Yesterday, PlayStation employee Garrett Fredley posted one of those fun career update posts on Twitter, noting he’s started a new gig as a Senior Build Engineer. And while that’s great news for Mr. Fredley, the gaming community was interested in a different piece of information in that post. According to Fredley, PlayStation has started a new team focused on game preservation.
A topic of growing intensity, game preservation is often something the community feels obligated to take charge of. From emulation to larger efforts like the Video Game History Foundation, the running narrative is official sources being unreliable at best due to inconsistent profit motives. And seeing preservation come up specifically at PlayStation was an even bigger surprise.
Related: Sony Walks Back PS3/Vita Purchase Shutdown
Just recently, the PlayStation brand had to walk back a decision to close down the PS3 and Vita store pages after public backlash from fans worried about disappearing games. Backwards compatibility has also been an issue on the Sony front, with software like PSOne Classics never turning back up on the PS4 or PS5.
That said, later this summer a big change is coming to PlayStation Plus, splitting the service into three tiers. These options include streaming PS3 games, and an unspecified collection of classic games from the PSOne and PS2 platforms. Perhaps this new preservation team is part of building those libraries up.
Of course, no details are available yet. But as that trickles in y’all know where to look.
Published: Apr 26, 2022 11:32 am