XBOX’s Jason Ronald says Project Helix has a core goal rooted in game preservation. Why? Because a shiny new console shouldn’t leave your old games behind.
Game preservation is an increasingly important topic in the industry as the world moves toward an all-digital landscape. Nintendo and PlayStation have made certain classic games available through digital storefronts, but digital purchases raise ownership concerns, as PlayStation has made it clear in recent months that users are only renting a digital license that can be revoked at any time.
XBOX is trying to combat this with a disc-to-digital system, and it now seems that game preservation will be a core element of their next console.
XBOX Says Nothing Gets Left Behind With Project Helix
In Microsoft’s special 25 Years of Play magazine, VP of Next Generation Jason Ronald explained why game preservation matters to XBOX and the deep responsibility they feel to keep the past three decades of video games available for years to come.
Game preservation is core to XBOX. Not only do we feel like it’s the right thing for the industry, we feel a deep responsibility as one of its biggest platforms and publishers. For the first 30 years of game development, nobody really thought about game preservation when they were designing their hardware, when they were building their games.
A great example of where that’s already starting to happen today came earlier this year. For the first time ever, I can now play original XBOX games on my PC and a handheld. When those games were originally designed, and when we designed the original XBOX, we never envisioned a future where that could actually be true.
[Compatibility is] really informing how we design the platform and how we work with our partners to make sure that these games can not only be played, but they can also be played better than ever before in the future. Not only are we preserving those games from the past, but it’s actually informing how we’re designing and building the platform and games today – so that they can be preserved 20 years, 30 years in the future.
It’s still unknown whether Project Helix will have a dedicated disc drive. However, XBOX is making it clear that although it intends to bridge the gap between PC and console gaming, Helix is a game console, not a PC
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For more Insider Gaming coverage, check out Nintendo’s recent efforts to preserve its history. Don’t forget to sign up for our weekly newsletter, too.
I'm Robert DeFelice. I spent years covering pro-wrestling industry for outlets such as Fightful. After years in wrestling journalism, I’ve transitioned to video games, another passion of mine.
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