Via a note sent to the IGN portal, a spokesperson for Microsoft stated that the recent removing emulators from the Xbox store it was not a consequence of a specific request by Nintendothus denying the news of the last few days.
Brief summary for those who missed the latest: a few days ago Xbox banned emulators from its store. According to an alleged email sent by a member of the Xbox QA Team shared by developer Alyanna McKenna on Twitter, the removal appeared to be related to some legal problems arose with Nintendo.
“The main reason for the ban is related to some legal issues with Nintendo,” the email read. “While emulation itself is not an illegal practice, it can be used to play games for consoles that are still in copyright without permission, which could create issues for Nintendo and its affiliates.”
Apparently, however, this is not accurate information or at least it is not the official version of Microsoft. In the note sent by the spokesman of the Redmond house, it is explained that emulators have been banned from Xbox to align the company’s policies with the contents available on its store and in particular with the point 10.13.10 of the regulation.
“The information currently circulating on Twitter is not accurate,” Microsoft’s statement read. “Our actions are based on a long-standing policy on content distributed to the Store to ensure alignment with our Microsoft Store policies. As explained in 10.13.10, “products that emulate a game system or platform games are not allowed on any device family.””
In essence, Microsoft has so far turned a blind eye to the presence of emulators usable on Xbox in its store, but has now decided to apply its regulation to the letter, hence the removal of these contents.