I don't doubt that can be the case, but do those particular medium are rather fragile and hard to back-up statistically. Plus, you also have the drives in good condition? You actually trust those games and the respective players to continue readable (presumably you have some others that have become unreadable)? I was just recently checking some 3 inch floppies and although I could salvage some of the stuff, some was gone. And the stuff I salvaged was a pain - had I done the proper thing and stored it first in a Hard Drive, passed into CDs, then into flash memory I would have all of it and would have given me less trouble overall I think.Retronomy wrote:I have games on Cassette Tape and 5inch soft floppy that are in near perfect, and readable, condition. Conversely, console situations (like the original xbox live arcade), and previous digital game distributors have died off. I feel this is a pretty good testament to the longevity of Physical vs Digital.
You would have to store them pretty deep underground as well because of radiation.The argument that you provide, Ivo, is essentially that if left in it's current state from now till the end of time, then yes, digital would last longer.
But I could say that if for some reason my physical products were in a completely sterile environment, say, oh, a vacuum of space, I could say the same thing.
This is a different issue, that Steam is basically a rental service rather than a store (even though it may not look like it at first).But neither of those situations are real life. You're entrusting your games, which for all intents and purposes you hardly even own, to another entity that can and at will withdraw, change and manipulate said games.
Because it is a rental in practice. There are 2 big ways to see that you don't really own the game: you can not trade it to some other Steam account and there is no policy guaranteeing that you can keep the game somehow in the case the service goes down.When steam is gone, your games are gone.
I am not entirely sure about this as I don't have either and haven't read the Terms, but I think you are incorrect (but it may be that I'm incorrect, in each case I would like to learn about the specifics).When Xbox is gone, your arcade is gone.
When your Wii is gone, your games are gone.
What I think is the case is that if I have an Xbox and a Wii with games and they malfunction, I can restore my games on a different console by going through a non-trivial process and contacting Microsoft / Nintendo. I.e. it is a bother but it is possible (and it is a bother to stop people from abusing the process, e.g. to "duplicate" their collection into a friend and keeping the original working one, etc.)
Conversely, I could sell my Xbox and Wii with the downloaded games and the new owner would in the future be able to do the same if that (2nd hand) console malfunctions. Or is this wrong?
I don't think this is the case in general, and as such it is not a problem with digital but a problem with particular implementations of digital "sales" (or perhaps one should say "rentals"). There is a theme, but it is not tied with digital collections, only with the specific services.When the servers that authenticate your games die, so do your games.
Do you see a theme here, yet?
All of these situations eventually are beyond your control. And that is the problem.
With GoG (which is the service I use and know a bit better), you actually OWN the game at least to a very good approximation and that is not the case. There aren't authentication servers, you can keep a local backup, and in principle they would even warn people in advance were they to shut down the service (but I wouldn't be surprised if they wouldn't, to save on the rush and bandwidth costs associated with it).
The only issue GoG can have in terms of collectibles is that their goal is not to create collectibles but to make the game available to whoever wants them. This means the print run is not limited in theory (although I guess it is in practice). Some collectors find that unappealing, but regardless I think there are other collectors who don't care about that print run being limited if their collection has innate value regardless (which I would really say it does, in GoG's case).
Fires and thefts are not so rare (although probably people wouldn't steal your cassettes I guess). From my own (recent) experience with floppies from the mid 90s I wouldn't bet on the majority of your tapes from the 80s being still readable. Have you checked recently?Meanwhile, so long as the rare natural disaster doesn't happen, my commodore 64 cassettes are going to STILL be there, likely still in readable form.
I do find it very funny how pirates had such a huge (IMO positive) contribution in preserving so many games in a usable form.Of course, the ultimate solution to all of this is to support piracy.
But don't do that because that's illegal.
I wish the game makers themselves took more care to preserve things. In fact I hope that by going digital (and thus eliminating issues such as "shelf-space") this is increasingly going to be the case. In GoG, Steam, Live Arcade, PSN and WiiWare you can get the vast majority of the games even if they were put there years ago (there are a few notable exceptions that got pulled for one reason or another). Apparently with WiiU, Nintendo lets you transfer your WiiWare Wii games to the WiiU WiiWare free of charge (even though they charge you if you want the WiiU wiiware versions with some improvements or whatever, but that is a different issue).
Ivo.
