Steam could, but it would be an extremely dangerous decision. One of their biggest competitive advantages is they they break users out of the console generation gaps.
Why buying a Steam Deck with all my old games (to say nothing of emulators) was more appealing than a Switch 2.
It’s only a matter of time until consoles make the jump from x86 to ARM. They will kill off the PS4-PS5 generations.
x86 is too inefficient. ARM CPUs match x86 system performance while using a fraction of the energy. This will give future consoles a chance to use a larger GPU.
Edit - that might be the reason why they’re going all digital for PS6. PS6 should run x86 code natively. Maybe PS7 will use an ARM cpu which will not be able to play any PS6 games natively but they will have a streaming service for the older consoles.
Every digital storefront will do an update that will “unfortunately” be incompatible with the legacy media every 10-20 years.
Every store front, you sure? How will GOG or itch.io accomplish this if I downloaded the games into a private offline storage?
I really only meant the big corporate ones. The niche ones would continue being awesome.
Steam could, but it would be an extremely dangerous decision. One of their biggest competitive advantages is they they break users out of the console generation gaps.
Why buying a Steam Deck with all my old games (to say nothing of emulators) was more appealing than a Switch 2.
It’s only a matter of time until consoles make the jump from x86 to ARM. They will kill off the PS4-PS5 generations.
x86 is too inefficient. ARM CPUs match x86 system performance while using a fraction of the energy. This will give future consoles a chance to use a larger GPU.
Edit - that might be the reason why they’re going all digital for PS6. PS6 should run x86 code natively. Maybe PS7 will use an ARM cpu which will not be able to play any PS6 games natively but they will have a streaming service for the older consoles.