eli5: Why do we need emulators to play old games? why can’t we just make the games work without the emulator?
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When a game is made, it’s made to be able to operate in a specific operating system. This can be a console’s operating system, or a computer’s. This is why there are separate console/OS versions for each game. The game has to have a way to interact with the machine and tell it what resources to use and how, otherwise it can’t use the hardware to do anything.
In the case of older games the emulator is a program using whatever hardware and OS a computer has to emulate a console, so that the game can run because as far as it is concerned it’s running in a console. Obviously nobody could have made an old game not need an emulator in the future because he’d have to be able to predict the future to do that.
What we can do however is make emulators native to consoles and computers, but officially no company can do that legally except for its own products, so a Windows computer may be able to run a game designed for Windows XP, or a current console could be made to be able to play older games from the same console line, and it’s been done in some cases. But generally it’s not done because companies can’t profit directly from it, whereas they can profit from rereleases of older games as remakes. Also each company is contained within their own product lineup, whereas unofficial non profit emulators can make a Windows PC play a Nintendo or Playstation game.
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