So someone else can correct me, but the architecture for consoles has gotten less complicated.
The GameCube, Wii & Wii U run on a PowerPC CPU architecture. Switch & Switch 2 run on an ARM architecture.
But the recent PlayStation and Xbox consoles are all x86/x86_64, which is the same as your PC. So these consoles won’t need recompilation.
For the Switch series, while ARM would need recompilation, it’s also hugely popular. I know Valve is doing some ARM magic, although I think that’s to ARM and not from ARM, but it still might be helpful. But importantly recompilation of these should be much easier.
ARM is a RISC ISA, which should make it way easier to emulate/statically compile. The main difficulties wouldn’t be hardware quirks like a lot of past emulators, but system OS quirks. The wine project has dealt with a lot of both (x86 has a ton of instructions and windows has a lot of system shit going on).
I do think you are 100% correct that hardware is much simpler now. The Switch has had several emulators for a while now bc of this.
I wonder if recompiling will be the new emulation, since architecture for consoles has gotten more complicated.
So someone else can correct me, but the architecture for consoles has gotten less complicated.
The GameCube, Wii & Wii U run on a PowerPC CPU architecture. Switch & Switch 2 run on an ARM architecture.
But the recent PlayStation and Xbox consoles are all x86/x86_64, which is the same as your PC. So these consoles won’t need recompilation.
For the Switch series, while ARM would need recompilation, it’s also hugely popular. I know Valve is doing some ARM magic, although I think that’s to ARM and not from ARM, but it still might be helpful. But importantly recompilation of these should be much easier.
ARM is a RISC ISA, which should make it way easier to emulate/statically compile. The main difficulties wouldn’t be hardware quirks like a lot of past emulators, but system OS quirks. The wine project has dealt with a lot of both (x86 has a ton of instructions and windows has a lot of system shit going on).
I do think you are 100% correct that hardware is much simpler now. The Switch has had several emulators for a while now bc of this.