For me, Xbox’s commitment to backwards compatibility has been the single most important point of comparison against Sony’s Playstation. I remember re-downloading Castlevania Harmony of Despair a few months ago, and being in absolute awe when it downloaded my old save data; it was truly a magical moment as a gamer, being able to access data that legitimately hadn’t been accessed in probably 10+ years.
I find it incredibly disheartening to hear that the entire 360 marketplace is apparently being removed. In fact, I thought it was a poor decision on their part not to offer a whole separate category of “360 games” in the Microsoft store.
There have already been a ton of games delisted over the years, but again; backwards compatibility is one of the areas where Xbox has excelled beyond any other manufacturer.
As someone who has been gaming for quite a while now in my mid-30’s, I’ve seen just how volatile the used game market can be, particularly with the rise of streamers and content creators. Old hardware can only deteriorate, no matter how well you may care for your systems and games, and since older consoles are no longer produced, and the used gaming market filled with poor quality knockoffs or severely damaged originals, it paints a pretty grim picture of the future.
I really hope Microsoft will find some way to show its commitment to gaming preservation as one of its core pillars, because without it, I fear it takes away one of its only real strengths as compared to Playstation.
It obviously just makes it all the more compelling to just do gaming on the PC, as players can pretty much always expect for a game to be playable indefinitely. But still, it’s just a shame for some of those console-exclusive experiences to die, particularly rarer or less popular games (Castlevania Harmony of Despair being a perfect example, as it is digital-only).
I find it incredibly disheartening to hear that the entire 360 marketplace is apparently being removed. In fact, I thought it was a poor decision on their part not to offer a whole separate category of “360 games” in the Microsoft store.
There have already been a ton of games delisted over the years, but again; backwards compatibility is one of the areas where Xbox has excelled beyond any other manufacturer.
As someone who has been gaming for quite a while now in my mid-30’s, I’ve seen just how volatile the used game market can be, particularly with the rise of streamers and content creators. Old hardware can only deteriorate, no matter how well you may care for your systems and games, and since older consoles are no longer produced, and the used gaming market filled with poor quality knockoffs or severely damaged originals, it paints a pretty grim picture of the future.
I really hope Microsoft will find some way to show its commitment to gaming preservation as one of its core pillars, because without it, I fear it takes away one of its only real strengths as compared to Playstation.
It obviously just makes it all the more compelling to just do gaming on the PC, as players can pretty much always expect for a game to be playable indefinitely. But still, it’s just a shame for some of those console-exclusive experiences to die, particularly rarer or less popular games (Castlevania Harmony of Despair being a perfect example, as it is digital-only).