Future Emulation

[jon28]

All of the next gen games consoles have some method of allowing games to be downloaded from the internet - Xbox has Live Arcade and Wii has Virtual Console (not sure what the PS3 system is called).

At the moment these are being used to release; old arcade games, budget games and old console games. Though there is lots more potential.

Legal emulators could be created and sold with a pack of games. Perhaps a BBC emulator with all the Superior games included. Sales might not be great but then development costs should be low.

Also, one man development could again be viable. It worked before with 8 bit computers, so why not now?

Of course, all of this is dependent upon cheap and suitable development systems being made available. I'm not aware of any at the moment, but I'd imagine there will be some at some point especially once the new consoles become more established. Maybe they will even release game creators for the general public to use.

Any of the BBC programmers out there care to comment? Any plans to return to programming, maybe re-making an old game?

There are lots of people working on emulators and re-making old games. Will they move over to developing for the consoles instead? There would be the potential to actually earn some money.

Anyone else have any comments?

Jon.