Someday that GameCube will break and so will all the others. And someday that PC capable of running open source emulators will also break. And all that will be left is corporation controlled hardware running corporation controlled software. Maybe we'll be lucky and be allowed to rent a few of the old games.
The MiSTer is already struggling to fit the N64 core, and the GameCube is more than 10 times more complex than the N64. Just the CPU cache and the GPU embedded RAM would be prohibitively expensive to implement on an FPGA, it would require one of the very top of the line FPGAs in the market to even attempt it.
Time will tell, but I don't think big enough FPGAs will be affordable any time soon.
And in any case, software emulation is already incredibly advanced, with emulators like Dolphin and PCSX2 arguably being superior to original hardware (4k rendering, anti-aliasing, high resolution textures, etc). Honestly I can't see the benefits of FPGA emulation for 6 gen consoles and onwards.
This. My old GameCube is already broken, the optical drive decided to die. Fortunately some Swiss magic still allows it to run games, otherwise it would just be an expensive paperweight.
