It’s still PC architecture. May not be 64 bit, but there’s nothing stopping a modern x86-64 processor from directly running software made for an IBM PC from the 1980s without a VM or emulation. Backwards compatibility on PC is amazing. Drivers are a different story.
With dedicated consoles, the hardware is often bespoke and completely changes with each iteration of the console. In order to remain backwards compatible, emulation is required to recreate the previous environment so older games will run. That or they literally just stuff a miniature subsystem of the old console into the new one.
It’s still PC architecture. May not be 64 bit, but there’s nothing stopping a modern x86-64 processor from directly running software made for an IBM PC from the 1980s without a VM or emulation. Backwards compatibility on PC is amazing. Drivers are a different story.
With dedicated consoles, the hardware is often bespoke and completely changes with each iteration of the console. In order to remain backwards compatible, emulation is required to recreate the previous environment so older games will run. That or they literally just stuff a miniature subsystem of the old console into the new one.