On the 24th of June, 2016, Dolphin 5.0 was released. The product of a long and hard transition period, the fundamental inaccuracies that plagued Dolphin for over a decade had successfully been undone, and Dolphin was now free of its burdens to swim forward into a new era of accuracy and performance.
Eight years have passed since that great release, and we have seen the dividends of that effort time and time again. Dolphin has seen constant updates, with new features and enhancements coming side by side with bug fixes and stability improvements. Users are now able to upgrade without fear, knowing that even in the unlikely event of a bug it will be fixed within hours. And of the thousands of titles that Dolphin can run, the number that do not function can now be counted on one hand!
All of this was achieved without a new release. In fact, Dolphin has been in the 5.0 era longer than any other, and with almost twenty-two thousand commits over the past eight years, the 5.0 era now makes up over half of Dolphin's entire commit history! But users haven't forgotten our past releases. They have been waiting for years, patiently anticipating when our next release may arrive.
That wait ends today.
However, the purpose of our old stable builds is now no longer relevant to Dolphin Emulator. We no longer need a benchmark to compare against or an anchor to ground us. We have grown beyond them. So in leaving the 5.0 era behind, we are also leaving behind that release scheme and all it offered. In exchange, we're not just giving you a release today, but also a commitment to continuous releases from now on. The long drought of Dolphin releases is no more and will never happen again!
Welcome to a new era of Dolphin Emulator - the Release Era!