| setsunatenshi said: I would say, maybe going forward, the publishers will be better about preserving their older titles and not require consumers to permanently carry on decades old hardware in order to enjoy the games they purchased. That is one of the main reasons why I feel going all digital may be really good. The same way like you can still play PC games from windows 95 era and even purchase them on Steam to play on your modern computer, the console side of gaming should adapt and I really do think it finally is to this reality. I really do expect at least Sony and Microsoft to have a permanent backwards compatibility since they adopted X86 architecture as a standard, and unless there is a massive computational standard change in the future, there should be no reason why my digital Bloodborne copy shouldn't work on my PS5, 6 or 7. And also there should be no reason why I should purchase the same game multiple times in order to play it on a new hardware. That's on them as publishers, not on us as consumers. The movie industry had exactly the same problems since the golden age, many movies that once existed are now lost forever. Thanks to emulation, the same will never happen to our golden age of gaming. |
It used to be the same with movies and other media, buy again to play on new hardware. 8-track, Laserdisc, MUSE hi-vision, 8mm projectors, the hardware isn't made anymore. You can still buy record players, casette decks and VCRs, yet no more Betamax, Video 2000, HD-DVD playes.
You used to buy the format as much as the content. Nowadays there is a shift towards buying a license to the content only. No more right of first sale, but the right to view it on anything. Although I don't think buying a digital 1080p movie gives you the right to watch the 4K version? I don't know.
The distinction is still there, only digital games are cross-buy, cross-gen. While physical games give you the right to resell. So yes, for modern digital games you can claim that you should be able to keep enjoying the content on new hardware. For old physical games, that holds no ground. But agreed, it would be nice if publishers took more care of their back catalog. No reason nowadays not to offer a way to play them on modern hardware. I'm glad we have services like gog.com. And I wouldn't mind if console emulators get their stuff sorted out and officially offer the roms at a small compensation to further improve the software and catalog.
