Why are companies so d*mn stupid & against emulation?

[Deezbeez]

I was reading the Playstation.com news on their japanese site a little while ago. They are now warning customers (in Asia) that viruses can be spread via ripped UMD's and emulators. What are they trying to do with this? And Nintendo has been taking a number of rom sites to court. It's anticipated that when N releases the Revolution, they will be pushing hard on oldskewl NES/SNES/N64 games. So this is like their preliminary attack, kind of like the R1AA going after Napster and then going after customers and other file sharing sites.

So I have to ask, why are these companies so d*mn stupid? Why are they against emulation so much? Don't they realize that many untranslated games from Japan could be emulated and people might order the originals? If they would stop attacking people who translate games, many of these games almost entirely unavailable in many countries...they might generate some more hardware sales. Their policies are so stupid, they are shooting themselves in the foot and actually PROMOTING bootlegging, and piracy.

[onewecallgod]

they're so damn stupid because thats how the corporate world is. anything that might possibly threaten profits needs to be destroyed

[Deezbeez]

But why won't they comprehend that there's no more profit to be made on most of the games that are downloaded?

[Lefteris_D]

The main purpose of emulation was and still is to preserve software and hardware of systems that are absolete or no longer commercial. However there is one slight catch.

What happens when newer systems such as the GBA, Gamecube, Playstation etc get emulated while the system is being sold in shops and titles continue to be released? It's simple, people choose to download and play the game on their PC rather than pay for the commercial product(which in turn pays for the development cost etc).

As for old games a nice example is the Namco collections for the Playstation or the countless SNES ports for the GBA. An old game can still bring profit and having it emulated is not profit.

If you want to read the view of a game company on emulators read this: http://www.nintendo.com/corp/legal.jsp
That page also explains our strict NO ROMS policy

[montpics]

Not interested as long as emulation is STILL going strong.

[Deezbeez]

With newer systems I agree such as GBA and Cube but how in anyway is there profit to be made off of nes games?

[RockY]

I think the new Nintendo console will emulate those old systems so they could sell old games.

[Deezbeez]

Even if what about sega or neogeo or atari. Yea, they're going to make a lot of money selling atari games.

[ticktock]

seeing how atari, sega, and neogeo need money, they can make said money via lawsuits, but if a corporation can make money, they will

[noname]

I found this on Nintendo's legal page:

Can I Download a Nintendo ROM from the Internet if I Already Own the Authentic Game?

There is a good deal of misinformation on the Internet regarding the backup/archival copy exception. It is not a "second copy" rule and is often mistakenly cited for the proposition that if you have one lawful copy of a copyrighted work, you are entitled to have a second copy of the copyrighted work even if that second copy is an infringing copy. The backup/archival copy exception is a very narrow limitation relating to a copy being made by the rightful owner of an authentic game to ensure he or she has one in the event of damage or destruction of the authentic. Therefore, whether you have an authentic game or not, or whether you have possession of a Nintendo ROM for a limited amount of time, i.e. 24 hours, it is illegal to download and play a Nintendo ROM from the Internet.

Is this true or is Nintendo just bluffing?