When Sony’s PlayStation Plus service expands next month, it will provide access to hundreds of games from older console generations. Now it looks like the company is getting even more serious about game preservation.
Today is my first day as a Senior Build Engineer at @Play stationworking as one of their first collaborators for the newly formed Preservation team!
Game Preservation was my first career passion, so I’m ecstatic to be able to go back to those roots 😊
— Garrett Fredley (@SomeCronzaGuy) Apr 25, 2022
According to Twitter and LinkedIn posts spotted by Sony hired at least one engineer (Garrett Fredley, a former construction engineer for mobile developer Kabam) to work on a new conservation team. “Today is my first day as a Senior Build Engineer at @PlayStation, where I work as one of their first collaborators for the newly formed Preservation team! Game Preservation was my first career passion, so I’m overjoyed to be able to go back to that roots.” ,” †“Let’s make sure the history of our industry is not forgotten!”
It’s not entirely clear what the conservation team will be working on or what Sony’s goals are. cafe-madrid has contacted Sony Interactive Entertainment for clarification.
Historically, Sony hasn’t done a great job of preserving games. Aside from the possibility that the original PS3 models, backwards compatibility seemed an afterthought to the PS5, which .
The company closed its PSP digital store last summer, though it had to close the PS3 and Vita stores after a significant backlash. There is no guarantee that every PS3 and PSP exclusive will be added to the new PS Plus service, which will not include Vita titles, so some games will be lost over time.
In a Speaking about seeing Gran Turismo titles on PS1, PS2, PS3 and PS4 at an event, Jim Ryan, CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment, said something that has haunted him ever since: “The PS1 and PS2 games looked old. out like why would anyone play this?” Ryan last year that he tried to make it clear how good the more modern entries in the series look and that his intention was not to respect the history of PlayStation. Still, many thought his first comment meant Sony didn’t care about older games.
It’s good to see Sony putting more emphasis on game preservation. and led the attack on that front. PC gamers, of course, have access to titles that are decades old (e.g. I’ve popped in and out half-life recently).
Microsoft understands that people still want to be able to play old games on modern platforms and has put more emphasis on backwards compatibility in recent years. Xbox Series X/S can play games from .
Like Sony, however, Nintendo hasn’t really been great at preserving games. It will happen next year and probably won’t port every game from those consoles to Nintendo Switch. Many of those games will be inaccessible to future generations of players.
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