Xbox president Sarah Bond has announced that Microsoft is putting together a team dedicated to video game preservation.
“We have formed a new team dedicated to game preservation, important to all of us at Xbox and the industry itself,” Bond said. “We are building on our strong history of delivering backwards compatibility to our players, and we remain committed to bringing forward the amazing library of Xbox games for future generations of players to enjoy.”
Game preservation is becoming more of a concern as the industry shifts to a digital ecosystem and physical media becomes not as common as it was twenty years ago. Digital storefronts like Nintendo’s eShop have been shut down for Wii, Wii U, and now Nintendo 3DS. Some of the games that were on those stores will never be available again unless they’re ported to other platforms. The Video Game History Foundation reported recently that 87% of classic video games are out of print. Of the three major console manufacturers, Microsoft is the only one that’s shown any concern and taken positive steps to do something about it.
Microsoft is also not done in the hardware space. After buying both Bethesda and Activision-Blizzard, they now have exclusive access to gaming IPs they could’ve only dreamed of when the original Xbox hit the market in 2001. They’re hard at work on their next console, which they promise will be the biggest generational leap in hardware power that we’ve seen thus far. Bold words, but Microsoft has both the money and the experience to pull it off. We’ll see.
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