comment by eropple | Hacker News Reader

That's a good point, but if that's the way their product ends up being used, the company is looking at a rough road. Obviously I have no privileged information on their operations, but the BOM for their console is not leaving much in the way of a profit margin on hardware. So I have to think they're banking on people buying games and making their bones off of that. If people use the machines just as emulator boxes, I would bet that the Ouya folks have cause for alarm.

They're giving away the razor here, and their blades aren't better than anyone else's.

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Well N64 and SNES emulators have already been announced. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ouya_software

That's great, but emulators don't pay the bills. (Which, to be honest, I'm glad for; making their bones off pirating other people's work would be pretty gross.)

"Pirating" SNES games? Where can you legitimately buy a SNES game that would give money to the creator?

Wii Virtual Console.

XBox Live Arcade. Nintendo's Virtual Console service. Re-releases on the GBA/DS/3DS. Not all games can be purchased this way and there is certainly a moral argument towards emulation to playing games that don't have such re-releases or were never released in an accessible market at all, but it is an observation that the ones people want to play can generally be acquired in this manner--your Chrono Triggers, your Final Fantasies, your Marios.

There's little defense for emulating the majority of games people actually emulate older consoles to play, aside from "I want it for free and no one will stop me."

People actually emulate a ton of games not available on virtual console. In fact, emulation is a pretty popular way for people to play fan translations of games that were never released in english (tales of phantasia, radical dreamers, etc.).

It's true that there are plenty of folks who pirate chrono trigger via emulation but there are also plenty who want to play the more obscure titles out there.

I am aware, but I noted a defensibility for those cases, didn't I? I am, however, skeptical of any claim (not that you are making one, but such a claim in general) that they are a majority, or even significant minority, of the set of people who download and use emulators.

You can give money to the former publisher's holding company's acquired trademark owner on virtual console.

It is worth noting that re-releases are coordinated by the copyright owner. Trademarks are not relevant here. It's also worth noting that most of the games you see that people actually want to play still have their copyrights held by relevant parties. Square-Enix re-releases the Final Fantasy series--and they still own it. Street Fighter or Mega Man re-releases? Capcom still owns it. Super Mario Brothers? Nintendo owns it. Phantasy Star? Sega still owns it.

Most of the games where copyright has bounced around are quite abandoned and not resold at all; in the "abandonware" situation I'd be much more receptive to the idea of emulation to play them. But those are generally not the games that most people pick up emulators to play.

Trademark should have been Copyright, you're correct. However, the creator of Megaman is no longer at Capcom, the creator of Final Fantasy is no longer at Square, Sega is no longer Sega, but owned by Sammy.

That dodge? Really? "Oh, the single lone sprightly soul no longer draws a paycheck from them! Woe, woe, they deserve nothing! Take it for free!"

The companies that bankrolled the entire thing are still there (or--shocker--have been subsumed into another company, which spent money to acquire its assets). Your excuses are poor ones designed to paper over that you want something for free and can take it so you will. At least the guy who says "fuck 'em, I can take it and nobody will stop me" is honest.

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