How Will The State of The Retro Gaming Collecting Hobby Be in 5-10 Years?

No further thoughts on this topic? Its pretty interesting to hear what everyone thinks

 

I used to be in the second category of Johnny's post, bordering on the first with a few of my fave games. Rapidly falling to the third category now though, lol. At least until Uni is over.

In another 10 years I think many of today's games will be harder to find without cracks due to DRM and things. So original condition wont be a usable game for some, especially if next gen ends up tying the purchases to accounts like Steam are doing. However, I don't think many of today's games have the collectability and replay value that retro games have. There are a few I will miss if I can't play them in another 10 years though.

 

People are different. We'll see a lot of variation.

Me, in example. I really don't care about anything NES or Atari. There will be people like me who avoid completely the older generations.
I see Atari graphics and think, "What? I can spend 6 hours straight playing Daytona USA or Blast Corps, but this? No way."

I care about Master System to the point of knowing it. I remember playing in my older brother when younger but that's it.
I avoid collecting Mega Drive because I just can't find what I could want brand new, factory sealed. But that's another issue I have, avoiding used games is not that common...

But like some already said. I believe that some entrepeneur will try to explore the market, just like the extremely limited vinyl albuns that some singers realease. That's more common in Japan, I think.
There will be exremely prmium editions, that's for sure.

Some people are already playing with this. The release of that Edition with a car included shows this.
IMO, only stupid Publishers will never release something cool and try to go online only someday. The ones that love what they do always try to show up with something nice often.

 

You'd be surprised at how fast some things can truly die out when it is used constantly. From my standpoint when it comes to collecting, I've come to accept the fact that eventually my childhood cartridges for the Nintendo 64 or Super Nintendo are going to die out because I only buy games that I'm going to play. I don't strive to have full collections, I just strive to own the games I want to own for a platform and get my use out of it because video gaming was a big role in my childhood and still is to this day.

Technology works in crazy ways.

 

It will be about the same as now, just involving much more 32bit and above systems, as the trend is already showing right now. 8/16bit stuff will raise in price a lot.

 

5 year head start? Did you forgot about that CD-ROM was already successfully introduced to us gamer in 1988, 5 years before Gunstar Heroes was even out?

 

This is true, but it's not what I said or meant. Gunstar Heroes came out in 1993, Radiant Silvergun came out in 1998.

I'm just saying, I think a cartridge will last at least 5 years longer than a CD. CD's die just sitting on shelves. I have some audio CDs from the 90s that don't work anymore. I have some Nintendo carts from the 80s that are doing fine though.

 

And I just said that in 1988 the first CD-ROM games came out and still all work perfectly today and sure will for another or two decades. We all know about issues caused by the CD-ROMs mechanics, but which most of them can be repaired in the meanwhile.
But we do not know about any case were a CD-ROM game actually broke, not counting the once that got abused by some spoiled brats of course.

So why start to compare CD-ROM games from 1998, when they were already around in 1988 and still prove to work perfectly?

 

Pardon me for derailing the thread. I'm wondering whereabouts this is - the two CC's I know of in NW London sell crap in the main, like a bajillion FIFAs and the PS2 James Bond games :-(

 

MaskROMs are usually pretty durable, along with the PCBs and other components. However they can fail, usually when subjected to abuse or extreme operating or storage conditions. However that isn't to mean that lets say you live another 60 years and still want to play that cartridge that it will still work then. If you're worried about the games themselves, the good news is they usually can be copied and recreated. If you're worried about the originals, eventually they will be junk no matter what you do. But it'll take quite awhile.

Kind of a good and bad news thing is that many old cartridges (and CDs/DVDs) can be reproduced without too much trouble. So they could be around a long time. But it has been posing a problem for collectors and gamers now as fake Earthbound and other cartridges are rampant on places like eBay. Another somewhat good thing is that cloned systems like the SNES give another pretty accurate way to play the original cartridges. Now if only other systems would get better quality clones. There's no telling what technology in the future might enable.