At E3 2015, Phil Spencer, the chief of Xbox, took to the stage to announce that the Xbox One would be getting a brand new feature: backwards compatibility with original Xbox games through emulation. Xbox then spent the years since then adding more and more to their backwards compatibility lineup, culminating with this month's recent, and final, addition of original Xbox and 360 titles, emulated and enhanced on the Xbox Series X|S. There are currently no plans for further releases, as Xbox has been unable to acquire further rights to older games beyond what they already have.

In an interview with Axios, Phil Spencer said due to some older games being harder to track down and play, as opposed to how it is with more accessible content like music or movies, that he hopes, "as an industry we'd work on legal emulation that allowed modern hardware to run any (within reason) older executable allowing someone to play any game", advocating for other companies to make use of "legal" video game emulation.

"I think in the end, if we said, ‘Hey, anybody should be able to buy any game, or own any game and continue to play,' that seems like a great North Star for us as an industry"

Source

 

[Deleted member 568587]

Dying hardware and rare games very much are

I mean you're right hardware is not going to last forever but it comes back to the licensing issues, which is why MS just announced they're ending Xbox backwards compatibility. But yet in the same week I think the CEO wants to say there should be legal emulation of any game I don't get that logic at all it makes absolutely no sense. If that was really his stance why is he ending backwards compatibility at the same time? Do they not conflict with each other? He wants gamers to play any old game but not any old Xbox game? I guess.

 

[Noctosphere]

We already have some company who works in legal emulation.
I don't remember its name, but it was announced here on Temp, a console with hardware expansion that allows you to copy different cartridge roms inside the console and play them at will.
You could buy expansions for reading nes cartridge, another one for snes's, another one for n64's, another one for genesis, etc.
You'd just have to insert the expansion cartridge slot in the machine, put the cartridge in it, and play.
Wait... are such machine even legal? XD
Tbh, i don't even know...

 

[gudenau]

But emulation is legal. So I guess he approves of all emulation? Didn't know big wigs at Microsoft would approve.

 

[tech3475]

I wish more companies were like Sega with the MD games on Steam, which has both the official emulator but the ROMs are just there in a folder you can copy them from.

 

[Xzi]

But emulation is legal. So I guess he approves of all emulation? Didn't know big wigs at Microsoft would approve.

So long as the only games you're emulating are those you have legit copies of, yes. But even among collectors, how many people own legit copies of every game ever made? He's basically saying that digital copies of the entire library of retro games should be available for purchase at reasonable prices. There's really no downside for developers/publishers because they get nothing from used sales anyway.

 

[Noctosphere]

So long as the only games you're emulating are those you have legit copies of, yes. But even among collectors, how many people own legit copies of every game ever made? He's basically saying that digital copies of the entire library of retro games should be available for purchase at reasonable prices. There's really no downside for developers/publishers because they get nothing from used sales anyway.

Actually, even downloading roms of games you legitly own IS illegal

 

[ChiefReginod]

I understand why he had to use the word "legal" and that these companies need some incentive to justify putting resources toward emulation. But, for better or worse, a major game console CEO talking preservation is still a landmark moment.

I think it's a very smart move since people say all the time that game companies aren't offering alternatives to downloading old games from random websites or torrents. Microsoft are making themselves look like the cool guys in touch with retro gamers while Sony and Nintendo throw their hands up and say, "Not my problem." They potentially have this whole market to themselves, much like how GOG made it possible to monetize old PC games when there were no platforms that made that possible.

Whether all of this is good or bad from a preservation standpoint is open to question. It will be good if it makes it possible for more people to have access to older games on modern hardware, but it will be bad if it delegitimizes independent preservation efforts. But on the whole, preservation entering the mainstream is probably a good thing in more ways than not.

 

[WG481]

No joke, anyone who says emulators are illegal needs to read a book

 

[LSDMTHC]

They finally added Beautiful Katamari to backwards compatibility yesterday

 

[DCarnage]

If we had vast libraries of "legal emulation" games like the Wii's Virtual Console, I would definitely buy.

 

[impeeza]

I bet his definition of "legal" emulation means emulating on a current generation console and re-buying your library.

the big N is doing now, they charge you 60 bucks for a emulated game.

 

[the_randomizer]

I mean, having some sort of standards would alleviate this. Or better yet, allow us to use the emulators currently available and offer a service or product to allow us to use our own games or to purchase roms to use on said emulators.

The only emulators I can think that are good are from M2. I believe they were involved in the NSO's Genesis emulator as well, which is why it's fairly accurate; M2 are emulation wizards.

 

[gudenau]

So long as the only games you're emulating are those you have legit copies of, yes. But even among collectors, how many people own legit copies of every game ever made? He's basically saying that digital copies of the entire library of retro games should be available for purchase at reasonable prices. There's really no downside for developers/publishers because they get nothing from used sales anyway.

The emulation is still legal, what you are emulating less so.

 

[Xzi]

The emulation is still legal, what you are emulating less so.

Right, the emulators are legal, the ROMs/ISOs vary in the legality of their ownership. That's kinda splitting hairs though, as emulating a game obviously requires you have that game available to emulate in the first place, in whatever form it might take.

Spencer is pitching the idea that legit ROMs/ISOs be sold to the consumer, and presumably have "official" emulators provided for free by MS/Sony/Nintendo. Ideally you'd also be able to use those legit ROMs/ISOs with any other emulator of your choosing, but some developers/publishers would be less inclined to give you that sort of freedom.

 

[Kwyjor]

I wish more companies were like Sega with the MD games on Steam, which has both the official emulator but the ROMs are just there in a folder you can copy them from.

Sega has sold and re-sold their library so many times over that they can barely give the games away anymore (i.e. Sega Forever).

That's the thing here: it doesn't really matter so much what Nintendo lets you do; if you want, you can get almost any old Nintendo game running on your PC in minutes. But you can't do anything like that with XBox games because no one really figured out how to make the relevant emulators.

 

[duwen]

Literally all Microsoft would need to do to get me to jump back into their ecosystem and all but abandon Sony is implement their backwards compatibility to the point that every physical Xbox/360 disk I own and every downloaded XBLA title I purchased for 360 would work flawlessly on their current hardware.
They're definitely making more moves in the right direction than any of their competitors.

 

[FAST6191]

Whether this becomes a definitive reality or not, I'm glad someone from the industry is presenting the topic and theorizing a solution.

Piracy/theft will always exist for the sake of preserving art (and other motives, of course). But I would love a way to keep my physical media preserved legally without jumping through hoops.

Much to discuss here, and this is a bigger player than usual, but it has long been talked about.
Probably the most notable
https://www.gdcvault.com/play/1023470/-It-s-Just-Emulation

and the follow up
https://www.gdcvault.com/browse/gdc-19/play/1025782


Anyway roll on MS or someone making a nice USB dumping tool for cartridges for everything (or at least the big three/four of any given generation) and having that feed emulation. Would not even be that much of a mess (GBA covers all GB stuff, 3ds does most of the rest, NES, SNES, megadrive, at least base master system, floppy, N64, tape maybe, maybe suitable neo geo, everything else is optical really). Make it modular and it probably goes low, an all in one would probably still even sell and actually not be that large and also be the first addon that was not a controller anybody cared about in the history of games.

 

[dsdavis6]

Can they not just release a generic emulator with a few options that will play old games from disk and wouldnt therefore involve distributing licensed content. Sure not everything would run perfectly but it would be something.

 

[Deleted member 568587]

Can they not just release a generic emulator with a few options that will play old games from disk and wouldnt therefore involve distributing licensed content. Sure not everything would run perfectly but it would be something.

No, because engineering a console that can play say Nintendo games without Nintendo's permission is illegal. Souljaboy tried to come out with a console that played older roms and was quickly sued and was no longer able to sell it. The same would apply even if you made the console to play original games you need the company's permission. Nintendo does not agree to let it's games on any other console or even PC. Sony is the same deal, despite allowing a few of it's games on PC.

 

[Inola13]

He deserves a medal, shame it won't happen from Nintendoom

shame it won't happen for any japanese-based console corporation like nintendo or sony because of how the japanese view trademark and intellectual property