3 ms·
I'm really confused by this whole article given how DRM is the real barrier to emulation, and Spencer is clearly not advocating less DRM. This comes down to whe
by madrox 5y ago
I'm really confused by this whole article given how DRM is the real barrier to emulation, and Spencer is clearly not advocating less DRM. This comes down to whether there's a profit motive by rights owners in ongoing support of a game. The outcome will be...what we already have. Games that have enough nostalgia power get adapted, like old Nintendo or Square Enix titles.
And sometimes profit motive is not enough. I worked adjacent to the games division at Disney, and in spite of customer appetite for adapting their 16bit classics for new consoles, there was not a lot of internal support for years...simply because no one saw it as a project to build a career on. Until you solve THAT problem, no company will throw more support behind emulation than they already do.
- stubish 5y agoYou don't need DRM when your customers don't actually get a copy of the game. Like Microsoft's new Game Pass Ultimate feature where you can subscribe and play XBox console games from Windows, streamed from the Cloud. This is what they are up to. You no longer need to own a console or purchase the games. I imagine they will be pushing a future where games are written primarily for these virtual consoles, and using the correct APIs your games will automatically look better as the virtual consoles become more powerful. As for preserving games, this is purely a call for publishers to permanently license their games for this service (ie. if you license music, make sure the licenses don't expire and are compatible with streaming game distribution).