Even if it isn't, old games eventually just stop running as Microsoft releases newer versions of Windows. So, even "owning" the install files is not a long-term solution. I think we should accept the fact that video games are just ephemeral goods that disintegrate within 5-20 years timespan.
I just need to comment that this is alarmist and ridiculous. I have had no issues running old applications on modern versions of windows whatsoever.
If anything, I think it's particularly impressive that Windows has as much backwards compatibility as possible going back to some of the earliest popular versions of windows.
At most, you could argue that BASIC and DOS are the biggest examples of us losing compatibility but realistically noone cares because they can be emulated at speeds a thousandfold the hardware they once existed on.
The most terrifying part about steam is them banning you arbitrarily or your account being hacked.
That's the real concern not some kind of compatibility nonsense.
This is a shame - there are a lot of great "old" games for PS3 and PS Vita, which were never ported to modern consoles.
This is the new normal on consoles. The Nintendo 3DS will face the same issue soon - once Nintendo pulls the plug on the 3DS online shop, many games will cease to exist, since they were never released on physical media.
Piracy is a solution, but it's sketchy, hit-and-miss, and is kinda against my morals.
This is why I love Nightdive Studios, which is reviving some old games.
I would say it's the inverse - PS3 had unique HW that's hard to emulate on new consoles, PS4 -> PS5 should be straightforward and can probably be done on system level, I suspect this trend will continue to next gen cloud gaming.
i don't get why everyone's complaining about this. No-one was like "OMG they stopped making super nintendo games." or "OMG no more sega genesis games" when those platforms were end of lifed.
This is the same thing. Your existing games continue to work. You existing console continues to work. You're just not going to get an endless supply of new stuff for it.
I agree the lack of disk based games kills the ability to share and resell but that's a separate issue, and i'd like to think that we can all agree at this point that physical media is "a dead man walking" regardless of how we feel about that.
If you'd read the article in its entirety you'd have seen these points discussed.
Those old Super Nintendo games could be played for as long as the console lived (to this day for some of them) without an online store being nixed or capability reduced to drive sales of a new console.
The main point of your comment 'existing games and systems will continue to work' is patently false. When games are no longer made/sold physically and online stores are eventually taken down, your product has vanished into the aether. Hard and disk drives fail and if you cant read a disc or download your game, how then does one play it?
I think the larger issue is Sony's outright lies and anti-consumer behavior
