Vandaag verscheen er dit artikel op de website Kotaku, daar in gaat de schrijver dieper in op de vraag of het nut heeft om als toekomstige game verzamelaar aan de huidige generatie games te beginnen. Want ik ben zelf een groot verzamelaar van oude games (vooral het 16bit tijdperk) en wie nu een SNES, SMD of een PlayStation 1 of PlayStation 2 koopt kan deze spelen zoals het jaren geleden op de markt kwam. Maar heeft het in de toekomst nut om games van de PlayStation 3 of de Xbox 360 te kopen?? Want zoals we allemaal weten worden veel games gewoon op de markt gezet en later (Ja toch, Electronic Arts en Ubisoft) door middel van updates dicht gepatched. Maar hoe zal dit zijn over tien of twintig jaar?? want het is dan wel zeker dat de huidige servers dan offline zijn.

In the past, games were released regardless of whether they were polished products or laden with bugs - Some of which are now infamous for having been released with amusing errors or glitches (Zero Wing, anyone?)! Games were released, and that was final. No patches, no fixes. Unless a publisher recalled a product at retail and re-released an amended version, every copy of the game was exactly the same, and remains the same to this day. However, this cannot be said for the current generation of games, where almost every new release has had some kind of patch issued - Some bigger than others (Eg, Gran Turismo 5). The game you bought brand new, and the games we're collecting, are effectively unfinished or broken products. In the future, some of these games will be playable, but others are so full of bugs that they're practically worthless.

Has anyone ever stopped to think what will become of your X360 or PS3 once the respective companies stop supporting them? What happens once these companies decide that they no longer want to support these consoles and stop supplying the necessary patches to older games? In the case of games like Skyrim or GT5, it's a big deal!

While the games will still be playable to some extent in the future, they won't be the same experience without the patches. I have friends who play current-gen games but don't have their PS3 or X360 online, and they're constantly complaining about this bug or that bug. I keep telling them that these bugs have since been fixed and patched, but they don't have internet to download them, so they have to suffer playing a broken game. This is what it will be like in the future! Retro collectors of the future will look back at this generation of games, only to see that what they're collecting are worthless broken games.