With recent talks of PC game preservation and Gog's mission to keep games available I'm wondering if it would be possible (given some amount of effort) for gog to sell licenses for rom files for games on retro consoles for use on emulators or Flash Carts

I'm sure it wouldn't be easy but if possible it would be a great win for game preservation (especially considering the only group actively doing stuff like that is Piko which I've always found kind of sus)

if they just can't that's perfectly fair just thought I'd put the hypothetical out there

At the end of the day, GOG is a store that sells games, not a museum or an archive. They simply don’t have the means or resources to function as one. They are market driven, they need to make a profit.

I would also argue that their game preservation initiative thingy is more of a PR project or a USP, rather than a real effort for game preservation. There are organisations and archives out there that do try to preserve games, they also need your support as most of them are non-profit.

Not sure what you mean, but if you mean taking old cartridge-based games and running them through an emulator to get them to work on my PC, I'm all for it. But it would need to be click and play, kind of like how they do old PC games with DOSBox. Most folks aren't going to want to muck about with all the various emulators trying to get roms to work.

Seeing as they're not even including other PC OSs for the games that support them, the program only being for the Windows versions, the chances of expanding to non-PC are quite clearly zero. Plus that they're saying that the program should eventually include some 2500 titles currently in the catalog but at the moment only covers about 100, so they have a long, long way to go to even go over what they already have and mean to include...

Yes, gog.com has talked in 2017 about bringing console exclusive video games to sell on PC. They even had a youtube.com video about it on how they talked about it.

They have also talked about how they would never have deep discounts as it devalue games, or dont have regional pricing, or...

I'm thinking a few options. maybe including a rom file with a basic emulator. but with the ability to pluck the rom and run it on a different open source emulator or real hardware for those who know how to do that. (Everdrives for example)

What GOG said or did in 2017 or yesterday is completely irrelephant to what GOG is actually doing today.

Let's talk about some of the problems, mm?

1) Need for access to a proprietary Bios ROM or system core.

2) The !!FUN!! debate over which emulator or Software FPGA to use. Seeing as GOG still uses the outmoded original Dosbox, this leads me to imagine they'd make all sorts of quaint choices. I can imagine ZSNES, NESticle, and all your other favorites that haven't been updated in over a decade.

3) Many systems just don't emulate well. This is why N64 fans are decompiling the games instead of trying to emulate them. Not only does this make them extensible, they also run better because you've removed an entire abstraction layer and replaced it with baremetal.

4) If these are new PC ports, who exactly is baking them and ensuring they play to original, and aren't just cheap emulator wrappers in a fancy box? Sonic Adventure's PC port is a bit of a slap to the face over it's original console port and the original.

5) Many games are at best, a "have you seen me" plastered on a milk carton in terms of their source code. Others were produced for extinct or obscure codebases. Do you want to read Z80 assembly? 3D scripting made for quads? Know anyone up to date on Control Program/Monitor? Turbo Pascal?

These are just a few I could summon off the top of my head.

I think that would be fine [but here's the kicker], as long as doing so wouldn't take GOG's manpower and focus away from what they are currently doing. As it seems like just keeping up what they are already doing is a challenge for them, I can't really see them starting a whole new project right now unless they hire more people to do it.

And then we need to ask, "Would such a project be successful?" I'm certain there are many people who would buy their old favorites this way, but I'm not so sure there are enough of them to keep such a store alive.

OTOH, maybe a store expansion like this would provide the kick in the pants that GOG needs, though I really doubt that. So in short, I think it would be too risky.

You're probably right I was just wondering if it was possible considering that's generally a sore spot in terms of retro game enthusiasts

Soooooooo......you want them to try and sell what is deliberately not sold by each original company. That notoriously kills competition. That already has around 20 years of people with access to that content already, for free.

Bruh....Sounds like a bad deal to me

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

All the answers have been given already, but I'd like to add my cents too:

Emulation.

I know many companies are chasing emulation like they're the worst criminals and some organizations tied to unions with said companies are in fact DMCA'ing every kind of emulation content from many sites.. but this is the proven method that works to actually preserve console games on the long run.

Companies think on short term profit because they need it.
For GOG to make a good profit reselling game Roms it would need to strike a huge deal with so many companies that, for now, it seems out of their scope or even ability to do so.
For GOG to maintain this, they would need to, without a doubt, keep paying said companies in a market that is already niche, when we talk about old games, so they would need to keep a profit margin well enough to actually keep on business.
It seems very unlikely.

Maybe one day, when GOG reach Steam status, but with game preservation focus... We can dream.

Well, I know I've dreamt about RETrilogy and DCDuology being here.. and... WELL, THEY ARE NOW! So...
"Never say never." - but this kind of thing wouldn't happen so soon, I think.