Still a lot of confusion as to the actual topic of this topic. 
@goto80 - maybe you could edit the thread title to something less inflammatory like "chipmusic post-hard/software - what's next?"
Ilkae has illustrated a lot of the points that make this topic interesting. Mainly, hard/software was not a concern in the early years of chipmusic. It was just music being made on the tools of the time. The hard/soft argument has been a big part of chipmusic's adolescence. As chip continues to grow and with more tools like deflemask, 1tracker, lgpt, and various emulators and ports (just saw that windows hivelytracker post, awesomesauce!) physical hardware seems less and less critical.
So what makes chipmusic chip, anyway?
"If it sounds like chipmusic then it is." Ok, great! What does chipmusic sound like? Like Hubbard or Nullsleep? Like early Nullsleep (Depeche Mode Mega Mix) or more current Nullsleep (Disaster Fetish)? Anamanablueberryyogurt? godinpants' "whalecore" stuff? This just isn't a very usable metric...
"If it was made using [some of the generally accepted chip platforms like C64 or whatever] then it is." Personally, this is one of my default definitions but... emulators? Ports of classic trackers to modern PC? Using something like Pixelh8's carts to play a GB in real time? What if the chip element is only part of the setup in the "use chip as an instrument" way that so many people were pushing there for a while? This isn't very good either...
I don't want to believe that chipmusic means being stuck in some foggy past where getting a snare sample into your software took 5 minutes of load time and then you accidently recorded over the data cassette with a Randy Newman song that came on the radio.
I also don't want to believe that chip is some artificially restricted sound pallete. This was never the case in a general sense, only when speaking of specific platforms. Have you listened to CCDM's amiga mods? There's certainly nothing lofi about that. Same with O2star's FM stuff.
All of this is why I think it's the *physical act* of creating chip music that is it's core attribute. The interaction of the person with the set of options they choose (the interface, i suppose). I've called this "methodology" in the past but I may not be using the term correctly.
How to share this experience with the listener without waving an NES over you head while your tunes play?
1. You don't have to! Let your music and art speak for themselves. Interested people will dig deep enough to find out and those are the people we want to become part of our community.
2. Share source files! Hell, share your music music as source files ONLY. This is something that really needs to come back hard. Except for Hexawe who've kept the torch burning bright. 
Check out lamptonworm's thread where he shared the tape audio data of his spectrum track on Soundcloud. Now that's how you share tunes AND interest! http://chipmusic.org/forums/topic/10100 … -datatape/
3. ...i dunno...
When soft/hard no longer define what you're doing then just what are you doing? The answer is "what you are DOING has always been the important aspect". Keep DOING chipmusic. It's only going to become more interesting!
*this post was not proofread or edited in any manner flarpafart*