A long time ago, there was a big difference between PC and console gaming. The former often came with headaches. You’d fight with drivers, struggle with crashes, and grow ever more frustrated dealing with CD piracy checks and endless patches and updates. Meanwhile, consoles offered the exact opposite experience—just slam in a cartridge, and go!
That beautiful feature fell away when consoles joined the Internet. Suddenly there were servers to sign in to and updates to download and a whole bunch of hoops to jump through before you even got to play a game. Now, those early generations of Internet-connected consoles are becoming retro, and that’s introduced a whole new set of problems now the infrastructure is dying or dead. Boot up and play? You must be joking!
My main problem with the current crop of consoles, excepting the Switch/2 (which I have a different problem with) is that they’re all just a cut-down PC anyway. Except one that you don’t control, and is subject to an order of magnitude more vendor bullshit even than usual. Consoles quit being interesting to me not just because of their reliance on internet connectivity and inevitable decay of all of the necessary features that this entails once the manufacturer loses interest in favor of the Next New Thing, but because they don’t do anything inherently interesting anymore. They all basically have the same controller, they all play basically the same games barring console exclusives, and none of them do anything experimental or innovative. Do you want the green one or the blue one? Otherwise, there may as well be no difference.
Except for dumb shit that Sony insists on keeping locked to the PS5 and other dumb shit Microsoft insist(ed) on keeping locked to the XBox Series Whatever, my PC can also have the same controller and play the same games better.
I have a pretty comprehensive collection of retro consoles from the slap-a-cartridge-in-and-play eras, and I have to wonder if anyone is going to bother in the future with preserving the PS4 and XBone, or the PS5 and XBox Series, etc. in the same way when half of what they did doesn’t work anymore because the servers are gone. Not to mention the Switch 2 cartridges which don’t actually contain the games.
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The only way I see this sort of working is getting people together similar to Abandonware and either making emulators or someone figuring out how to fake the server authentication on a local PC for a console to ping. It would probably send the console manufacturers into a frenzy, especially Nintendo.
I can see the hardware part being easy enough, a miniPC for $200-$300 or an older junker PC running Linux from storage and a CAT6 from the console to the miniPC. The hard part would be figuring out what every single game needed to authenticate itself.
But where it really falls apart are systems that only partially run on the local console or require lots of online players to even function. So anything after Gen 7 or 8 probably wouldn’t work or would be very limited.
I’m hoping that by installing all of my game discs and updating everything before putting it away that it will remain somewhat functional if I pull it out of storage. I will give is a little more time then try it, so fingers crossed.
There’s some similar work done with the Pretendo network for Nintendo systems, but my understanding is it’s just for server-hosted and multiplayer game features and not copyright authentication.
I think it’s inevitable that someone creates an online server that authenticates online games, the lawsuits will be swift and vicious. The best solutions will probably be to create a local network authentication method, but who knows if it’s even possible.
Yeah, I expanded my hard drive (unofficial methods) in my 360 and “installed” all of my games to it. That way if the optical drive starts to go or my discs get messed up, all it’ll have to worry about is reading the disc initially to allow it to play from the hard drive. I did similar on my soft-modded OG Xbox but I don’t even need the disks for that one anymore (and the DVD drive is kaput anyway).
I haven’t messed with x360 emulators as I never had anything powerful enough at the time, but I saw not long ago there was one available for Android now, so I may look back into it.
But yeah, something like XLink Kai that somehow satisfies the cloud connectivity would be cool. But I’m not sure how that would work since it’d have to have valid certs for the hardcoded domains the system and games would connect to.
But emulation is already close to perfect for that generation, and all the games are easily available online, so the issue is irrelevant.
A long time ago? Honey, updates weren’t even a thing until like 20ish years ago. They definitely weren’t a thing at the same time that cartridges were common.
I have edited this comment to appease the masses. I apologize for any inconvenience that my comment may have made whilst contributing to a social media website. I shall stew in my downvotes that I deserve and continue to degrade myself until I can form an opinion that matches the uber-intelligent that form the opinions of Lemmy. Thank you for your patience as I learn and grow.
Did you read TFA or just react out-of-context to the intro paragraph?
I read it. That line set me off though.
I didn’t even remotely get the assumption it was implying cartridge-based consoles connected to the internet. The next sentence is even “That beautiful feature fell away when consoles joined the Internet”
Cartridges and online updates for PC games literally are from two different time periods. The entire premise is false.
Should I just delete the comment, or will you accept my apology for my comment that’s not to your liking? Jesus Christ.
For future reference, a “My bad, I misunderstood.” goes a lot further than being a dick to others because of your own mistake.
You moderate the Atheism community. LOL
I hear Reddit is looking for users.
Either delete or edit so you don’t waste anyone else’s time reading it.
You commented on a post complaining about time wasted? Do you see the irony?
I don’t think this is the last time you’ll do it. And we’re not the only two people.
The paragraph you quoted refers to the era before consoles connected to the Internet (fifth-gen, except Gamecube and GBA which are sixth-gen). These consoles were split in the use of cartridges (Jaguar, Game Boys, NGP, N64) or CDs (PS, 3DO, Saturn, GameCube).
That’s why I was confused by that line.
