The future of collecting...

Myrddin

I watched this video, & it got me thinking. Where do you see the hobby in ten or fifteen years time? Will be be out at car boot sales looking for those elusive PS2/PS3 era games? Or do you think things like the PS streaming service, might render collecting somewhat inert down the line?

CiDeRmAn

I have been asking these questions for a while now, and it was the subject of a letter I got printed in Edge some time ago, the fact that the last gen of machines, PS3/360 are so damn fragile, and without care I can't see any lasting longer than a decade.
Couple that with the servers going offline, or at least not supporting the consoles anymore, if you do need to replace your console you won't be able to access your digitally purchased games or cloud based saves.
I can see, in 10 years, only a modded 360/PS3 with no disk drive at all and instead reading from a external HDD the game content, that's the only way I can see it persisting.
The MD, Snes, Fami, TG16, they aren't going anywhere, even the PS/Sat/N64 and PS2/Xbox/GC seem to be blessed with spare parts, but they seem orders of degree simpler than the last gen.

And if you want PS2 games, you'd better get your skates on because, judging by the contents of your average Sunday market, the picking are getting very very slim.

Retr0gamer

I'm already looking for PS2 games! Also I'm trying to pick up any current gen games that have a chance of becoming rare. To be honest on the main consoles there's very little that is rare on them. You need to sell at least a million otherwise your company is screwed. Handhelds will be the last place you'll see the majority of rare games.

I'd say things won't change too much down the line but I can see some digital content being very elusive down the line especially when servers are inevitably shut down. I think for now hacked consoles will do but perhaps the later consoles won't be hacked and games consoles with all the DLC for a particular game, patches or even downloadable titles will become very sought after. It will be a bit like satellaview cartridges with sought after games still on them.

CiDeRmAn

It's all a tad depressing and, perhaps, a good reason to see PC's rather than consoles as a way to guarantee access to games into the future.
For example, a topical game like Dark Souls.
In 15 years are you going to have a way to play it on PS3/360, assuming the servers are down and your console just died?
If you've a PC you've less to worry about with plentiful old hardware, modular and easy to fix, not to mention legacy modes on the then current hardware, ensuring assess into the bright future.
I think most of us have the hard part of collecting done, I think there'll be fewer oddities like Vectrex and Virtual Boys and more simply mainstream devices, meaning it'll all be much easier to collect the physical ephemera and idiosyncratic artefacts we have come to adore in this hobby.

Myrddin

I'm not sure if the 'servers closing down' thing is as bleak as it might sound. When you consider Sony, & their plans for PS1, PS2, & PS3 game streaming to the PS4...backwards compatability will no longer be a requirement, as you're simply paying for a subscription to a service that's streamed to you (I think you can buy as well as rent games in their plan).

So if say you buy a raft of PS1, PS2, & PS3 games digitally by this service, to enjoy on the PS4...by the time the PS5 comes along, it will simply be a matter of extending the service to that console, rather than having to reprogram games for different console hardware/os systems etc...just a thought anyway, that by this service, long term digital collecting might actually be a viable way of collecting (depending on how Sony implement it ofc)

CiDeRmAn

But won't you be limited by what Sony choose to support.
So if you are hankering after Earth Defence Force you could be out of luck but need Ico and there it is.
Also, we've seen it with Outrun 2 and GTi Club where they were for sale on PSN and Xbla but, due to licencing issues, were taken down and aren't to be had at all now.
We've just seen it with the Marvel Vs Capcom titles point of fact.

Retr0gamer

Yep, I was just going to buy XMen arcade on Xbla at the weekend before it disappeared and lo and behold its already gone. Licensing issues will mean a lot of games will disappear forever from those services.

CiDeRmAn

[Obvious Troll]I wish Sega would hurry up and withdraw the licencing for Golden Axe already [/Obvious Troll]

Myrddin

CiDeRmAn wrote: »

But won't you be limited by what Sony choose to support.
So if you are hankering after Earth Defence Force you could be out of luck but need Ico and there it is.
Also, we've seen it with Outrun 2 and GTi Club where they were for sale on PSN and Xbla but, due to licencing issues, were taken down and aren't to be had at all now.
We've just seen it with the Marvel Vs Capcom titles point of fact.

True enough, the selection would obviously be limited by what Sony would decide to host...

Andrew76

Myrddin wrote: »

I watched this video, & it got me thinking...

It got me thinking, do folks still wear sleeveless t-shirts these days? :pac: Also, "nitch" titles? It's niche, as in "neesh". :rolleyes:

Being serious though, what with less robust hardware these days and digital distribution being at the mercy of big companies - I just assume I won't be able to play modern games indefinitely and purchase accordingly (or not). Once I get value for money (whatever that means to me) then I'm happy.

I also wonder what will happen to all of our collections down the line. Will some be binned, will folks try to sell them on if they lose interest (if they're still worth anything), or maybe try to pass them on to their kids (probably unlikely they would be interested in 'ancient' games).

Flaregon

Guy people still have download limits and in the USA they want gamers to pay more lol.
Don't think people will want to stream games all the time, also when the nets down I can play my copy of suikoden 2 while you Can't stream yours.

CiDeRmAn

I'm safe enough, my son loves videogames and gets as much, if not more, fun from older games than from the newer stuff.
He'll be getting my stuff when I finally snuff it, any day now given my advancing years...

eddhorse

Myrddin wrote: »

So if say you buy a raft of PS1, PS2, & PS3 games digitally by this service, to enjoy on the PS4...by the time the PS5 comes along,

I agree that digitally all games will be available eventually but there won't be a PS5 it will be just a Playstation app on your TV.

CiDeRmAn

If any one is familiar with the backwards compatibility features of the 360 or the PSone title catalogue on the PS3 I wouldn't go putting my faith in the console manufacturers to be generous in terms of games offered.
If it's a good revenue stream they'll jump in if not, they won't, at least not to any meaningful extent.
I can see the 360/PS3 gen being the last true collectible gen, with an enormous amount of meaningful content on the XB1 and PS4 needing online access to live servers.
Maybe Nintendo will linger on as a physical hardware/software format and something worth collecting, assuming they don't do something unexpected and change from the present course into making playing cards again...

Myrddin

Flaregon wrote: »

Guy people still have download limits and in the USA they want gamers to pay more lol.
Don't think people will want to stream games all the time, also when the nets down I can play my copy of suikoden 2 while you Can't stream yours.

There are disadvantages to streaming, & I wouldn't be one to overly support it. I'd much prefer physical collecting. However, there are advantages to it to...will your PS1 still be able to read discs in 15 years time to play Suikoden 2? Theoretically, any content you 'purchase' on Sony's streaming service will be transferable to any hardware they produce in the future too, meaning your account follows you & you don't need a bunch of consoles sitting around.

Most here would want consoles to display, myself included...but the alternative might appeal to a lot of other people too.

eddhorse wrote: »

I agree that digitally all games will be available eventually but there won't be a PS5 it will be just a Playstation app on your TV.

That may be, I guess time will tell. It should only emphasise the fact though that with a streaming service, content you purchase shouldn't ever be lost to you because of compatibility issues on new hardware etc...you can play your PS3 games on a PS3, a PS4, your TV, or your blu ray player...upgrade any of those down the line & your games will follow you, unlike upgrading to a newer console & not being able to play those discs on it. It's a good selling point.

CiDeRmAn wrote: »

If any one is familiar with the backwards compatibility features of the 360 or the PSone title catalogue on the PS3 I wouldn't go putting my faith in the console manufacturers to be generous in terms of games offered.
If it's a good revenue stream they'll jump in if not, they won't, at least not to any meaningful extent.

With the exception of Onlive, this is a fairly new avenue that hasn't been really explored yet by the console makers. It'll be interesting to see how it pans out.

Flaregon

Myrddin wrote: »

There are disadvantages to streaming, & I wouldn't be one to overly support it. I'd much prefer physical collecting. However, there are advantages to it to...will your PS1 still be able to read discs in 15 years time to play Suikoden 2? Theoretically, any content you 'purchase' on Sony's streaming service will be transferable to any hardware they produce in the future too, meaning your account follows you & you don't need a bunch of consoles sitting around.

Most here would want consoles to display, myself included...but the alternative might appeal to a lot of other people too.



That may be, I guess time will tell. It should only emphasise the fact though that with a streaming service, content you purchase shouldn't ever be lost to you because of compatibility issues on new hardware etc...you can play your PS3 games on a PS3, a PS4, your TV, or your blu ray player...upgrade any of those down the line & your games will follow you, unlike upgrading to a newer console & not being able to play those discs on it. It's a good selling point.



With the exception of Onlive, this is a fairly new avenue that hasn't been really explored yet by the console makers. It'll be interesting to see how it pans out.

people are building retro consoles, to play nes, snes and mega drive, when ps2s become hard to find *good time before that* they will have new consoles that will play them.

Thargor

In 10 years we'll have 100 terrabyte hdds with perfect emulation of everything up to the current gen, servers etc will be a major problem though. My modded 360 only has a terrabyte and thats already a vast collection of everything up to the PSX and every 360 game worth playing.

Retr0gamer

Thargor wrote: »

In 10 years we'll have 100 terrabyte hdds with perfect emulation of everything up to the current gen, servers etc will be a major problem though.

Considering that we still don't have any console anywhere near perfectly emulated (BSNES gets the closest) then I very much doubt that. It's nothing to do with power and all to do with coding and very few people have the skills to code that well.

Thargor

Everything up to the SNES is pretty much perfectly emulated though, PSX is near perfect these days aswell.

Myrddin

Thargor wrote: »

Everything up to the SNES is pretty much perfectly emulated though, PSX is near perfect these days aswell.

Those systems might be perfectly 'playable', but in terms of accuracy, no, they're not. Bsnes (I think that has been assimilated into a bigger project now?) is the closest as Retr0 says, & the requirements to play it are vastly higher than the likes of Snes9x or Zsnes.

As systems become more complex, coders won't get away with 'hacks' & 'tricks' as easily as they could on older systems, & if you look at Saturn emulation for example, it's nowhere near perfect despite the computational power we have available today. It all comes down to coding skill, & the emulation scene as a whole seems to have died considerably these days compared to how it used to be.

I remember when CPS2 was decrypted & you needed XOR tables to get the games to run etc, the whole scene was alive & buzzing. Anyone remember Callus95? Oh the nostalgia

Retr0gamer

CPS2 getting decoded was the end for me of the emulation scene. When the Final Burn developer was getting death threats because he wasn't quick enough with emulating games it kind of soured it on me. That and JoseQ's emuviews closing.

As for emulation most consoles are no where near perfectly emulated (you mention PS1 being near perfect, it is in fact one fo the worst when it comes to emulation) and that is only going to get worse with the new consoles. These consoles have multiple cores. The more chips you have on the machine, the more complex the coding has to be to emulate the timing of the chips and the less likely you'll get emulators actually coming out for them. Case in point look at how difficult the saturn is to emulate and that as 2 CPU's and 2 video controllers. When you get to multi core machines it gets ridiculous.

The Last Bandit

You can't have it both ways though... Perfect emulation or decent play-ability within a reasonable time frame.

Look at all the whining going on with regard to Mame. Every time the bump the version moving closer to their goal of more accurate emulation they break a bunch of games that relied on hacks to be playable.

Myrddin

The Last Bandit wrote: »

You can't have it both ways though... Perfect emulation or decent play-ability within a reasonable time frame.

That's essentially it, though that balance becomes increasingly harder to find as consoles get more advanced...Saturn, PS2, etc have a looong way to go to get the kind of balace that other emulators of more basic systems enjoy. I shudder to think what a PS3 or Xbox 360 emulator might be like to get balanced between speed & accuracy

CiDeRmAn

I got in on emulation back in 96 and a vibrant community it was too, with webrings a plenty devoted to the subject with little in the way of interference about little things like copyright theft.
And while it was fun it was never a replacement for original hardware and still isn't to this day.
There are no systems perfectly emulated.
Even if you look at VC releases on Nintendo hardware even the company themselves will acknowledge limitations and the ease of just porting a game over running original code on new hardware.

Thargor

You know those flash carts with a microSD slots that you can load up with ROMs and stick in a SNES, would you class those as near perfect or do they still have flaws?

o1s1n

They're perfect as they're not an emulator, you're running the game on a real snes.

The ROM is just the game - exactly what's on a cart.

Only thing you have to make sure of with the Snes ones is that the game you want to play doesn't use a Super FX chip (like for Starfox). Although I think newer Snes Everdrives cover that now.

CosmicSmash

o1s1n wrote: »

Only thing you have to make sure of with the Snes ones is that the game you want to play doesn't use a Super FX chip (like for Starfox). Although I think newer Snes Everdrives cover that now.

I didn't think that was possible yet. I remember when the sd2snes was launched at a stupidly high price it promised support for some of the special chips but failed to deliver the goods. Things may have changed since then with new firmware updates. The super ufo 8 is a cheap and cheerful cart no dsp support though priced around 50 euro, another option would be an everdrive with dsp already installed.

Retr0gamer

One problem with flashcarts are fan translations. Some are made for emulation and won't work properly on real hardware.

Then there's other fan translations like Shin Megami Tensei that have problems on the low end emulators like zSNES and SNES9x but work on actual hardware.

o1s1n

Monkeykube wrote: »

I didn't think that was possible yet. I remember when the sd2snes was launched at a stupidly high price it promised support for some of the special chips but failed to deliver the goods. Things may have changed since then with new firmware updates. The super ufo 8 is a cheap and cheerful cart no dsp support though priced around 50 euro, another option would be an everdrive with dsp already installed.

Oh really? I didn't know that, just kind of assumed the sd2snes supported everything. That's disappointing.

I've still managed to stay away from Snes Everdrives. The Megadrive one is soon to be stored away only to use with translations etc. Actually what I might do is just keep it in the case with the Nomad.

The Last Bandit

Never really understood all the fuss about the sd2nes, there isn't a lot of SNES carts that use the FX chip so its hardly a big deal to actually buy them.

Doge

For perfect emulation hardware FPGA emulation is where its at.

Once the price of FPGA chip comes down we may well see clones of old consoles using this method.

o1s1n

The Last Bandit wrote: »

Never really understood all the fuss about the sd2nes, there isn't a lot of SNES carts that use the FX chip so its hardly a big deal to actually buy them.

There are lots of other fancy pants chips though, I think it's meant to help with emulation on them too?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Super_NES_enhancement_chips

Myrddin

waveform wrote: »

For perfect emulation hardware FPGA emulation is where its at.

Once the price of FPGA chip comes down we may well see clones of old consoles using this method.

What advantages does FPGA offer over traditional software emulation of hardware? Is it because they (FPGA chips) are hardware, & can be field configured to tailor meticulously to one particular task, like Snes emulation for example?

Doge

Myrddin wrote: »

What advantages does FPGA offer over traditional software emulation of hardware? Is it because they (FPGA chips) are hardware, & can be field configured to tailor meticulously to one particular task, like Snes emulation for example?

What I think is appealing is the fact the circuit is physically the same as the real chips, the way the logic gates in an FPGA chip can be configured just like they would be in the original chip.

I'm certainly no expert on FPGA but I think its cool that you can create hardware clones with it.

You can't clone everything with FPGA, like the analog filter in the SID Chip for example or analog video circuits, but it gets pretty damn close!

The fact it's not running on OS is a bit more authentic too!

CosmicSmash

o1s1n wrote: »

Oh really? I didn't know that, just kind of assumed the sd2snes supported everything. That's disappointing.

At 190$ plus delivery for board only or 260$ for the deluxe model you would expect it to.