Sony's Unacceptable Avoidance of Full Gaming Preservation

We have cloned sheep.

We have sent people to the moon.

We sent satellites as far away as Pluto.

We have been able to take old footage from a century ago and added color to give the world a glimpse of what life was like in an era long ago.

We have cars that can drive themselves.

We can seek information about the middle ages within seconds on a supercomputer the size of our hand.

Yet, still, STILL, Sony has been failing to deliver a fully backwards-compatible console for the last 14 years.

So in other words, this is bullshit.

Sony has once again failed to truly deliver on its promise of bringing the legacy of the Playstation to its latest hardware by not making the effort to allow its machine to play Playstation games from 1995 all the way to today. Instead of creating a console that would already start with a 10,000 game lineup, instead of making a console that rewards longtime and short-time fans of the company, instead of creating something that allows for the continuing progress towards true video game preservation, here we are once again seeing Sony cutting their corners and forcing gamers to seek older games through digital means and not giving them the chance to play purchased software from the past.

Now, we can discuss Nintendo’s also-sketchy history involving their old games another time, because their problems are different considering that their software has literally been produced in seven different formats this century. But Sony and (especially) Microsoft have this unique and awesome opportunity to create a console that celebrates its past, present, and especially future, especially with advancements in technology from hardware to the digital era of gaming.

We have not had a great example of backwards-compatibility since the original PS3 model that could play PSX and PS2 games (The WiiU was backwards-compatible with the giant library of Wii games, but it was a very awkward chore to implement), and with the Nintendo Switch selling like hotcakes and the gaming economy in full positive swing, this was a chance to reward the consumers as well as try to bridge the ever-growing gap between Nintendo and the competitors since 2019. But instead, PS5 will only be backwards-compatible with PS4 games. This is good news, but its not enough.

The gaming industry deserves more than just technological crumbs. We deserve to play those extremely old PSX games that are made by defunct companies or stuck in intellectual property hell. We deserve to play older sports titles like NFL 2K5, like All-Star Baseball 2002, NFL Blitz 2000, NBA Street Vol. 2, games that could never be brought back to modern-day consoles digitally because the rights of the players and leagues have shifted everywhere else. We deserve to play those old JRPGs released in the PSX days. We deserve to play those classic first-person shooters during the XBox and XBox 360 days, where Halo and Call of Duty were at their peak. Sony currently sells blu-ray players that upconverts older DVDs, you telling me there’s no way they couldn’t make a PS5 that at the very least can style-up some of the 90s games to make it more playable in modern-day televisions?

I know morality isn’t exactly required to compete in the hostile gaming industry, but video game preservation would also greatly benefit the second-hand market, which in turn would continue driving interest of your product. Imagine how great it would have been had the PS5 been announced to be able to play PSX games, and seeing gamers nationwide and worldwide to find these local game stores or searching the internet for classic discontinued games and franchises to buy in preparation for the holiday season. Especially in the coronavirus era and an economy that’s being ruthlessly beaten, this would have been a breath of fresh air for gamers that may not have the funds to immediately seek new games to play with their new Playstation (whose price tag is STILL unrevealed).

No matter how good (or how bad, because Sony’s PSN network is a bit much) their online services might be in bringing back their best hits, there’s no way in the ruthless world of intellectual property rights and changing hands could you cover all the games from the past three decades and move them digital. Dozens of developers every year go bankrupt or become dissolved into larger publishing of development companies. Since 1983, nine developers that made games that earned Game of the Year in the Golden Joystick Awards have been defunct. As for Game of the Year in Electronic Games Monthly? Four developers, including two that made games for the original Playstation (Neversoft, SingleTrac).

You’re not going to see digital translations of ATV Off-Road Fury 2, or 007: Everything or Nothing, or all the Dragon Quest games, and especially obscure titles like Jade Cocoon, True Crime: Streets of L.A. (which was a hit that time completely forgot about) or Vigilante 8. It’s a daunting task to accomplish this, and especially with Sony and Microsoft being notoriously mostly 3rd-party in the earliest days, so the solution should have been to make it easier for these games that have slipped through the digital cracks to have their second chance in the new era of gaming.

We have been able to convert music from 1940s to the digital age, AND create modern-day music players that could still play these normally-outdated records. So why can’t the gaming industry make the effort to provide the same dual-service to gamers with the upcoming XBox Series X and Playstation 5? And I promise you, if you were to increase the price slightly and provide this service in its entirety, it would be a justifiable reason and the consumers and industry altogether would not shun the practice. But here we are with multiple consoles costing at least $450 from the jump, still refusing to physically acknowledge and embrace its past.

After nearly 160 million consoles sold, the XBox gaming community deserves better.

After 25 years of Playstation selling over 430 million consoles, and their fans making Sony the top console for three of the last four generations, they deserve MUCH MUCH better.

The consumers, customers, content creators, streamers, and professional gamers making the video game market the top entertainment market in the United States and possibly the world deserves better.