It doesn’t come to much surprise that Microsoft has officially banned any and all emulators from appearing on their official digital storefronts. Thanks to a report made by Arstechnica, we now know that Microsoft is saving time from removing emulator listings that pop up on their digital stores by simply banning all emulators from entering the storefront, to begin with.
This may be a bit of sad news for gamers who enjoyed using emulators on the Windows 10 storefront along with the Xbox Store. Apparently, the policy was changed for the storefronts on March 29, 2017, though the rules will only show up for those who have downloaded the Creators Edition patch on Windows 10.
Essentially, the ability to enjoy emulators for consoles such as the Nintendo 64 on Microsoft’s Xbox One is no longer an option. Although, as mentioned, this doesn’t come to much surprise as keeping these emulators up would likely create more problems for Microsoft down the road.
Likewise, it doesn’t appear that developers behind these emulators will receive any type of notice or alert. One good question that was brought up by Arstechnica is the fact that some license holders and game makers might have opted to use emulated consoles in order to port their past video game titles onto the Xbox One platform.
With this new rule being enforced, it seems that option for gamer makers has been removed from the table completely. Unfortunately, it’s not likely we’ll see Microsoft revert on this new policy change for the Xbox One and Windows 10 stores.
