The Anti-Consumer Digital Revolution of the Video Game Industry
The world of gaming is pushing towards becoming fully digital, much like all the other mediums of entertainment. Technology is obviously improving and it has become easier than ever to make, publish, release, and sell games. But unlike the worlds of television, music, cinema, and even art, this has started creating a negative effect on the gaming industry from a consumer standpoint. That’s because unlike the other mediums I have mentioned, the bigger players in the gaming industry have actual minimal interest in preserving their past while pursuing the future, and the consequences of limiting actual ownership of the product are much more dire in the gaming standpoint.
With music you have Spotify and Apple Music, and even when you don’t have direct access to the music because of copyright limitations (which has become increasingly rare), you still have many ways of purchasing songs and albums. On Spotify, I can play over a hundred hours of classic Mozart or Beethoven without any setbacks. With movies you have Redbox, the streaming apps, digital cable, YouTube’s arsenal of free movies, blu-ray discs for those who want a movie forever, and even informational websites like IMDB having movies for people to watch. The world of television is at its peak as we have more content than ever before, with streaming services not only making new content but also buying up older shows to display to everyone at a monthly price. Even though if you like diversity it might end up costing you, the amount of content to pick from is seemingly endless.
With the gaming industry however, there appears to be time limits to all playable games, and this is becoming a bit of a problem. Your access to content is nowhere near as extensive as what you see in other forms of entertainment. You are basically at the mercy of the very few that actually produces the hardware that enables you to play games----until you decide to branch off to unofficial/modding/pirating territory. In the latest example, we see Sony shutting down the online stores of previous consoles Playstation 3 and the Playstation Vita---and with that, digital-exclusive games from the past will cease to exist until Sony decides to bring them to the future.
The three major players, Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft, have constantly thwarted efforts to try to configure ways to play purchased content from the past, and instead having the gamers and consumers rely on the minimal options of past video games the Big Three chooses to offer, and past video games they are legally allowed to offer. Nintendo is a separate creature because they constantly change their hardware formats (and…in slight defense of them, DOES offer physical backwards-compatibility when it’s possible), but Sony and Microsoft have essentially been disc-gaming for at least 20 years, but their newest hardware still cannot play games from the decade of the 2000s. This is the equivalent of blu-rays being unable to play DVDs despite being far stronger hardware.
The three major consoles in the market now have limited backwards-compatibility, which is not a problem the other industries ever have to face. With movies, your blu-ray players can still play older movies that remain stuck in DVDs; and then of course the versatility of MP3s and other digital files makes it insanely easy for music to travel through a variety of devices, even some of the consoles themselves. But the gaming industry essentially forces you to hang on to all your older consoles to play a variety of older games that are stuck in the past for one of several reasons. The rare exception of complications in playing games is the Playstation 3 era, which had a notoriously difficult hardware setup.
But what could possibly by the excuse of Microsoft? You know, the company that revolutionized computers and computer software? What’s nonetheless the excuse of Sony? You know, the one that revolutionized the music and movie industry with the Walkman and the mainstream appeal of the Blu-ray? Why if they’ve been nearly entirely consistent in their hardware (and even the controllers that plays said games) not make efforts to allow you to play titles from the original XBox days? Unlike the other mediums, the world of gaming is unique because those producing the hardware, also produces the software, and has exclusive rights on making said hardware that can play the software. So Apple could offer the ability to play movie discs, but couldn’t offer the ability to play a WiiU game.
Adding to the complications, the hostility of the industry is definitely a major factor as to why video games quite can’t transition from older hardware to new hardware on a digital forefront. Many IPs and entire video game franchises constantly change hands, change owners, get in messy copyright territory. Dozens of companies every single year that produces gaming content go under because of finances, in gaming you are usually one or two flops away from not existing; even worse you can be one large company decision away from being purchased and dissolved to a larger development/publishing chain.
I always use NFL 2K5 as an example of my fears because its quality is to THIS day still higher than that of modern football simulators (which in part might explain the hesitance of gaming companies today to allow us to play games of the past). This 2004 game cannot be played on ANY of the consoles even though it’s on a disc much like the Playstation 5 and XBox Series X (Nintendo, once again, cannot qualify under this complaint), and even worse its not available digitally because the football license currently belongs to EA, who has held the rights to making NFL football video games since 2005----right after Madden barely outsold Sega’s 2K installment. Legally, it cannot be a digital download, and because of hardware limitations imposed by disinterested companies, NFL 2K5 remains stuck on old hardware.
Games being more and more dependent on digital is a danger to older games precisely for this reason, the ever-changing world of video game production makes it harder for older games and franchises to continue having life as we move on. Unlike a movie, we have to rely on a gaming company that owns the IP or the company that ends up with the IP to decide to bring games from the past to the future by digital and/or physical means, if their disc is too “old” to play in new hardware.
In 1997, we had the release of criminally underrated film The Fifth Element, the album Spice by the Spice Girls, and the Playstation classic Final Fantasy Tactics.
Today, Fifth Element is on blu-ray and available on seven different streaming options.
Today, Spice is available on Apple Music to purchase or to stream, and also on Spotify, while also being a “radio station” option on Pandora.
As for Final Fantasy Tactics? It is NOT in any of the current digital stores, it has NOT received a re-release since the PSP back in 2007 (which is outdated hardware that isn’t compatible with anything today), and the original game itself cannot be played on the Playstation 5, nor the 4, and only in select versions of the Playstation 3.
Video games has many more obstacles to leap to survive, leaving the consumer to rely on older hardware, on second-hand markets, or playing unofficial versions online to get the gameplay experience. The big players don’t enjoy looking into the past, don’t enjoy offering options of digitally re-introducing past games, and as a result we get news like Sony shutting down online stores, news like Microsoft forcing gamers to pay a monthly service to play specific games that THEY pick as opposed to allowing original XBox and XBox 360 games to be playable in the new console, and of course Nintendo’s excruciatingly frustrating slow rollout of their online service of playing past games—even though arguably their fanbase is the most faithful to their software past AND present. Nintendo, all we want are playable Gamecube games, and you even have a playable Gamecube controller for the Nintendo Switch.
Around here would be the part where I propose solutions, but to be honest we really can’t do much outside of increasing our demands for stronger efforts for playing old games somehow, someway. Its practically a legal monopoly as unless you decide to go the route of emulating or modding, there are hundreds of games that are stuck in the past and without many official options of enhancement and progress thanks to the Big 3 progressing more towards digital and neglecting anything that might cost their hardware production more money.
Nonetheless, Microsoft and Sony should offer an upgraded version of their current consoles that has full backwards-compatibility at a higher price. Not sure about you, but if there’s a $700 Playstation 5 that gives me full availability to play ALL Sony software since 1994 I’d consider that a very worthy purchase. This type of hardware would be especially beneficial to the content creators that play video games for a living, having one hardware with modern-day connectivity to have the ability to play over 5,000 games---especially those that couldn’t be brought back to today’s gaming because the IP has changed hands and/or the developer/publisher no longer exists and the game is floating in content purgatory.
At the end of the day, this is the direction the entire gaming industry has taken. Not only have the Big 3 hardware developers made strong efforts to be more selective on what to bring from the past and made stronger efforts to limit actual physical copies of their software, but we’re seeing gaming publishers also pursuing these same routes. We’re seeing digital-only games not only from smaller indie companies that may not be able afford creating millions of physical copies, but even larger conglomerates that could easily offer such a function, but don’t do it.
Combating this are limited print companies like Limited Run Games, who have been among the frontrunners in the concept of Video Game Preservation; a movement based around the idea that ALL games deserve to be played, all games ever made deserves the chance to be played regardless of how old the game might be. Having an actual physical copy of the game prevents you from ever losing a game digitally if somehow your console stopped being supported by the company one or two generations later (like what’s about to happen to the Vita this summer). But even then, we’re still at the mercy of the hardware developers, because if they decide to be purely digital in the future, you’ll once again have to hang on to your older consoles to play the games.
The gaming industry overall deserves better, the customers, constant consumers, pure gamers, content creators, and video game collectors has made the world of gaming an extremely lucrative one. Video games makes much more money than movies and music, and we’re rewarded with increasing limitations, increasing obstacles on playable options, and having to put up with whatever anti-consumer decisions made by Sony, Microsoft, or Nintendo. On a legal standpoint there’s not much that can be done, and third-party solutions of playing software are non-existent. Unlike music, movies, and television, where content is always increasing, with gaming it feels like the amount of content slowly decreases as games become more expensive, become harder to produce, and we don’t have as much access to older games.
In 2021, during an era in which we have a vehicle in an entirely different planet roaming around and taking pictures, we should be able to legally and properly play games we’ve purchased in the past without any complications. It really is that simple.