I note that the recently announced PS4 will not initially be
backwards compatible with PS3 games but Sony are looking at ways that
might make it possible to play PS1, PS2 and PS3 games play on their new
console.
That made me think about the
importance, or lack of importance, of older games and retro gaming. Do
older games actually matter at all?
I play a
lot of older games myself (witness my recent sojourn in Baldur´s gate)
but I am an old curmudgeon. I remember when these classic games were
released so they have significant nostalgia value for me. I am also
fortunate that my gaming platform of choice, the PC has unparalleled
backwards compatibility. This is not representative I suspect. I guess
that the majority of gamers have neither the desire nor the mechanism to
play ten year old games.
Are retro games
important from a business perspective? I guess not very. Sure there are
websites and forums dedicated to retro gaming and at least one company
(gog.com) seems to have built a successful business out of it. It still
seems like a niche niche market though. How do gog's sales of retro
games compare with sales of recent releases? I don't know but I suspect
very poorly even on that most nerdy of gaming platforms the
PC.Unscientific Experiment: Looking at Steam's list of 100 most played
games for today (http://store.steampowered.com/stats/)
I count 12 of out of 100 that are more than 5 years old which is
actually more than I expected. Multiplayer games (shooters and mmorpgs)
top the list of older games but some RTS games also seem to have
longevity (possible multiplayer also). Valve's own Half Life 2 is the
only resolutely single player game that still has longevity. Most of
these old games don't actually make the list of current best sellers on
the Steam store suggesting that these are being supported by long time
players rather than new players but there are a few older titles making
an appearance on the 100 best selling games: Garry's Mod tops the list
while Baldurs' gate, Half Life and the Fallout collection are all in
there.
Even if we assumed the
retro gaming market was 12% of the overall market (I suspect it is far
far less). it probably isn't enough to get the big players interested.
From a purely financial perspective there is more money to be made
selling new games for $60 than old classics for $10 classics. Perhaps
access to a back catalogue is a marketing advantage when a console first
comes out and is not yet well supported but does anyone really buy a
new console to play old games?
What about the
cultural value of retro games? I can still watch the movies of Charlie
Chaplin. I can read the works of William Shakespeare. Surely it would be
a tragedy if gamers of the future could no longer experience Monkey
Island or Doom or Halo or Uncharted? Would anybody care? Would gamers be
content to see these games being displayed only in museums. My reaction
is "Of course not!" but then again I am not representative. I find it
impossible to play a modern game without making links to its
antecedents. I wonder how many players of recent blockbusters like
Skyrim and Black Ops 2 even have the means of playing Morrowind or the
original Call of Duty?
Software emulation
could be a solution to saving older titles from eventual demise by
allowing them to be played on newer hardware. Even today emulation is a
very powerful way of resurrecting some older games and platforms but the
area remains technically obscure and legally questionable. It tends to
be the domain of nerds. A particular difficulty is that the emulating
hardware needs to be many times more powerful than the device it is
emulating so emulation always seems to be about ten years behind the
latest technology. That is more than one generation of gaming hardware
and creates a black whole in the retro gaming time-line. In a couple of
years time it could be easier to play PS2 games through emulation than
to find system that is capable of playing PS3 games. It might be
possible to shrink that 10 year gap if a major company was to embrace
emulation and put its resources behind it but Sony seems to be looking
for a different route involving streaming older games to the PS4. I am a
little sceptical about the ability of the streaming experience to
complete with playing a local copy but it probably makes commercial
sense. Sony won't make money by allowing you to stick your old PS2 disc
in their new machine. They might make money charging you a monthly sub
to stream that PS2 game from an online service.
However
I did have a thought. Given that the PS4 is built on X86 PC
architecture surely it wouldn't be impossible to emulate a gaming PC on
it. Linux and Wine probably have most of what you need. Imagine if Sony
did a deal with gog.com to open up their catalog of classic PC games for
the PS4. I am not sure how they might handle the mouse / keyboard issue
but that is surely solvable with a custom peripheral if required.
Imagine playing Homeworld and System Shock 2 on a PS4. I think it would
be great but then again I am not representative.
Edit I should of course have given a nod to Nintendo's virtual console as an example of a big company using emulation to keep older games alive.
Comments
While emulators and ROMs could be construed as piracy, as far as I'm concerned, at least in my case, it's not, because all of the SNES ROMs that I did download I own the original cartridge. Okay, so they're no longer physically in my possession but are in a box back home in Australia with my Mum, but I did buy the games so I figure that gives me the right to have a copy of the ROM. RIAA be damned.
In a world that includes games like Zelda: Twilight Princess, Uncharted, and the Resident Evil series, why would I download 20+ year old ROMs?
Zelda: A Link to the Past, Chrono Trigger, and Secret of Mana, of course. In the 8 & 16-bit era graphics alone couldn't sell a game, so developers needed to create games that were actually worth playing, and these three are definitely games worth playing.
I have a feeling that when Sony say they're looking at ways to make it possible to play older games on the PS4 console, that they're going to sell downloadable versions of those games, rather than allow you to use your older discs in your new system.
I think retro gamers make a small but dedicated force of the gaming community as a whole. As you mentioned, there are always those connected to the past in any hobby (music lovers who only listen to Classical, movie buffs who are addicted to black and white, etc. etc.). Gaming is a relatively new community compared to others, and the concept of 'retro' for games is comical when considering how long some of them have been around.
Still, I think retro gamers are in the minority of gamers, and this portion of the community is shrinking as rapidly as the technology advances. One of your older posts (http://mindbendingpuzzles.blogspot.com/2012/01/do-you-have-obsolescence-recovery-plan.html) really hit home with me. As someone who rarely uses a PC anymore, I have to find ways to play older games on my phone or tablet. The days of multiple emulator options are over. There's one or two that work well, and you're pretty much stuck with those. Maintaining the ability to keep playing old games gets harder and harder.
Overall, I think the importance of retro games is something that will dimish as the generation that grew up on those games fades. I'm not terribly old myself, but I'm literally the only person my age that I know that still cares about retro games. We're a dying breed.