Our recent podcast on the PlayStation 2 really highlighted for me the fact that as gaming moves on, I become more and more concerned about a few things — the transient nature of a lot of digital experiences, the acceptance of unfinished products being released and fixed later as the norm, and the lack of care over the ideas of preservation and true backwards compatibility.
I think the latter is of greatest concern to me. Backwards compatibility is constantly being hyped as a big feature for the new Xbox platforms, but that's not what it is at all. You don't put in a previous generation disc and just run a game; you put in that disc, download something that has been recompiled to work on the new architecture, then run that emulated version. If, for whatever reason, that recompiled version is no longer available to download, then that original disc you have becomes useless… unless, of course, you still have the old hardware.
There's another consideration here, too; since backwards compatibility being handled like this effectively means that the games are being "re-released", after a fashion, that means they're subject to all the licensing shenanigans that comes with any re-release of an old game — and this is a particular problem when it comes to music. A significant number of original Xbox and Xbox 360 games aren't backwards compatible on the newer model Xbox systems because they had licensed music, and that music hasn't been re-licensed for a re-release. And it's unlikely to ever be re-licensed in a lot of cases.
While it's all very nice in principle, I can't help but feel if you really care about old games on previous generation platforms, your best bet is keeping hold of (or acquiring) those old systems — or modern recreations of said systems, such as what Analogue and Polymega offer. They haven't really reached the era we're talking about as yet… but I'm sure its time will come at some point in the future.
In the meantime, I think I might invest in an original Xbox at some point… and perhaps a spare 360! And, of course, keep enjoying the fact that I can stick a PS2 game in the drive and it just loads, with no Internet connection required…
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