Topic: Retro Gaming is never going to move beyond the Gamecube/PS2/Xbox era.

@Heavyarms55
"We aren't going to really have flea markets full of old PS4 and Switch games."
My local game shop at my hometown Surabaya, named Game Inn (Check its profile from Instagram) accept Second handed PS3, PS4, 3DS, PS Vita, Switch games.
There are so many of them and the price of Second handed games are usually a half of their actual prices.

@Anti-Matter All those consoles you mentioned still have the online infrastructure to support updates and the purchase of their DLC. It isn't gonna last forever. Eventually those servers will shut down and many of those games will become next to worthless. Except for 3DS and Vita games perhaps, as those tend to be more self contained. Anyway, I am not talking about right now, of course you can buy used games now, but 20 years from now, well I doubt they'll be worth much for the reasons I already stated.

Amazes me after all this time, there's still people that think when a game is delisted from sale, that they suddenly can't redownload it if they had previously purchased it.

If your PS3 breaks or you delete your Scott Pilgrim game, you can still retrieve it until the sad day comes when Sony shuts off online support. Just log into the purchasing Playstation account and go to whatever download history is called, and redownload. Mine isn't connected to check what it's called on the system itself, but on Playstation.com, it's called "Download List". All of my just delisted Bally/Williams pinball tables are there, GTI Club+ is there, Sega Rally Online Arcade is there, etc. I can queue them up right now to redownload on one of my PS3's.

Your other complaints are valid where longevity is concerned, but as long as the Playstation Store remains up, your delisted PS3 games and DLC are safe as long as you still can access the account that made the purchase (As are delisted PSP/Vita/360/XB1/PS4 releases).

@Atariboy I can do that right now But who is to say that service will still be there in 20 years? I doubt it. Eventually the PS3 will have its online servers shut down. Just like the previous generation of hardware. Once that happens, like I said, if the PS3 breaks, that game is just gone.

There will be games unplayable without patches, and there will be online games that simply won't work anymore.

Nevertheless there is a whole truckload of PS3/360 games out there that are indeed playable out of the box, even if they don't have their patches or DLC. Even most PS4/X1 games are in a fully playable state right off the disk.

So yes there will absolutely be a retro market in the future. Not to mention PC emulation will always be there to help preserve the full spread of content for these titles. And PC gaming is getting more and more popular as they design software and games to mimic console-like convenience. Heck I just bought a handheld that's running Windows 10, that can emulate all of these retro games in HD up through PS2, GC and Wii, and it's instantaneous. Set the system to go into hibernation when the lid is closed just like 3DS...

That's going to be the future. People are going to carry around PC handhelds in their pockets like a 3DS, and by then they will be able to fully emulate PS3 and 360 games. In the future you'll be able to buy one they can emulate all of those systems through seventh generation for 100 bucks or 200 bucks, just like today we can buy lower powered PC based handhelds (GPD XD and Win 1) for $200-300 and run all the retro titles.

Yeah, getting Nintendo DLC content in the future when ROMs are the only option will be a pain. Not like DLC on Satellaview where the DRM was only like a byte of the ROM.

It's an interesting topic. I just finished Donkey Kong: Tropical Freeze and it's 1,0 version that was on the card was flawless in terms of bugs and having the full content. Breath of the Wild felt incomplete without the dlc, and other third party Switch games need updates to fix bugs. Some games are even sold incomplete on the card and completely dependent on a download from a server.

My guess is that retro Switch collectors will simply account for all of this, with complete games like Tropical Freeze being more collectible than L.A. Noir, which needs a download. The technology in the game cards is as reliable as it comes, and will be usable for a long time, a greater concern would be how long the Switch consoles will last.

For me ps3, xbox360, wii, ds and psp count as retro, they’re 10+ years old each, they’re gen 7 and we already entered gen 9 with the switch.
I really like collecting for psp, ds and ps3 due to it having so many great exclusives, rpg’s and most importantly short and cheap budget AAA games.

As someone whose been playing BOTW with the DLC, this is not remotely true. Outside of the big addition in DLC 2 and maybe the Korok mask, the DLC is almost laughably irrelevant to how complete the game feels.

As far as I'm concerned, anything 10+ years old is "retro." Tech moves too fast for that to be considered modern.

I actually got evidence of this phenomena this very week.

I wanted to go back and play Mass Effect 3 so I bought the Wii U version for a cheap price and then realised they didn't release any of the DLC for that version.

I then bought the Xbox 360 version for backcompat and then found out that all of the DLC is still at full price, and therefore costs more than a brand new AAA game to get it all (and about 10 times as much as the game cost).

So basically because they never released a complete edition of the game on console, it's not really possible to go back and play ME3 in full without spending silly amounts of money. That's not true of any other retro gaming. If I want to replay Super Mario World, there are like 10 ways I can get hold of it to play for a reasonable price.

It's tempting to just pirate it given how hard they've made it to replay. I bought the DLC back when it came out, but on the PS3, and therefore can't use it on any current console, so it's not like they didn't make the money from me. Old games need to be available for reasonable prices or people just won't bother.

Yeah that seems a bizarre position to me too. The DLC was enjoyable but it added nothing new to the game at all. It didn't add to the game's quality. Just its length.

Another thing worth pointing out is that PC-collectors have dealt with this for a long time, but still keep collecting. You just need to know which games are useless due to, DRM, being MMOs, being expansions, not being patched, etc. Switch games are clearly marked if they need a download to work.

@JaxonH This. People will find a way to make games playable that initially depended on patches, although it may not be exactly the same with patches it will be more or less playable. And based on my opinion, PS2/GC/Xbox is definitely retro at this point. Idk about Wii/PS3/360 though, I think you need to go 2 generations after before one generation can be considered retro. In particular the PS3 still feels fairly recent and not very "retro" despite being more than 10 years old. Once PS5 and Xbox 2 release then Wii/PS3/360 can be considered retro IMHO.

The PS3 is also still fully supported online, with weekly sales on it's digital store. Having a PS3 as your main console is still possible if you're not that big of a gamer.

That doesn't really change what I said though. There are PC-collectors and they do manage to keep track of which games work and which are paper weights.

I don't think the retro collecting scene will change much. In a few years they'll come up with a way for you to download all the patches/DLC onto an SD card, then stick it to the back of your console and play the regular boxed game with all the post-release frills.
I think we are already at a stage where you can play Dreamcast games off a SD card on the original hardware, and there's people who still play it online - something we thought would have gone lost after the console was pulled. We have reproduction carts with games that once were available only through satellite streaming services...I mean, 20 years ago all of what we have now would have been considered witchcraft! So I'm sure pirates will find a way for physical collecting and digital content to co-exist somehow.