The Hulu of Retro-Games

As we approach the next generation of gaming, more and more talk is focused on digital downloads. We've already reached the point where full size games like Burnout Paradise and WarHawk can be purchased and downloaded right to our consoles. But what does that means for the past? When we arrive at this brand new age of completely digital sales, what will become of our past purchases?

Previously if you owned a game, you'd always be able to find some way to play it. Your console might die, but you could just buy a new one and pop the game into that one. I've gone through 2 Sega Saturns, but I don't worry about my copy of Shining Force 3 that I paid $100 for not working on the 3rd Saturn I'm sure to purchase at some point.

That was then, and this is now. Our games won't be physical things we can hold in our hands anymore, they will be forever stuck on hard drives and memory cards. So when the next generation comes, will it support those same hard drives and memory cards? If not, will there be a way to transfer your purchased games? Will those games even be able to be played on the new technology?

Let's pretend our games don't make the jump with us to the next generation, what will become of them? Say I lose the memory card holding all of my purchased games, or the hard drive holding them goes bust. Almost all of the current consoles allow you to sign in and re download your purchased games. But will those stores be kept up when the world has already moved onto the next big thing?

If they've forgotten about backwards compatibility with our physical game copies, whose to say the same won't happen with our digital? The only difference will be that we have nothing to show for all of the money we spent.

So I have an idea to make all of this irrelevant. Once cloud computing is commonplace and all of our games are held up on servers in the air for us to play with a press of a button, I want a company to come along and answer all of our problems.

They set up the system, and establish all of the servers. Then, every single game from 2 generations and older are added to their service. Think of Hulu but for retro-gaming. Want to play Halo 3, Shadow of the Colossus, Pilot Wings 64, or even some Atari 2600 classics? All you'd have to do is boot-up the Hulu of Retro-Games and click whatever your heart desires.

The pricing structure could be debated. Maybe we'd have to pay a subscription fee for the service, or maybe they could just stick ads on the game selection screens and in between levels. The games that get played the most, get more of the ad revenue.

So instead of Nintendo making you buy Super Mario Bros. 3 again and only getting one set price from you in the process, they would be making money from every time you actually started playing it. If a game was so obscure that it only got played once a year, it wouldn't really matter. The company who made the service would be hosting it, and the company who made the game had nothing to lose in allowing them to do so.

Something like this needs to be done. Even in a world where I'm downloading Final Fantasy XVII straight to my Xbox 1440, I'm going to want to play my old games. This answer seems to be a win-win for all involved parties. I just can't wait for it to happen.