So one comparison they make is “What if Titanic was only available on VHS and you had to go buy it off eBay!” I feel like it’s a very silly way to compare video games and movies. Like what? That’s fine. There are thousands of movies that are only available in their given home release format. Video games are already digitized for the most part but it’s like asking “What if you could only play a really specific pinball machine by buying the pinball machine?”
I’m all for preserving games. As a game developer, that’s my work and I do want it to live on forever. That said it’s insane to expect any developer or publisher to fund a failed game’s port to newer hardware or still sell it for older hardware. It’s simply not worth the hassle. Make it profitable, give grants for selling older titles. If this is something gamehistory.org wants to see, offer the money to make it happen. Otherwise be happy with old formats and ROM dumps.
That’s not how I understood the analogy. What I thought it meant was vhs is an outdated format. Having it only available on home release is fine, but if it was only on VHS, and not say, DVD or Blu-ray, then it is less accessible and not easily obtainable. Titanic has released on DVD and Blu-ray, so you don’t have to scrounge around reselling sites to find an old VHS copy
So one comparison they make is “What if Titanic was only available on VHS and you had to go buy it off eBay!” I feel like it’s a very silly way to compare video games and movies. Like what? That’s fine. There are thousands of movies that are only available in their given home release format. Video games are already digitized for the most part but it’s like asking “What if you could only play a really specific pinball machine by buying the pinball machine?”
I’m all for preserving games. As a game developer, that’s my work and I do want it to live on forever. That said it’s insane to expect any developer or publisher to fund a failed game’s port to newer hardware or still sell it for older hardware. It’s simply not worth the hassle. Make it profitable, give grants for selling older titles. If this is something gamehistory.org wants to see, offer the money to make it happen. Otherwise be happy with old formats and ROM dumps.
That’s not how I understood the analogy. What I thought it meant was vhs is an outdated format. Having it only available on home release is fine, but if it was only on VHS, and not say, DVD or Blu-ray, then it is less accessible and not easily obtainable. Titanic has released on DVD and Blu-ray, so you don’t have to scrounge around reselling sites to find an old VHS copy