3 ms·

The flip side is: 1. Playstation purchases seem to follow accounts and most games will run on future hardware. 2. Cross-platform is near universal now. While

The flip side is: 1. Playstation purchases seem to follow accounts and most games will run on future hardware. 2. Cross-platform is near universal now. While you may not be able to play the PS5 version on your PS9, you will likely be able to run the PC version still. There's a subset of the preservation community who are focusing on decomp/recomp with PCs as the target architecture. x86 / Windows will outlive all of us, and with the source code, games can be recompiled for newer target architectures. This is trivial with LLMs now (targeting new architectures, not the decomp/recomp - though that has made progress too). It's not a perfect solution, but it's good enough, IMHO.

rbanffy 10d ago
> most games will run on future hardware. Until Sony decides you no longer own them.
- criddell 10d ago
  They did this fairly recently with over 500 movies and TV shows. The licensing agreement with StudioCanal ran out and everybody who had one of those titles in their libraries had it removed (stuff like Terminator 2, Total Recall, Paddington, Apocalypse Now, ...). Who knows what licensing timebombs exist in Sony games? If the license for music played over some title sequence is lost 30 years from now Sony isn't going to fix the problem. They will just make the game unable to start.
kibwen 10d ago
> most games will run on future hardware. I'm starting to get uncertain about how much longer there will even exist future Playstation hardware. Apple and Google phones have devoured the casual/mobile gaming market and as that market hits saturation they'll be eyeing the prestige AAA gaming market. It's not hard to imagine that a modern iPhone or flagship Android has the hardware chops to run something like GTA 6 at an acceptable level of quality. Continuing the GTA 6 example, it's not hard to imagine Rockstar taking one look at the TAM of current-gen console owners vs. the TAM of high-end phone owners and realizing how much more money they could be making by porting it to the majority platform. With the right games signed on (GTA, FIFA, Madden, COD), all it would take is either Apple or Google releasing a $100 dock-plus-controller to absolutely blow the traditional console makers out of the water; everyone either needs or already has a phone, and nobody needs a dedicated game console. The point being, it's not much comfort to preservationists to consider the longevity of a proprietary platform that might realistically be defunct in a decade. I don't know if there will be a PS7, but I tend to doubt there will ever be a PS8.
- mywittyname 8d ago
  You're right, IMHO. Platform convergence is already here and I think Minecraft represents the epoch for it. Kids growing up today are used to playing Minecraft on anything, and that will probably grow to be their expectations going forward. Just log into your account from any computing device and play the game. Playstation will probably stick around, but it will probably eventually become a Switch/Vita. There's still value in a platform that is a strict set of hardware requirements that are designed ground up for gaming. Plus, Sony & Nintendo have great development studios making games people want to play. Tying this back to preservation - there's probably a large number of games that are not preservable due to their "GaaS" model. But anything single player built for Android will be around forever since 99% of the software for it is cracked not long after release. I'm not sure about the iPhone stuff though.

rbanffy 10d ago

> most games will run on future hardware. Until Sony decides you no longer own them.

criddell 10d ago
They did this fairly recently with over 500 movies and TV shows. The licensing agreement with StudioCanal ran out and everybody who had one of those titles in their libraries had it removed (stuff like Terminator 2, Total Recall, Paddington, Apocalypse Now, ...). Who knows what licensing timebombs exist in Sony games? If the license for music played over some title sequence is lost 30 years from now Sony isn't going to fix the problem. They will just make the game unable to start.

kibwen 10d ago

> most games will run on future hardware. I'm starting to get uncertain about how much longer there will even exist future Playstation hardware. Apple and Google phones have devoured the casual/mobile gaming market and as that market hits saturation they'll be eyeing the prestige AAA gaming market. It's not hard to imagine that a modern iPhone or flagship Android has the hardware chops to run something like GTA 6 at an acceptable level of quality. Continuing the GTA 6 example, it's not hard to imagine Rockstar taking one look at the TAM of current-gen console owners vs. the TAM of high-end phone owners and realizing how much more money they could be making by porting it to the majority platform. With the right games signed on (GTA, FIFA, Madden, COD), all it would take is either Apple or Google releasing a $100 dock-plus-controller to absolutely blow the traditional console makers out of the water; everyone either needs or already has a phone, and nobody needs a dedicated game console. The point being, it's not much comfort to preservationists to consider the longevity of a proprietary platform that might realistically be defunct in a decade. I don't know if there will be a PS7, but I tend to doubt there will ever be a PS8.

mywittyname 8d ago
You're right, IMHO. Platform convergence is already here and I think Minecraft represents the epoch for it. Kids growing up today are used to playing Minecraft on anything, and that will probably grow to be their expectations going forward. Just log into your account from any computing device and play the game. Playstation will probably stick around, but it will probably eventually become a Switch/Vita. There's still value in a platform that is a strict set of hardware requirements that are designed ground up for gaming. Plus, Sony & Nintendo have great development studios making games people want to play. Tying this back to preservation - there's probably a large number of games that are not preservable due to their "GaaS" model. But anything single player built for Android will be around forever since 99% of the software for it is cracked not long after release. I'm not sure about the iPhone stuff though.