I wonder how many were old timers, or new players that inherited older debug systems.
especially the real crufty old timers want the hardware debuggers. HP system 9000 based system HP16505 prototype analysers combined with reverse assemblers and code tracers. those things were everywhere in the 80's and 90's. Now only silicon makers still use those as they need to do the HAL work.
Once the HAL is stable then the 'softheads' can kludge around with 'emulation' and 'printf'
You may get the upper layers of the stack right on a pc. But one point you will have to flip bits in register in the chip. if you need to debug that bit flipping you WILL need a hardware debugger.