The easiest way to stop piracy is not to use anti-piracy technology, but to provide players with a better service than piracy.
11 years later, Steam founder Gabe Newell's words have been verified, he is correct, Steam's excellent service and game distribution mechanism, so that it has a huge game market, but also more and more players abandon piracy and move to genuine games.
▲ Who can refuse the discount
It's just that for Sony, the situation is a little different.
Since the launch of the PS5 and PS Plus services, veteran players have found that they can't easily play classic PS3 games such as Time Wheel and Final Fantasy 6, which has indirectly led to the popularity of some pirated game emulators.
It's 2022, why it's harder to play PS3 games
Since the release of the PS3 console in 2006, until 2017 was completely discontinued, 11 years of long life has spawned classic games such as Uncharted, Sky Sword, Resident Evil 5 and so on, even today, there are still some players who want to revisit them.
However, for Sony, the classic game has become a "legacy" that makes it headache.
▲ PS3
Last year, Sony said it would stop operating the PlayStation Store on PS3 and PS Vita, which means that players can't download digital versions of games on old consoles.
In Sony's view, this will not only allow players to turn their attention to the new generation of game console PS5, but also save operating costs.
A stone stirred up a thousand waves, Sony just announced that it caused a player boycott, Reddit, Twitter and other social media are full of criticism of Sony, and finally Sony can only give in:
After further reflection, it is clear that we have made the wrong decision here. So today I'm happy to say that we'll continue to run the PlayStation Store for PS3 and PS Vita devices.
▲PS Vita . Image courtesy of Pushsquare
However, it didn't end there.
Recently, some players found that classic games such as "Wheel of Time" and "Final Fantasy 6" on PS3 could not be re-downloaded, and the system showed that "the game will expire on December 31, 1969", and restoring the factory settings did not solve the problem.
▲Classic 2D game "Wheel of Time"
It looks like another "millennium bug" bug, kotaku, The verge and other media asked Sony and did not receive a positive reply, I don't know if it can be fixed.
Speaking of which, you might wonder why players can't play these classic games on the latest PS5 consoles.
At present, PS5 backward compatibility is mainly PS4 games, if you want to play earlier generation console games, you have to subscribe to Sony PS Plus service, the key is not a "one-step" solution, for players there are still many requirements.
Subscribing to the PS Plus service to play PS3 games is through cloud streaming, which requires the player's network to be fast and stable, and the lineup of games supported in different regions may vary.
In the entire PlayStation console series, the PS3 is a special presence, in which Sony introduced the Cell microprocessor, which was quite powerful at the time, and even later used by some agencies to build supercomputers because of its performance and cheap price.
The Cell processor consists of a 3.2GHz core CPU and eight coprocessors (SPEs), a special structure that gives the PS3 a powerful performance while increasing the difficulty of development, and developers must design and program for two different cores.
▲ Cell processor
Kazunori Yamauchi, the producer of the GT Racing series, even called the PS3 era a nightmare.
The RPCS3 team, a third-party PS3 emulator, also took years to fully support analog PS3 games.
Obviously, Sony's reluctance to devote a lot of development resources to classic games, as well as whether to close the game store, is due to cost and commercial interests, which is why PS5 does not have a direct built-in emulator backwards compatible with PS3 games.
Backward compatibility with older games is a problem that every game console manufacturer needs to think about, and with the support of many classic games, IP such as Pokémon can mature and obtain more commercial benefits.
The classic games that made great contributions to IP at that time also needed a "home".
Subscription system, a less than perfect program
The benefits of subscription to game manufacturers are numerous, console manufacturers like Sony and Microsoft can continue to earn revenue, game developers can develop games more freely, and independent niche games can find players who love them through subscription services.
For classic games, including them in the subscription lineup is actually a solution, players can play classic games, manufacturers can enhance the attractiveness of subscription services, and Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo have indeed done so.
The best thing to do so far is Microsoft, the latest Xbox Series X/S downward compatible with Xbox One, Xbox 360, the original Xbox games, players can re-download the digital games they have purchased on the new console, only a few do not provide downloads.
▲ Xbox provides image quality enhancements for some classic games
At the same time, Microsoft also provides the corresponding FPS frame rate enhancement and HDR image quality enhancement technology to improve the picture quality and experience of some classic games, and the Xbox Game Pass subscription service also contains many classic games.
In contrast, the other two subscription services are less attractive.
Although the price of Nintendo's membership service is slightly lower, the game lineup is too different, only providing FC, SEGA Maga, N64 games, GBA and other classic games are missing and not completely covered, and the Switch games provided in the membership subscription service are very few.
▲ Switch membership service.
Sony's PS Plus subscription service is the same, there are too few new games, and PS3 games still have to go through cloud streaming, which is inconvenient.
For players, the subscription system is not a perfect solution, does not provide a complete lineup of classic games, and has to worry about the rotation of the game lineup.
Someone wants to subscribe, someone wants to buy out, leaving a classic PS3 or PS Vita to let players reminisce about the original classic game, of course, provided that Sony can continue to operate the corresponding digital game store.
▲ Image courtesy of playstationlifestyle
There will be service when there is demand, and it is precisely to see the needs of old players, as well as the excellent quality of the classic game itself, remake games have become a new trend in recent years, and various "fried cold rice" masterpieces have emerged in an endless stream.
"Resident Evil 2 Remake" and "Final Fantasy 7 Remake" are all high-reputation remakes, compared to the original, they have been improved in terms of picture quality, operation gameplay, and narrative experience, and are naturally welcomed by players.
▲On the left is a remake of Resident Evil 2, and on the right is the original version of Resident Evil 2
There are good and bad, there are many "remake" games that are not done well, "Pokémon: Crystal Diamond / Bright Pearl" as a remake game, not only did not add new content, but also integrated many bugs in the original, naturally will be criticized by players.
In addition, the price of the remake game is also a relatively large point of controversy, the manufacturer paid the development cost, of course, hope that the work can be profitable, but for those games that have not changed much, the price is still high, the player will have a feeling of being "cut leeks".
▲ "Final Fantasy 6" is quite expensive, and some players said in the comment area that they were cut leeks
There are only a few games that can be remade, after all, there are still many game companies that have been acquired or even bankrupt, and subscription services cannot cover all the classic game lineups, or a lot of preconditions need to be met before playing.
When the service is not convenient and affordable, players inevitably pursue other things, and behind the open source game console boom, it is retro games that are not valued.
Retro gaming craze
We have introduced retro open source handhelds in previous articles, in short, a handheld machine equipped with an emulator, most of which are similar to GBA forms, cheap, easy to carry, decent to feel, and most importantly, a rich game lineup.
Games including FC, GBA, SNS, SFC and even Sony's original PS platform can run in the form of simulators, and merchants generally give away a large number of classic games, which is still quite attractive for players who love retro classic games.
It is worth mentioning that although the emulator itself does not have many problems, the game ROM is indeed pirated.
The reason why retro game functions have formed a boom, in addition to the cheap price, game manufacturers have not provided corresponding services is also one of the reasons, as mentioned earlier, including subscription services and remake games, can not cover the classic game lineup, especially Sony and Nintendo two.
When the simulator became the only way to play some of the classic games, things contradicted, and players chose to pirate, not necessarily for cheap.
Players want to use the most mature PS3 emulator RPCS3 is required, the emulator development team stressed on the official website that it will not tolerate any form of piracy, to use the emulator to play games must first download the corresponding firmware update from the PlayStation official website, to ensure that it is a genuine game.
As Steam founder Gabe Newell said, what players need is better service.
As a player, I am more looking forward to Sony and Nintendo coming up with more valuable service solutions, which can be better subscription systems or more flexible payment solutions.