Four Games Is Not Preservation

In Microsoft Announces Xbox Backward Compatibility for PC, Stephen Warwick reports that Microsoft is bringing original Xbox games to PCs and handhelds.

“This marks the beginning of a broader effort to preserve Xbox games from the past.”

It is cool that Microsoft is supporting backward compatibility. The four initial games are Blinx: The Time Sweeper, Conker: Live and Reloaded, Crimson Skies: High Road to Revenge, and Fuzion Frenzy. Existing digital purchases carry over, but physical copies are not supported.

Only four games, though. Pathetic.

So many game companies are abandoning physical media that I have lost interest in consoles that do not support it. Digital libraries are convenient, but they depend on accounts, storefronts, servers, licenses, and companies continuing to care. That is not the same as owning a copy that remains on my shelf.

The gaming industry has not earned much trust as a caretaker of its own history. A Video Game History Foundation study found that 87 percent of classic games released in the United States are no longer commercially available.

I can still put the original Legend of Zelda into an NES and play it nearly forty years after it was released. Nintendo first introduced Link in that game in 1986. There is something important about a game surviving because someone bought a physical copy and kept it, not because a corporation decided it was still worth hosting.

What happened to buying a game and being able to play it forever?

Read Stephen Warwick’s full article, Microsoft Announces Xbox Backward Compatibility for PC.