Microsoft gaming chief calls for industry-wide game preservation
The cynic in me thinks that this is because they've realised that the options are either a loss of history, an industry-sponsored scheme, or a legally-mandated exception to breaking DRM for preservation grounds.<p>Microsoft's DRM on their latest xbox is <i>insane</i> – they actively consider the customer hostile at every available opportunity, have essentially always-online DRM, including for physical discs [1] and have had senior architects giving talks explaining how the "only" way to make a games console is to have a physically secure enclave in a chip with a truly unique root of trust, a very strict hardware watchdog, engineered resistance to under/overvoltage or clocking techniques and literally everything, including all buses and IO, encrypted to the nines. This is <i>clearly</i> incompatible with recording history (and also produces lots of errors like "this game isn't ready yet" – utter tosh. New Xbox consoles <i>require</i> an internet connection at least once to "activate" and play games – meaning any unsold will become e-waste once the servers shut down [2]).<p>I'm glad they're making the argument -- the preservation of our culture <i>is</i> hugely important, and emulation is a good way to do it, particularly if industry sponsored (I think it's a shame that, e.g. there isn't a good PS4 emulator yet) -- but there's a definite false narrative behind this.<p>[1] <a href="https://nichegamer.com/xbox-series-x-reportedly-has-always-online-drm-for-physical-xbox-one-games-disc-drive-issues/" rel="nofollow">https://nichegamer.com/xbox-series-x-reportedly-has-always-o...</a><p>[2] <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9E983349p7Q" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9E983349p7Q</a>