Gone for 5 years. What's the current state of preservation?

I haven't been following No-Intro (dumping group) or emulation in general for years so can anyone bring me up to date what the current general situation is? I can see that as each year passes, more and more things (e.g. games) go digital/online and that also brings about complacency and a false sense of comfort. "Once something is online, it stays online forever" is an assertion that is increasingly becoming false. Super Famicom's Bandai Satellaview is probably the oldest example of this.

1. The Closing of DSiWare on March 31, 2017 - how much stuff got backed up? For example, I was looking for Noroi no Game: Chi (ノロイ ノ ゲエム 血) and Noroi no Game: Goku (ノロイ ノ ゲエム 獄) which are spin-off titles to Square Enix's horror game of the same name. I had a look at the DAT file and it seems like it was preserved so that's good.

2. The Closing of PSP Store on March 31, 2016 - and how does this affect downloadables like games, demos, game updates and DLC?

3. Game Updates and DLC for PS3/PS4/PSP/Vita, DS/DSi/3DS, Xbox360/Xbone - what's the go regarding these? Game updates are pretty important, they're basically the (Rev A) and (Rev B) of disc-based games. DLC is also important, they could be additional side-quests/missions (e.g. Metal Gear Solid: Revengeance) or something small like extra costumes or pieces of equipment for RPGs.

Also on the subject of DLC, to download DLC you will need a copy of the game and on top of that, DLC is separated by region (USA, Europe, Japan)?

4. PS2 Online Content - There's a small amount of stuff here that should be of interest to dumpers and gamers alike. One example is the Multiplayer Mode from Dirge of Cerberus: Final Fantasy VII.

5. Mobile Phone Games - yes, there's a lot of shitware on the mobile phone marketplace. But there are a small amount of good stuff too. Here's a selection of stuff: https://assemblergames.com/threads/japanese-region-mobile-cell-phone-games-e-g-square-enix.30677/

As far as Japanese games are concerned, it should be easier to back up? 10 years ago, Japanese mobile phones' system was separate from the rest of the world but now that everyone uses smartphones, everything should be more accessible (region issues aside). By the way, is "Before Crisis: Final Fantasy VII" dumped yet?

6. Online-only Games - like the above, a lot of low quality here. But there are a lot of challenges here that deserves its own thread. Is it even theoretically possible to backup the entire Final Fantasy XI experience? We're talking the main games, the sequels/expansions, the addons, the game updates, and the one-time events.

7. What can I do and how? - what do I need to know before diving in? Now that I have some time (and some money), I would like to do my part.

To explain myself a bit, I solely collect Japanese games for all consoles so I'll be approaching preservation from that angle. I guess the first step is logging in to the Japanese-region version of the PS3 Play Store and just grabbing stuff? And booting up my Japanese games and grabbing their DLC? After I do that, how do I back up the stuff to USB? And restore it back to the PS3's hard drive? I also wanted to grab the Japanese version of P.T. (Hideo Kojima's horror game demo) but that doesn't seem to be possible (the English version seems to have been backed up).

 

I would like to mention the US and EU versions are saved (US version lacking a JSON file). The JP one might not have been saved.

 

I've seen PS4s on Yahoo Auctions that were advertised as having PT on them, but that was quite a while ago. Looking now I can't find any.

As a general response to you @layzee, there doesn't seem to be such a huge community for preservation anymore, or at least there's a lot less excitement about it than there used to be. Unless we're talking pre-retail games, which ObscureGamers.com looks to be doing a pretty good job of at the moment.

Part of this can be attributed to assemblergames.com's unexpected downtime of 4 - 5 months from March-ish (more or less, I can't remember exactly when it went down - a lot of stuff happened in my life around that time), and since it's been back, many of the more enthusiastic and prolific members simply don't have their hearts in it anymore or they've left/been banned.

 

The PSP store was closed... For the PSP. We can still purchase PSP games on the PSVita. If I remember correctly, games we purchased can still be downloaded from the downloads list, via the (defunct) PSP store.

 

I think a lot of it is technical - the current generation of platforms are far more locked down than the older ones and the companies appear much more likely to go after people that start to investigate them. On top of this, things like the PS4 and the Xbox One are simply not that interesting from a hardware point of view - they use what's basically PC technology with a locked-down execution environment, which makes them unappealing things to play with when it's so easy to get machines using PC technology with a non locked-down execution environment. My PS4 and XBone are basically just dust traps now.

 

yeah these new systems are little more than just DRM machines to play console exclusives on, though the collector in me still likes having games on discs

 

Seems like the Wii shop will be closing on January 30, 2019 so there's some advance warning.

The only groups I can see doing any sort of preservation are No-Intro (mainly cart-based games) and Redump (disc-based) though I'm not 100% sure their approach to DLCs.