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EXCLUSIVE: Xbox President Sarah Bond has set up a new team dedicated to game preservation and forward compatibility
(www.windowscentral.com)
this post was submitted on 06 Apr 2024
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I refuse to build up expectations, the little I'll hope for they will mess up. This is the same company that tried to make physical games unsharable long-term.
Which they walked back and hacen't tried again since. Their latest console is also still backwards compatible with games from the first xbox.
I'm legitimately hopeful. Won't ever stop the best option from being piracy and open source emulators on PC, but Microsoft's track record for backwards compat is sparkling.
Sure, it's not true hardware based backwards compat. It works by using the disc as a key to download and run a full copy of the original game + an emulation layer customized for the specific game, so if you don't have internet or they pull the plug on their store servers you can't just use the disk alone. If you lose the disc or it breaks, you have to buy the game again from their online store. Also, I've encountered some crashes and minor emulation issues with some titles. Poor, poor Kotor.
It's sad, but that's still leagues better than their competitors in the console market.
Sony makes you buy the old games again on each platform. Standard "Virtual Console" type shit. Thankfully, they usually do this by making a general emulator that homebrew folks can later shove non-supported games into.
Nintendo. Nintendo. Are you shitting me? An ongoing subscription to keep access to the same 30 year old games you've been reselling since the Wii?
You can use homebrew to shove other games in, but you risk a ban from their online services. Also, if you're already doing homebrew, the consoles they offer games for this way on the Switch are more than easily handled by Retroarch running as homebrew.
Mario 3D All Stars? Take all the time and money to get a half port half emulation solution working on the Switch for one Gamecube and and one Wii game, sell it as time limited, don't include the direct sequel to the Wii game that was built on the same fucking game engine in the package... and then never use that tech again? Are you fucking kidding me?
That last one shouldn't surprise me too bad though. They managed to emulate the N64 on the Gamecube, and only used it for Legend of Zelda. Once in a limited preorder bonus for Wind Waker, and also in a limited Nintendo Power magazine bonus disc for subscribing.
Emulation is probably a better strategy than hardware compatibility, since future machines will have the chops to emulate current machines.
Emulation is the only thing that can long-term battle the difficulties of physical platforms evolving. Doubt x86_64 will be in main consumer hardware forever. I don't even know if ARM will be forever. It's all just a matter of timescale.