There’s something I’ve been thinking about recently. Notice how games companies constantly rehash old games for profit? Take a look at Xbox Live arcade and Nintendo’s Virtual Console as well as the upcoming PS3 online games network. It’s becoming clear that selling old games is a great way to continue making money with little effort.

I admit I’m interested in getting games from these services due to its ease of use and compatibility with wireless controllers. I don’t think I’ll be purchasing games I already own though as it seems silly. But what about those people out there who choose to replace their collection with purely downloadable games - wouldn’t this destroy the second hand industry one day? If games are constantly released and rehashed over the Internet once a new console generation is unleashed and customers continually put money down for Super Mario World, what happens to the old cartridges out there? Will they become worthless because they are unneeded? As a consumer I think the second hand industry is great, it allows me to play old games which have become classics, as well as being cheaper than the latest releases. But from a game developer’s point of view, I can see that second hand games would be a bit of a nuisance.

But here’s the problem in my opinion. What happens in a future generation, when input is completely different? Will we need 20 different controllers just to play different games? Maybe I’m going too far but you can see this problem with the Wii. There are three different controllers! Doesn’t that seem a bit mad? Here’s an example, what happens after the Wii? If they want a future console to have back compatibility with Wii games, they will probably have to release a controller that can be used by such console but have the same motion sensing capabilities, as well as a ‘traditional controller’ for those old retro games, this could be troublesome as you will be required to have a multitude of controllers just for the games you want to play.

This is all terribly geeky but, from a business perspective, I can see this could be a little worrying for games companies. There must be a point when they have to just learn to forget about the first NES Zelda game surely?

Popularity: 1% [?]