Game Pass Was Supposed To Save Xbox – Instead, It’s Killing the Company

perfectly tuned for it.. for how long though?

Perfectly tuned forever, just keep the game bundled with the same emulator.

If eventually the system that the emulator runs on diverges too far from what the emulator was able to run on, then wrap it in another emulator to emulate that. Or just update the emulator, DOSBox is under the GPL.

How many indie titles on PC aged out of the platform and have no maintainer?

If you have an emulator then you don’t need a maintainer. As far as the game is concerned it’s still running on the exact same computer that it did when it was first released.

A person who purchased Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone for PC would be unable to launch the game in any modern OS. But if they have it on PS1, it still works.

They’d need a PS1 emulator for that. DuckStation, for example.

A person who purchased Minecraft in 2011 can no longer play that game on the same computer they purchased it from.

The newer versions of Minecraft can’t. The old version they purchased in 2011 still can because it hasn’t changed.

I’m saying PC is a moving platform.

And I’m pointing out that an emulator need not be a moving platform. It can be a frozen snapshot of a particular moment in time. Get a game working on an emulator and you can freeze that emulator’s code and configuration and then you’ll know that the game will always work on it from then onward. Bundle the emulator with the game, like GOG does, and there’s no “fiddling around” - you can indeed just sit down and play it.