In a recent interview with Axios, head of Xbox Phil Spencer talked about why emulation and preservation of video games is important. During the interview, Spencer also called for industry-wide support to make a push for preservation via emulation.
Spencer said that the industry should work together to make emulation of older games on modern hardware accessible and legal, and that such a thing would be great for the industry as a whole.
“My hope (and I think I have to present it that way as of now) is as an industry we’d work on legal emulation that allowed modern hardware to run any (within reason) older executable allowing someone to play any game,” Spencer said. “If we said, ‘Hey, anybody should be able to buy any game, or own any game and continue to play,’ that seems like a great North Star for us as an industry.”
Spencer has long been an advocate of preservation of games, and it’s great that platform holders are making such positive moves to preserve the legacy of the medium. Xbox recently added over 70 original Xbox and Xbox 360 games to its backwards compatibility program, and also announced that it was the last batch of such titles due to a multitude of legal issues. Whether Spencer’s beliefs and statements pick up steam in the industry remains to be seen, although that does seem a highly unlikely prospect for now. Here’s hoping that’s proven wrong in the not-so-distant future.
