Time to pad for updates with a write-up. This can be seen as a bit of a follow up to this old writing from 2011.
You folks may have noticed how I have been attempting to use Twitter to communicate with Japanese Satellaview fans lately.
Today, I’d like to highlight a comment from a bit back here!
Yep, the Xbox One was directly compared to the Satellaview! Now, I’m going to assume for the time being that the readers of the blog are following the new consoles enough to know what was announced about the Xbox One lately, and, well, I can see some of the relations.
And I can also see how scary it is. In fact, as of this writing, Xbox One is essentially my worst fears about next-gen realized, with heavy DRM requirements on a systematic level, absurd online checks… I won’t go too much into the other factors that aren’t related to the Satellaview, thankfully for you readers. It’s simply the worst kind of large-scale, systematic DRM since the suicide battery on the CPS2.
It’s scary to think how the One can systematically render your games unplayable merely by being offline.
But even worse, I think the REALLY frustrating thing about this is lurking around on various forums and seeing so many people brush this off because “emulators will be around by the time we want to revisit these.”
Y’know, in spite of how long it took to make fully hardware-accurate SNES emulation or likewise for Sega-based systems. In spite of the fact that Xbox 360 and PS3 still do not have emulators… and heck, the 64DD doesn’t either, last I checked.
Oh, and of course, the fact that I’m here, still digging around for Satellaview ROMs 18 years after the fact.
That’s not even getting into stuff like Family Basic Data Cassettes having basically no western emulation presence whatsoever… And that’s one that doesn’t even have DRM or service issues; it’s just archaic media!
Let me once again bring up the Sega Channel. That was a pretty nice service at the time, but when it shut down in 1997, there was suddenly no trace of it left to recover for the thousands of users it had. Years later, there’s still people searching for titles such as “Garfield: The Lost Levels” which were released exclusively via the service.
Come to think of it, Sega Game Toshokan in Japan basically had the same ordeal. These were only slightly mitigated with Sega keeping storage of their Megadrive library for future rereleases. (Which they at least do, unlike Nintendo in regard to Satellaview.)
How about Microsoft? Will they be willing to do the same? Considering that it’d be easier for them to outright bail from video games if they lose this gen, probably not!
I will tell you right now and that when Xbox One’s servers shuts down and takes all it’s games with it, I will probably still be working on getting Satellaview content. If I’m not, then the most likely thing I moved on to would be either 64DD or Family Basic. I can’t take the time to grab the One’s library and hack it up or whatever is needed to make the stuff play.
I’m sure many of the folks who are credited with emulation breakthroughs for retro-game systems feel the same way about whether they’d bother with the Xbox One. Do you actually know for a fact that anyone will be willing to make up for Microsoft’s errors? Furthermore, do you know that one person is all it’s gonna take? Older consoles can have emulators developed by one person, but with the complications of next-gen, it’s possible it may require an actual team of people!
Feel free to comment and give your own input.
Also, spread this information to other forums and communities. So many people don’t realize how the precedent has already been set, and history is going to repeat itself!
It is a very hazardous time to be a gamer.
