I bought the new N64,the Anologue 64 because I still have all my old N64 games and they have just been sitting on a shelf or in a container. I was planning on modding my N64 to add an upscaler, HDMI support and USBC PD, but then I saw the A64 and said Merry Christmas to me.

I'm playing Perfect Dark again and am so happy. Did you know you could use 2 controllers to have two movement control sticks!? The game also supports 16:9 and has "high res" option. It looks and plays amazing still.

Expensive is relative to income. 300eur is not much money for some. Also, 300eur is cheaper than a steam deck...

Buying a complete product means you don't have to mess around with emulators not working quite right, and if it doesn't work, you can just return it. Those two alone are pretty good reasons to get the prebuilt machine.

In general playing games on original hardware is going to be a better experience than running it in an emulator.

Especially in the 3DS family of systems, where so much unique hardware stuff is part of the experience. In an emulator you’re going to miss out on the dual screen, 3D effect, and stylus touch screen.

That’s not even getting into emulator issues with things like slow down, sound issues, or inaccuracies in rendering.

For DS/2DS/3DS specifically, there is no emulation hardware that has resistive touchscreen, which I think is superior to capacitive for many games. For 3DS, the same thing applies to the 3D capabilities. Additionally, I'm under the impression that 3DS emulation isn't fully reliable for the full library, but I may be out of date.

TLDR; emulation may not be as feature complete or as quality as original hardware.

To the everyday person a Steam Deck and emulation are very niche so they buy what they know.

I guess my MiSTer setup could count as a crazy expensive new retro setup

I went for it because I just want to play the games, as hardware accurately if possible, in a small footprint with HDMI scaling & wireless controllers as an option.

I've got a few older consoles, but frankly since I got the MiSTer it's nice to not have to mess with getting the old hardware set up in order to just play a game, and I've not gotten around to doing HDMI mods on any of them yet.

Can't you just run your existing retro consoles if you still have them, through an upscaler such as an OSSC, RetroTink or derivatives, or a FrameMeister, though?

Also, the XB360 and PS3 are new enough that they can just interface through HDMI like any other modern AV component. In addition, XB360 emulation sucks right now, and PS3 emulation while better than XB360 emulation, isn't all there either vs. running original hardware.

If you already have games it becomes an easier argument. Not always. I still have some 3DS games that I never got rid of when I got rid of the console, I would like another console but the prices...

That being said if my PS2 or 3 die, I'm replacing.

I feel like most used consoles aren't as crazy in price, as you're making them out to be, but that may be dependent on your market. I've picked up a bunch of consoles over the last few years, both home consoles and handhelds, for the purpose of modifying them. I've found that I like to play on original hardware, but the physical games are so absurdly overpriced at this point, I've either converted them to run optical drive emulators or bought flash carts. I can boot up the consoles, select the game I want to play, and go. Its a cool way to modernize the consoles I grew up with, while overall getting the same original experience.