The progress made by hardware emulators is irrelevant. You have a few factors to consider:
Virtual Console games are emulated on a per-game basis, meaning that you have to re-invent the wheel with every game you plan to emulate, as if it weren't hard enough to just worry about the hardware.
The other problem comes in that Sega actually LOST THE CODE for a good chunk of its Saturn releases. So in order to get per-game emulation going, they'd have to reverse-engineer a disc with the content on it.
If it were so simple, Sony and MS would have beat them to it.
You're better off hoping for Dreamcast emulation. Personally, I want Capcom to add CPS2 and CPS3 architecture games to the Virtual Console Arcade releases.
Look, no one said it was simple. I never said such a thing. I never said it would be easy at all, but I think it would be worth it if they could get it to work on a few worthwhile games. (Like, say, Panzer Dragoon Saga.)
Re-invent the wheel for each game? Really? No, they might need to modify the emulator slightly, refine some code here and there, and optimize some settings, but they do not need to "re-invent the wheel," which in this case would mean "code the emulator from scratch every time." It is possible for a customized version of the emulator with the proper switches and functions enabled to be included with each game, which is exactly how they already do it on Wii VC titles. EDIT: Just saw Dreamwriter's post on the last page. I didn't know they reworked VC titles to implement the emulator at the console leve. Thanks for that update.
You think they had to reverse engineer almost every NES game to get NESticle to run them? Yes, those games are simpler than Saturn games, but you need to reverse-engineer the hardware to write an emulator, not necessarily the software. (Although figuring out what calls the software makes to the hardware when it runs into trouble would help in refining and debugging an emulator.) What you're thinking of is porting the game to the console directly, in which case, yes, not having the source code would be a SERIOUS setback.
Once again, I am
not saying it's likely or even reasonable to assume it could happen in a commercial fashion, but you make it sound like it's outright impossible, and it is not. If the emulation community worked as hard on perfecting Saturn emulation like they did, say, SNES or even PSX emulation, we'd probably have a couple great, functional open-source Saturn emulators right now. As complex as the Sega Saturn is, nothing is unsolvable.
That's my ten cents on the matter.
