Because Valve asked Nintendo if it was allowed, and Nintendo said it shouldn't (pretty please), so Valve asked Dolphin to ask Nintendo if they could. Dolphin's team finds of obviously impossible to accomplish.
I think it's smart on Valve's part. With how litigation-happy Nintendo is, I don't think Valve really wants to go to bat for a program that isn't even their own, and isn't even needed on Steam anyway.
Plus it helps leave the door open for a potential partnership if Nintendo ever decides to bring some of their games to PC. I think it will happen at some point because there is both a growing frustration with having to re-buy your library with every new Nintendo system and a lot of profit to be made on PC if you approach it like Sony has.
That growing frustration ain't doing shit to stop people from rebuying. Even if we get to the point where there's 10 pissed off fans for every 1 buyer, it's pretty much free money for Nintendo.
I hope I'm wrong but I think we're several generations away from that. I think what's more likely is game licensing getting tied to your Nintendo Home account (or whatever it's called, I don't have a Switch) and being accessible on new consoles...for a fee, of course.
@Whirlybird@TheDarkKnight No? Switch isn't backwards compatible, like at all. I own a Wii U, a Wii a 3DS, a Game Cube, an N64... to name the most recent Nintendo consoles I have. Nothing I ever bought for them can be used with a Switch.
@Whirlybird@MomoTimeToDie Yes, extremely :( Fingers crossed, I hope the next console is backwards compatible! It happened between GameCube, Wii and Wii U so it's definitely possible.
The Wii U and the 3DS can be hacked to be incredibly backwards compatible. Wii U can run Wii and GameCube games natively, straight on the hardware, and the 3DS can do that for the old DS and GBA.
The Switch can do none of that, everything they got is ported or emulated.
I don't understand, why are people mad that Nintendo isn't allowing a random person to make money off its intellectual property and consoles? Why would or should they? There's nothing for them to gain