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.Microsoft's DRM on their latest xbox is insane – 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 clearly incompatible with recording history (and also produces lots of errors like "this game isn't ready yet" – utter tosh. New Xbox consoles require an internet connection at least once to "activate" and play games – meaning any unsold will become e-waste once the servers shut down [2]).I'm glad they're making the argument -- the preservation of our culture is 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.[1] https://nichegamer.com/xbox-series-x-reportedly-has-always-o...[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9E983349p7Q