What's the difference between old and new consoles - which do you prefer? Or is it more complicated?
4I love the newer generation of consoles, I love the enhanced life-like graphics and I love the online aspects of them. Especially the Xbox 360 Live Arcade experience is something unique and can not be matched by any of the other current consoles like the Wii or the PS3.
But there is something about the older generation of consoles that makes them more timeless, easier to use and their gameplay is guaranteed to last a couple of decades - provided the circuit boards don't corrode etc.
I am not sure if the Xbox 360 Live Arcade games are going to be any fun in 20 years time. What if your account is wiped and you want to access your live games? Well in 20 years time with the servers probably being dead you just won't have access to the full games anymore. So digital download-able content/distribution has disadvantages for the users apart from the fact that you don't have to go to the store to physically get the physical game medium. It does have great advantages for the publishers who can control their software even better than before.
In the future the 2nd hand market will disappear, there's no trade in Digitally Downloaded games. People will have to resort to hacking the consoles in order to preserve the games. But perhaps in the future companies like Microsoft and Sony will allow a final update that basically opens up the hardware and the games so that they can be played, restored indefinitely..... Would be a nice thing, but I don't see it happening
So where game collecting is concerned, older media and older consoles will withstand the test of time better than those newer devices. So if you want to collect a library that you still want to be playing in 20 years time - you'd better stick to retro.... or not?
Perhaps PC-gaming and emulation isn't that bad after all. This open platform (at least for now) will allow gamers to access the game-code in the future.