I'm convinced that video game preservation is only a concern of the hardcore gamers and there is nothing that we can do to convince video game companies to care about it. Once the money dries up/licenses expire cut costs and move on. Its corporate art at its core, especially games from AAA publishers. Microsoft doesn't consider Jet Set Radio Future to be a piece of art worthy of a museum, even if some of us do. Plus there is no financial incentive to save shit. Endless payment is the smart move for them. Regulation will never help us. Its their product to sell, discontinue, destroy, alter, you name it.
Gamers who care just have to save as much as they can when they can. Things will be lost. Things have been lost.
Support DRM free when you can.
Maybe this has already been discussed at lenght time and time again, but I think about it more and more now when this generation is coming to an end.
I've been playing video games since the Master System and NES era. Nowadays I don't sell games anymore, I just buy because I want them in my collection. It's a nice feeling to see the number of games for a console grow one by one. I do know that this era is likely coming to an end, though. Sooner or later. Just as streaming have pretty much killed peoples' interest in CD's and DVD's, it will affect the video game industry as well. Microsoft and now Google are pushing hard toward all-digital, and even though the next Xbox will probably have a disc drive, the rumoured Xbox One S All-Digital Edition shows us where Microsoft really want to go. What is probably just around the corner because most customers will welcome the idea.
Recently I bought a Wii U (talk about being late, I know) and while the system has tons of issues, it has a pretty cool retro feeling to it. I've tried 15 games during a week or so and it's been a nostalgic experience to just replace one game after the other without having to sit through huge updates. I fear that this is a part of the industry that will never come back, maybe except for how handhelds will still work for yet some time.
Digital has lots of advantages, and I like Game Pass as a supplement. I have to admit that I too buy less DVD's and Blu-rays nowadays when Netflix and other services are around. But there's a lot not offered on Netflix and HBO. There are tons of documentaries and smaller movies that will never show up there. Will those even be accessable in the future? And when Stadia, XCloud, Game Pass, PS Now and games for download is all we got, how will that affect what games we can play? Will it make the industry more diverse? Should we just accept that in less than ten years time, we can't buy games in a store anymore?
Do you have similiar concerns? Are you at all emotional about your physical video game collection and fear how it will be in the future when you can't expand it anymore? Or am I just getting old and grumpy here?
I don't fear the all-digital future, it's going to be far better than the partially digital present. Most today's games just don't function (well) as purely physical releases, you will need digital enhancements in the form of patches and content updates to enjoy them fully, so why not embrace digital to its full extent then? It's far more convenient, and the world is never going back to fully physical, it's just not happening.
I feel that. I hate it, but I get it. Most of the art we consume is a corporate production and a lot of it is lost. I guess the only thing that makes it feel worse in gaming is that this is a young medium and we are able to watch it happen before our very eyes. You can read about the tragedy that is the lost cuts of Metropolis or all the vault fires at Fox and MGM that happened decades ago. But it's a lot harder to know you're losing access to something you lived through.
Losing P.T. changed me, man.
I could probably play something like RE2make without its patches if necessary, but I do like that publishers release GOTY editions with all content.
Pretty much this. As for my reasoning I used to collect but reached an age when I realized I was just amassing a hunk of crap that would end up in a landfill when I die.I've been playing games since pre-Atari 2600 and have been digital-only across all media for like 6 or 7 years now.
So no.
You have my sword!
Before I feared it because I didn't really understand it, but the older I get the less clutter I want. The only clutter that I want physically are books; and most times I purchase those digitally as well.
Bring on the digital future