alt Hacker News> On the other hand, it's fucked up people are playing Ocarina of Time for free 2 days after launch.
Yet most of those are not lost sales. They never even want to buy the game to begin with (most of them doesn't even have a Switch 2). Also as easy emulation gets nowadays it's still a "technical hurdle" for most people.
The game sold 5.2m copies in 4 days https://www.nintendo.co.jp/corporate/release/en/2026/261111....
It's all guessing. My guess is that about half of those are lost sales. The kind of person who does this is obviously interested in the game. Emulating Switch 2 isn't a hacker task but isn't easy, so they were determined to play it. I think they'd buy it if there were no other choice. This emulation also requires a powerful PC, so they have money.
An opposite example would be emulating random NES games, probably only trying them out. And those are still sold on Nintendo's virtual consoles.