A future without retro games?

[tthor]

(note, i very well might not know fully about what I'm talking about, so don't mind me)
new technology and networking has opened whole new doors for video games, allowing for online multiplayer/coop, downloadable content, and simple updates. But all of this networking of games has left me feeling a little worried about the future of today's games. If you wanna play one of your retro games today, all you gotta do is pull out your old nintendo/sega/64/whathaveyou, and boot up the game. but 10 years from now, what about our games from 2011? it seems like all of these modern games require networking support in order to play, but what if the company decides to stop supporting the game/console, and then leave it without any servers or anything to let you play the game. Then you can't even play your favorite old games. does this idea bother anyone?

Edit: Escapist, please for the love of sanity get rid of these 'Solvemedia' captcha things, they are annoying as hell!

EDIT: actually, the more i think about this, i doubt it will be too big of a problem for most games.. only the multplayer and drm-heavy games would truly suffer,

 

[loc978]

Re-releases and reverse-engineering will take care of that for us, I imagine. Old games are always easy to emulate on new hardware, and networking support is getting easier by the year. I personally think we're on the cusp of gaming integration to the point where your hardware platform doesn't really matter... software will be universal.

 

[Continuity]

It may be a problem for consoles, but not for the PC, on the PC all you need to do is patch out the DRM and let the gaming community take care of the rest.

I can't get too excited about the fate of console games however as i've never owned a console... but yeah I guess i'd be concerned if I were a console gamer.

Re-releases and reverse-engineering will take care of that for us, I imagine. Old games are always easy to emulate on new hardware, and networking support is getting easier by the year. I personally think we're on the cusp of gaming integration to the point where your hardware platform doesn't really matter... software will be universal.

Were getting there but there are plenty of hurdles still in the way, and some of them pretty big ones like microsoft and sony not wanting to relinquish their proprietary grip on the market. We could go universal in the next generation easily but it just wont happen, maybe the generation after in another 15 years? who knows.

 

[Cheesus333]

As long as Fallout 3 and New Vegas still run after a hard day's work twenty years down the line, I can't seem myself raising too much of a fuss.

Personally, the most fun I have is in offline singleplayer anyway - you know, your Bioshocks, Fables, Red Dead Redemption and, of course, Fallouts. Multiplayer is generally a novelty that wears off for me a few weeks in.

 

[RevRaptor]

Problem for consoles but not pc's?
You are kidding right or have you never tried retro gaming on pc's.
I do a lot of retro gaming on my pc it can be a real nightmare getting games to work and things have only gotten harder since moving to win 7 64 bit.
I spent half a day of stuffing around and research before I could get system shock 2 to work and I still can't get the cinematics to play and don't even get me stated on the wide screen issue for a lot of the games the only way to fix it is to alter registry settings, not something for the faint of heart.

Compare that to playing my old console games where a I have to do is plug in the console and play the game.

 

[Continuity]

As long as Fallout 3 and New Vegas still run after a hard day's work twenty years down the line, I can't seem myself raising too much of a fuss.

Personally, the most fun I have is in offline singleplayer anyway - you know, your Bioshocks, Fables, Red Dead Redemption and, of course, Fallouts. Multiplayer is generally a novelty that wears off for me a few weeks in.

I think the point is that even single player games are starting to require online access for DRM reasons, and thats probably a trend that is going to get much worse before it gets better.
Take bioshock for example, a game you quoted as "offline" needs to connect to a server before you can play.

 

[Continuity]

Problem for consoles but not pc's?
You are kidding right or have you never tried retro gaming on pc's.

I retro game a lot, with games as far back as the early 90's.

Where the is a will there is a way, at least on the PC... the console is a proprietary closed box, either it works or it doesn't.

Admittedly i'm still on XP 32, so the pleasures of win 7 64 still await me... i'm upgrading in August.

 

[LookingGlass]

Problem for consoles but not pc's?
You are kidding right or have you never tried retro gaming on pc's.
I do a lot of retro gaming on my pc it can be a real nightmare getting games to work and things have only gotten harder since moving to win 7 64 bit.
I spent half a day of stuffing around and research before I could get system shock 2 to work and I still can't get the cinematics to play and don't even get me stated on the wide screen issue for a lot of the games the only way to fix it is to alter registry settings, not something for the faint of heart.

This is why I'm desperately hoping GoG get the licence to SS2. I never got the cinematics to work either.


Anyway, I'm hoping that 20 years from now we'll have Windows 7 emulators that can run everything from now. The thing I'm concerned about is that all my Steam games are going to disappear.

 

[Vault101]

(note, i very well might not know fully about what I'm talking about, so don't mind me)
new technology and networking has opened whole new doors for video games, allowing for online multiplayer/coop, downloadable content, and simple updates. But all of this networking of games has left me feeling a little worried about the future of today's games. If you wanna play one of your retro games today, all you gotta do is pull out your old nintendo/sega/64/whathaveyou, and boot up the game. but 10 years from now, what about our games from 2011? it seems like all of these modern games require networking support in order to play, but what if the company decides to stop supporting the game/console, and then leave it without any servers or anything to let you play the game. Then you can't even play your favorite old games. does this idea bother anyone?

Edit: Escapist, please for the love of sanity get rid of these 'Solvemedia' captcha things, they are annoying as hell!

EDIT: actually, the more i think about this, i doubt it will be too big of a problem for most games.. only the multplayer and drm-heavy games would truly suffer,

well with even a current console you just put the game in and play..I mean SURE mabye its better to be connected but not nessicary...I'm not connected

and with multiplayer....well Ive found they have a rather limited shelf life anyway

single player FTW!!

 

[Pat8u]

As long as Fallout 3 and New Vegas still run after a hard day's work twenty years down the line, I can't seem myself raising too much of a fuss.

Personally, the most fun I have is in offline singleplayer anyway - you know, your Bioshocks, Fables, Red Dead Redemption and, of course, Fallouts. Multiplayer is generally a novelty that wears off for me a few weeks in.

I think the point is that even single player games are starting to require online access for DRM reasons, and thats probably a trend that is going to get much worse before it gets better.
Take bioshock for example, a game you quoted as "offline" needs to connect to a server before you can play.

since when I never have had to(I play bioshock on a ps3)

OT: But these games will be remade

 

[RevRaptor]

Problem for consoles but not pc's?
You are kidding right or have you never tried retro gaming on pc's.

I retro game a lot, with games as far back as the early 90's.

Where the is a will there is a way, at least on the PC... the console is a proprietary closed box, either it works or it doesn't.

Admittedly i'm still on XP 32, so the pleasures of win 7 64 still await me... i'm upgrading in August.

Be prepared for a lot of pain my friend, win 7 is not retro friendly.

I got Bioshock 1 and 2 on the Xbox360 and have never needed to log online to play it, I'm pretty sure that's just for the pc version.

 

[Cheesus333]

Take bioshock for example, a game you quoted as "offline" needs to connect to a server before you can play.

I play mine on 360 without the internet connected...

 

[Continuity]

Take bioshock for example, a game you quoted as "offline" needs to connect to a server before you can play.

I play mine on 360 without the internet connected...

Maybe the DRM is PC only, I don't know... However I didn't say (or at least didn't mean) you cant play without the internet, its just the first install needs to activate via the internet.

 

[Cheesus333]

Take bioshock for example, a game you quoted as "offline" needs to connect to a server before you can play.

I play mine on 360 without the internet connected...

Maybe the DRM is PC only, I don't know... However I didn't say (or at least didn't mean) you cant play without the internet, its just the first install needs to activate via the internet.

Oh, right. Well I don't know about that, my Dad has it on the PC but I prefer the console version.

 

[Ordinaryundone]

Nah, retro gaming will always be an easy way to make money for companies, especially considering that a lot of them, Nintendo classics for example, are almost guaranteed to sell.

 

[veloper]

Problem for consoles but not pc's?
You are kidding right or have you never tried retro gaming on pc's.
I do a lot of retro gaming on my pc it can be a real nightmare getting games to work and things have only gotten harder since moving to win 7 64 bit.

Dosbox for really old games and also keep on one single-core rig with windows XP installed.

That should take care of nearly every game ever made on PC.

 

[machblast]

I absolutely abhor the application of 'retro' to the games that people use it on these days. It just smacks of pseudointellectual hipster crap. You know, the type of guy that only plays "8-bit" games and wears a fucking scarf.

I prefer to just call them last gen. Retro implies that it's 'back in style' after a while of being 'out of fashion', as if good games are a fashion trend.

 

[Fanfic_warper]

I'd be okay. I tend to move on. My snes is gathering dust and my ps2 can still play ps2 and most ps1 games that I care for. If it ever comes to it though, I'm ready to part with some of the old titles.

 

[Scarim Coral]

Depending on how advance the technology is they will bound to recreate those games and store them in site without needing the hardware, disc or the console iself. Example we had at some point play Pac-man on a flash game website while the original game itself was store as a arcade cabinet (ok the technologies are different but I said it't depend how advance the technology will get).

 

[evilneko]

Problem for consoles but not pc's?
You are kidding right or have you never tried retro gaming on pc's.
I do a lot of retro gaming on my pc it can be a real nightmare getting games to work and things have only gotten harder since moving to win 7 64 bit.
I spent half a day of stuffing around and research before I could get system shock 2 to work and I still can't get the cinematics to play and don't even get me stated on the wide screen issue for a lot of the games the only way to fix it is to alter registry settings, not something for the faint of heart.

Compare that to playing my old console games where a I have to do is plug in the console and play the game.

DOSBox and, with good enough hardware on the host, Virtual Machines. That should fix pretty much everything.