Console digital can destroy console history?

Eisberg

Eisberg

New member
So I watched this video

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One of the big points he talks about is about how digital would cause the history of games to go away, that our children or grand children won't be able to play these games in the future since no physical editions would exist.

And here I am thinking, "What?, does he know nothing about the history of PC gaming and the history of games?"

I'm looking at PC gaming, and I see the history of games being easily accessible even though the game is 10, 15, 20, 30+ years old now all thanks to digital. PC gaming history is being preserved through digital. I look at console gaming, and I don't see any history there being preserved except through ROMs which again is digital, and hardly any history is being preserved because of the physical games existence, and the ones that are preserved it is not easily accessible for everyone.

So I find his argument about that to be very strange given the already 16 year history of digital gaming on the PC.
 
For PC that answer is easy, if you can't find it legally for sure it's hidden away somewhere on the interwebs where you can find it.

Consoles you're limited to what the console manufacturer wants, i.e. Sony even though it can easily and has in the past been able to play PS1/PS2 titles no longer does this.

Microsoft is much better in this regard, it's not perfect but at least they're trying to make it so that most (especially the bigger games) can be played no matter the generation, and some even enhanced.

Sony needs a huge kick in the ass for this.

PC however doesn't have this kind of issue as it's just "one platform" that is slowly evolving but not a complete change, and when it does evolve to a point of complete change there's emulators.
 
For self-contained games that are single player offline experiences, it's not unfathomable that newer hardware will enable brute forced emulation to ensure successful archival. For online games, that is somewhat more difficult. I don't really think it's an enormously big deal though. For historical purposes it can suffice to note a game's existance: video's, reviews, screenshots. Actually playing games that are obsolete (think 30, 40 years back) has limited value.
 
Yea for consoles it can get tricky, you might have to hack your console. SirBaron nails it. On PC there is always a way, and it's rarely complicated.
 
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