It looks like Sony has created a new preservation team within PlayStation, according to a tweet and post on LinkedIn from Garret Fredley, a senior build engineer at the company.
Today is my first day as a Senior Build Engineer at @PlayStation, working as one of their initial hires for the newly created Preservation team!
Game Preservation was my first career passion, so I'm ecstatic that I get to go back to those roots 😊
— Garrett Fredley (@SomeCronzaGuy) April 25, 2022
The longer the games industry exists, the more important preservation becomes as older games are frequently lost to time and incapable hardware. We’ve lost hundreds, if not thousands of titles due to this situation and it’s up to the console makers to help preserve the industry’s legacy.
We’ve had Xbox doing their part to ensure backward compatibility but Nintendo seems to be against it for some reason while Sony has been silent, if not dragging its heels on the topic.
That all seems to be changing. At least regarding Sony’s inclusion as the newly formed team will look to the past to secure the future. It also makes sense now that Sony announced earlier this month that it intends to add tiers to PlayStation Plus, with the higher tiers offering older games to subscribers.
In related news, Apple is removing games that haven’t been updated in two years from the App Store. This includes games that work and do not require an update. This leaves dozens of developers being notified that their games are no longer available.
