Game preservation has become a hot topic these days, and some companies, and Xbox in particular, want to put in the extra effort needed to ensure games of the past are kept alive and available even if technology constantly moves ahead of them.
During today’s GDC panel, Xbox’s Next Generation VP highlighted the importance of game preservation for him personally and for folks at Xbox itself. “I fundamentally believe that great games are timeless,” he said, adding that it’s a personal matter to him, since his son sometimes plays titles that came out way before he was born, making them entirely new experiences in his eyes, even if they’re old for Ronald himself.
And those games deserve to be treated well, with players given opportunities to play them in familiar ways, rather than being forced to embrace the old ways, even when they’re quite archaic (which often ends up being the case).
“Not only do we want to preserve those games, but we also want to take advantage of the latest technology to enable them to be played in entirely new ways,” Ronald said.
“I think about features like auto HDR as an example. Being able to put HDR on top of a game that was created before HDR even existed, it feels entirely new, it feels very fresh. I think about features like FPS Boost, where we take games that were originally designed to run at a certain frame rate, and now we’re able to run them at a significantly higher frame rate. It almost feels like a remaster for a lot of players.”
Xbox also enables cloud streaming of retro games, allowing folks to play old titles on their smartphones, something that would have been unheard of when those games were made. Not even HD existed when these games were developed, and smartphones were borderline unimaginable, Ronald said.
“The developers that built the games could have never imagined a future 25 years later where their game is being streamed from the cloud to a smartphone.”
Ronald softly announced what could be remakes or remasters coming this year as part of Xbox’s 25th anniversary celebration. Rumor has it that a New Vegas remaster or remake is in development, and since Microsoft now owns both Xbox and Obsidian (and myriad other studios), one of these planned releases could very well be the reimagined version of that Fallout title.
They could even come as a surprise shadow drop, like the Oblivion remaster last year. The anniversary is on Nov. 15, so we’ll have to wait and see.
“The game preservation team has been working very hard in the background for a number of years. As part of our 25th anniversary later this year, they will release some iconic games from the past that are now going to be able to be played in an entirely new way,” Ronald said.
He reiterated that these decisions and moves prove Xbox’s commitment to preserving games, and with the release of the upcoming Xbox Mode, we’re likely going to see even more software solutions that enhance retro gaming in meaningful ways. Though I certainly hope a lot of it is optional, since there’s a special charm in enjoying a game as it was, rather than modifying it to suit current standards.
Either way, though, game preservation is a crucial component of contemporary video games. Or it should be, anyway. Just as books and other media are considered cultural heritage, video games can deserve the same treatment.
They reflect the moments in time when they were made and give us a glimpse into the minds of the people who played and created them. Not all games are culturally important, but we should still strive to keep them alive for as long as possible, allowing future generations to sort out which ones really meant something.
