Comment by mikepurvis
20 hours ago
Yes, for play-online titles for sure, but I think everything up to Xbox 360 / PS3 era has robust emulation and wide distribution of the whole library.
Obviously it's gotten harder over the years, but PS4 and PS5 jailbreaks do exist so that means there's a vector for dumping games that were only ever distributed digitally (at least ones released up to the point where the jailbreaks got patched, as the stores will refused to serve new content until you update your system).
There's a bit of a hit-or-miss situation for them, from what I can tell. I recently spent some time trying to figure out which MLB The Show titles worked for emulation, and somehow after the 2010 entry, all of the remaining PS3 ones have a notorious noticeable bug where the middle (from right behind the pitcher going all the way down to the center field fence) the field is covered with random fans or other "debris", for lack of a better world. As far as I can tell, it's been known for years (I think it's an instance of the general problem of Z-fighting), but either no one knows the exact solution, or the people working on the emulators have so many other things to work on that it's not a priority.
On the other hand, the fact that people have spent enough time to write down which entries have this bug and which don't (and potentially even which stadiums have it and don't in the entries that do have the bug, since it's apparently not consistent across them) does lead credence to the idea that the library is pretty widely distributed.
Definitely another case where Nintendo platforms benefit from everyone having a shared understanding of which are the marquee, must-work titles; like every Mario and Zelda and Pokemon game will emulate flawlessly and after that is the long tail playable-but-maybe-buggy ones.
Current-gen console jailbreaks may exist but are inaccessible to the vast majority of the public so I really doubt they will factor into any decisions made by Sony, Microsoft, etc.
Yes, fair, and that matters if the discussion is "I want to buy someone's physical copy of a game released a few months ago that they are finished with". Digital distribution with robust hardware security does in fact completely destroy that market, though notably Switch and Switch 2 physical games tend to keep their value, suggesting that maybe it has less to do with physical media itself and more than the second hand market follows the pricing set by the digital marketplace, and consumers know that Nintendo doesn't really do discounts, even years later.
All that said, I think my main argument with respect to emulation and root access was less about individuals having that access, and more that so long as someone gains that access even through extraordinary measures, the games can be dumped and distributed, at which point true ownership becomes possible (even if it takes a while for them to become playable on emulation or hacked hardware).
Fair point.
There is diminishing importance of ownership as time passes though because there is less and less desire to own such assets as they get older and newer titles come out.
There are exceptions to the rule, but I'd imagine less than 1% of the population cares about owning/emulating PS3 or even PS4 games at this point.
So yes, there is an eventual vector for "ownership" (though illicit, at least in this hypothetical) but I doubt that moves the needle much if at all.