In the NoClip video dedicated to GOG (link), a member of GOG staff said (at 39mn 50s) that the emulation of console games (like PS1 games) was a possibility on the store in the future !

I have seen GOG do some amazing stuff. Still remember the days when I'd wish listed revenant, diablo, and system shock 2. All of those games seemed impossible back then and the GOG team made the magic happen. So yes, never say never.

Didn't SH2 in particular have issues w/ the voice-acting and had to change it in the HD Edition? Do they have to get the rights to the old-voice acting?

Did any of this happen w/ SH3?

Also, are there any licensed songs or other licensed stuff in these game, in which they need to take care of that paperwork first?

Granted, I have all of these and ain't played these forever, so...my memory on that stuff's a bit spotty.

"Maybe we've already tried!" - GOG on emulating old games.

Wow, sounds like it's all matters of legal and paperwork w/ probably Sony, if there's a hold-up here. Who knows if Sony would ever agree to anything like that.

I would guess, since Sony's probably the hold-up here, many pub's or dev's would have to straight-up port their games here (if they haven't already). That means they'd have to have resources to port them over - dev's, man-power, time, $, etc - to port games here. Chances are, if they do that - since everybody's now on that x86/x64 type of PC architecture these days here - they'd likely port them everywhere at the same time (PC; X1/X Series platforms; PS4/PS5).

When Konami recorded new voices for the HD Collection, the James actor didn't want himself or his co-stars left out (he literally revolutionized games voice-acting) and convinced them to get permission from all 5 SH2 actors to include the old recordings as an option. Unfortunately, Heather Morris couldn't be contacted to do the same for SH3; and I expect these same hoops will need to be jumped through with every re-release.

Could they possibly just do some new voice-acting? Or release the game without any voice-acting?

Silent Hill!

Why don't we just release Mario without the jumping, or Doom without the guns? Silent Hill without voice-acting is just as much a monumental downgrade. And the new voices we already got in the HD Collection were mediocre garbage, they didn't get the emotions of their lines and delivery was flat.

I don't think Mario or Doom have licensed jumps or licensed guns used in their games, so...that ain't gonna happen.

I'm guessing some modder would & could mod the old voice files into SH2 or SH3, if need be.

Old versions of these games to exist; probably wouldn't be that difficult to make this stuff work w/ newer re-released versions; or do some back-patching/downgrading type of patch.

And people have modded songs back into GTA games and Mafia 1.

I get your drift on the long-run paper, but it would still be a disgrace that made-just-for-it content (which licensed music is NOT) is not in the core product. American cartoon productions are smarter about this by legally owning the voices as spoken by the hired actors; the downside being that actors aren't allowed to use that particular voice in any other role. As much as I loathe it, your solution might be our best option to maintain my favorite moment in having enough.*

*There was a lot of build-up, with the villain monologue-ing like an autistic robot non-stop for the whole game.