Emulation will never "cease to exist" as you put it. Because there will always be the demand to play a platform on your PC. Especially from people who do not want to spend money on obscenely priced products.
Computer hardware advances are a predictable rate, and now that we are seeing multi-core CPUs on the market, emulation will keep pace just fine with the other systems. The majority of time it takes is due to research and development and testing on the programmers' parts.
You have to understand that they are reverse engineering these emulators, they have never seen any code or hardware information (which is why reverse engineering is legal) and at the same time they have to make it work "just like the original". That is how the early "IBM compatible" PC's were developed.
It's a very difficult, and sometimes expensive process. And that is for companies that actually have the money; so I think what most emulator authors do is pretty good. Systems always appear in emulation a few years after the physical hardware. It's just the way things are. And depending on how difficult the system is to emulate, and how dedicated and interested people are in advancing it's progress it can move incredibly slow, or somewhat fast.
People often think the Saturn emulation scene is "dead" or doesn't exist because so few emulators are out there, for example. When the truth is the Saturn has multiple chips and is difficult to work with/program even on the real console. As we see more multi core emulators this same issue may crop up and slow down development somewhat. But the scene is in no true danger of ever disappearing.
I've also moved this to Misc Emulation, as it is not really a Nintendo specific issue.
