Phil Spencer Worries About The Loss Of Video Game History


We've seen Phil Spencer in the news a lot recently. Having spoken to The Guardian about how Xbox building more narrative-driven games than ever, acquiring a studio in South America, India or Africa, he's also talked about his concerns over games preservation.

Showing up on the Kinda Funny Gamescast - where he expressed admiration for PS5's DualSense controller and explained that Nintendo Switch on his shelf - the Xbox Boss detailed his wish for the industry to "come together and help preserve the history" of gaming.

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Phil Spencer Worries About The Loss Of Video Game History

Citing the Paley Center as one major example of preservation in action, Spencer told us:

Paley early on saw the TV industry was getting ready to literally throw away the tapes that these old TV shows were on, and he said, 'Hey, I want to archive those because at some point, somebody will want to go back and watch the Ed Sullivan show or something, and those things shouldn't be thrown away.' As an industry I would love it if we came together to help preserve the history of what our industry is about, so we don't lose access to some of the things that got us to where we are today

As for a potential solution, Spencer believes that Cloud Gaming could potentially play a huge role in this, advising it'd eliminate a need for emulators and investment in old hardware. He also believes that more recent releases benefit from online services, unsurprisingly citing Xbox Live and Game Pass as two examples. You can find the full video below.

Arguably, Microsoft has led the charge when it comes to preservation via backwards compatibility. With Xbox Series incorporating varying degrees of compatibility with each Xbox generation, they've even enhanced select Xbox One titles with FPS Boost. With older games recently emerged through Xbox Cloud Gaming like Banjo-Kazooie and Fable II, it'll be interesting to see what Microsoft does next.

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