Will your current games always be available to play?

Josey Wales

I saw a thread on another forum about the importance of backwards compatibility in the next generation of consoles. It got me thinking about the future of our game collections.

Does anyone worry that the games they have collected during the Xbox 360/PS3 era will be unplayable in a number of years? I'm leaving the Wii out of this for the moment because the WiiU is backwards compatible with Wii games. I have doubts that the next Xbox and Playstation will be capable of playing the full library of games available for the current systems. Another worry is that the current HD consoles have had a worryingly high failure rate over the past seven years. It won't always be possible to go into a shop and purchase a new system, so will that mean our library of games becomes unusable?

I would hate to think that in say, 10 years I would still have all my games on a shelf but no hardware capable of running them.

Also how annoyed will you be if the digital games you've purchased on PSN/XBLA fail to work on the next consoles?

horgan_p

Forget PSN / XBLA : I weep for the loss of Tie Fighter and X-wing Vs. Tie Fighter.

MarkusBrady

Nope. You can just use an emulator when you have no other alternative

Josey Wales

horgan_p wrote: »

Forget PSN / XBLA : I weep for the loss of Tie Fighter and X-wing Vs. Tie Fighter.

I was under the impression with a bit of time and effort you could get any old PC game to run on a current PC.

MarkusBrady wrote: »

Nope. You can just use an emulator when you have no other alternative

I can't see an emulator being developed for the PS3 and Xbox 360. They would be far too complicated for a small group of people to do in their spare time. Also it would need an amazing PC to run it if it ever existed.

MarkusBrady

Josey Wales wrote: »

I can't see an emulator being developed for the PS3 and Xbox 360. They would be far too complicated for a small group of people to do in their spare time. Also it would need an amazing PC to run it if it ever existed.

In 10 years, it won't be considered an amazing PC. It will be possible, if a little difficult

Retr0gamer

If you cut out backwards compatibility you can charge for when you put the games up for download. Profit rules out consumer satisfaction. I'll be hanging on to my old consoles but sure they'll probably RROD or YLOD in time. I just hope they carry over digital download titles to the next gen.

SeantheMan

As long as STEAM stay in business, I hope so.
Else they better give me a refund or the option to play them without STEAM , as the currents accounts worth is nearly 3k

marshbaboon

SeantheMan wrote: »

As long as STEAM stay in business, I hope so.
Else they better give me a refund or the option to play them without STEAM , as the currents accounts worth is nearly 3k

I could be wrong, but according to the TOS & their stance they *probably will* remove the DRM from all of their games if the platform goes down, but they don't have an obligation.

Been a while since I read up on it, so not entirely sure.

Antar Bolaeisk

It is a big worry in this age of digital distribution. If there ever is a scenario of Steam going belly up I'd say that some of the other big players in the market will end up buying it. I doubt there will ever be a time when it will go out of business but it could end up radically changed.

At the end of the day, if it ever comes to a point where I can no longer access the games I have legally paid for, well, there are other ways of playing them so I guess in that regard it's safe enough.

Another thing which Ubisoft have been doing recently (although they seemed to have stepped back from it with their newer games) is have their games almost constantly communicate with their servers. I'd be far more concerned about those games not working a couple of years from now than Steam not working (this is why I don't buy Ubisoft games). Heck their servers have gone down a couple of times as it is already.

hooradiation

Josey Wales wrote: »

Does anyone worry that the games they have collected during the Xbox 360/PS3 era will be unplayable in a number of years?

I can't imagine why, I've certainly not cared that my Dreamcast didn't play Saturn games, or that my gamecube didn't play SNES games, and I can't see that attitude changing.

ScumLord

In 10 years time they'll probably release all these games on your phone. All the current mobile games are just games from 10 years or more ago.

richymcdermott

Gaming eh ? only medium where you have to worry about and put up with so much bull**** just to play a videogame , wouldnt have it any other way :pac:

K.O.Kiki

MarkusBrady wrote: »

In 10 years, it won't be considered an amazing PC. It will be possible, if a little difficult

Bullshít.

It took coders over 20 years to 100% emulate the SNES, and you still need a 3Ghz CPU to do it.

That's 20 years to emulate a sub-4Mhz CPU.


I don't even want to imagine how long it will take to accurately emulate a 3.2Ghz triple-core PowerPC, or the 3.2Ghz Cell with its crazy multi-core technology!

Helix

I'll be buying a spare 360 and ps3 when they're going for SFA in shops post next gen release tbh, and I'll leave them in their boxes until needed in many years to come

Josey Wales

Helix wrote: »

I'll be buying a spare 360 and ps3 when they're going for SFA in shops post next gen release tbh, and I'll leave them in their boxes until needed in many years to come

I'm planning on doing the same. I'm sorry I didn't buy one of the slim PS2 consoles when I had the chance. I still have my launch model, which I think is still working.

Grumpypants

I've been collecting consoles for the best part of 30 years now back to the Atari 2600 and Nintendo handheld game and watch series.

more often than not older games age badly especially from this last 3 generations. often a game 3 years old is already pretty bad never mind what it will be like in ten.

some games do remain as good today as they were 20 years ago, any of the 2d Mario games are still brilliant.

I don't worry about my collection becoming unplayable if anything I worry that they will be made in ultra HD collections in ten years time that will show them up like the hd collections have done to splinter cell and resident evil. I still wonder how I loved such a terrible series looking back at it now, at the time it was cutting edge but now pretty unplayable.

C14N

Josey Wales wrote: »

Also it would need an amazing PC to run it if it ever existed.

A current average PC can play games at higher quality than a PS3 or 360. Both of those are basically 6 year old computers. However the difficulty of trying to emulate them still stands.

I have a feeling most current games will be re-released in the future as fairly cheap downloadables.

TheDoc

Meh, find when I go back to console games after a few years they don't hold my attention at all. I don't do the collecting thing at all anymore, I just get rid when I'm done.

Steam library the only thing I'd be arsed building, and I've bought most of my console library on Steam where possible.

At this point just being able to play everything on my PC is becoming alot more conveniant then dealing with consoles.

ScumLord

I've never experienced problems with emulators. I've only tried MAME which works perfectly and I have a Nintendo emulator for my windows phone.

K.O.Kiki

Most emulators go for maximum compatability, NOT maximum accuracy. Ars have an interview with a BSNES developer on this.

Beefy78

hooradiation wrote: »

I can't imagine why, I've certainly not cared that my Dreamcast didn't play Saturn games, or that my gamecube didn't play SNES games, and I can't see that attitude changing.

But your Saturn plays Saturn games and your SNES plays SNES games. The concern is that with the lack of reliability of the hardware, there won't be many 360s or PS3s around in 15 years time to play any of these games on.