When consoles go extinct...

So my dreamcast broke today :( and as I was browsing ebay for a new one (well...new second hand one) it occured to me that eventually - maybe ten, maybe a hundred year time- the remaining dreamcasts will either be possessed by gaming aficiados who will never let it go, or have become such a rare commodity that the price to buy one will be astronomical. When this happens, how do we play dreamcast games?

The same could be said for any consoles; but whereas the PS was safe two generations ago with the introduction of backwards compatibility, this generation we're seeing considerable less attention payed to the games that were.

So what now? Will old xbox and ps2 (or further into the future 360 and ps3) games be emulated on PCs like the 8, 16 and 32 bit era ones have been?  Will third party manufacturers like Joytech introduce third party machines to play the old classics? Or will the hundreds of great games just fade away?

What do you think?

So my dreamcast broke today :( and as I was browsing ebay for a new one (well...new second hand one) it occured to me that eventually - maybe ten, maybe a hundred year time- the remaining dreamcasts will either be possessed by gaming aficiados who will never let it go, or have become such a rare commodity that the price to buy one will be astronomical. When this happens, how do we play dreamcast games?

JoeTonks

So what now? Will old xbox and ps2 (or further into the future 360 and ps3) games be emulated on PCs like the 8, 16 and 32 bit era ones have been?  Will third party manufacturers like Joytech introduce third party machines to play the old classics? Or will the hundreds of great games just fade away?

What do you think?

Basiclly game download services like Xbox Live arcade, Virtual Console, PSN, and Gametap. Eventually any game that anyone ever wanted to play will be available for download.

Of course there is always the illigal option...

Maybe some people will be able to keep playing those old games of 100 years ago in their nintendo ziip with the virtual console after paying a too expensive price for those really old games that only some retro freaks want to keep playing.

I wouldn't be too worried for time passing over anything that can be stored in a digital medium, as video games are.

It would be nice to have the same definitiveness with games as you have for films. Whether VHS, DVD or HD-DVD/BluRay there will be constantly refined iterations of thousands of older films. With games we rarely see this, and when we do it can often leave much to be desired (random stabs in the dark make me think of the Final Fight game bundled with Streetwise which was poor quality, or how games such as Power stone and the original mario bros are ported to handhelds, which detract a lot from the TV console feel.

It kind of proves that videogames are considered a trivial medium by some; that theyre disposable entertainment whereas films are immortalised.