Looks like someone in GAME's PR department made a bit of a blunder. While coming up with an ad for the Android run Ouya and what programs it runs, someone decided to place in a picture of the SNES emulator, GNES.
However, the mistake was noted, and the advertisment was removed, but not before Kotaku grabbed a hold of it. The ad in question can be seen above.
Technically speaking, emulators themselves are completely legal. It's when you start grabbing the files that they run, ROMS, that things get a little tricky, and likely the reason why GAME ended up pulling the ad.
Now, we knew long before the Ouya launched that emulators would be able to run on the crowdfunded console, no doubt a nice selling feature, as nostalgia can be fairly lucrative. It's commonly believed that if you own the game itself, then legally, you're fine to grab and play said game's ROM as you please. Legal in some countries, sure, but not in the US. Actually, it's been illegal since 1983, and the issue has come under eve more scrutiny lately now that companies can make some of their old hits available to audiences new and old via streaming services, like with Nintendo's Virtual Console, Xbox Live, and the PlayStation Network.
However, even after it was confirmed that the Ouya would support emulators, most companies kept their opinions to themselves. But according to Nintendo Corporate: "The introduction of emulators created to play illegally copied Nintendo software represents the greatest threat to date to the intellectual property rights of video game developers. As is the case with any business or industry, when its products become available for free, the revenue stream supporting that industry is threatened. Such emulators have the potential to significantly damage a worldwide entertainment software industry which generates over $15 billion annually, and tens of thousands of jobs."
Think of it like this - Smoke shops will sell outlandish, decorative bongs and pipes. Sure, you could use 'em it for "medicinal" um..."substances," or tobacco, erego, completely legal, but 9 times out of 10, no one's using it for something legal.
Running the emulators themselves on the Ouya, the programs will often suggest ROMS, none of which are Nintendo originals, mostly consisting of homebrew games. But if you know where to look, it's fairly easy to find the more well known games. Once you have the console up and running, you could be playing old school Nintendo classics within 5-10 minutes.
As long as the Ouya doesn't advertise or offer copyrighted games / ROMS outright, they'll continue to fly under the radar, and the wrath of developers and publishers. But that doesn't mean that companies like Nintendo have to be happy about it.
