LOL the first post. How couldn't a company emulate their own machines?
It's not that Nintendo
can't emulate their own machines, it's a matter of labor and man-power. They have the ability, but why not take advantage of the work that has already been done?
If I were the president of a large corporation, and I'm not, I would take advantage of any time/money saving opportunity that I could, just like all corporations do. It wouldn't be illegal, only slightly unethical.
You also have to view it from the standpoint of Nintendo. They have fought emulation from the beginning, and suddenly they see a use for it. Would it be too much of a stretch to believe that they could see the
quality work that has already been done, and implement it into their own programs?
All I know for sure is that Nintendo is focused on making the Wii and virtual console monetarily successful.
Why wouldn't they take the opportunity to use "free" software to make money. Just because they can do the work themselves, doesn't mean they won't take shortcuts to achieve their goals.
I don't think that the actual code from other emulators is being used, only being looked at to see how certain problems have been solved.
Another interesting thing to note, none of the games that current emulators are incapable of emulating, are even on the release list for the virtual console. ie...Rogue Squadron, Indiana Jones and Battle for naboo. All of these games were very popular, yet very hard to emulate. If Nintendo is so capable of emulating their own hardware with ease, then why aren't they emulating such an extremely popular title as rogue squadron? The only answer I can think of is that others haven't done it yet, so those games will take significantly longer for them to figure out.
I'm not trying to insinuate that Nintendo is evil, in fact I'm pretty sure they are not. But they are trying to make money, and lots of it.