What if, let's say, we fast forward 100 years, and consoles become rarer and rarer. What will happen to speedrunning? Will emulators become the norm? This shit keeps me up at night.
This isn't even just a problem for speedrunning, in general the historical preservation of video games is in a pretty sad state. I'm hoping that will start to get better as video games continue to grow and get taken more seriously as an art form.
But yeah, unless great effort is taken to preserve the availability of old game consoles (which isn't likely to happen) I imagine emulation of these consoles will become the norm (and that's already starting to be the case, many Atari 2600 players aren't playing on original hardware, for instance). Fortunately, by then I imagine the quality and accuracy of emulation for consoles that currently exist will be drastically better (and also, going forward emulation will likely be easier, because the current-gen consoles are very close to PC's in terms of architecture, so there's less weird hardware quirks to simulate).
But you also have to consider the current trend of the decreasing popularity of home pcs. Things are moving towards a mobile and cloud infrastructure. Mobile means phones which also means that they are less powerful that what a game console can do when they are the same gen really. But the specs go up with time, I am sure there will be a way. A mobile infrastructure Which will affect the emulators since many are written for Windows versions. We may need Virtual Machines for the older Windows versions and Linux/Apple emulators) moving forward. The game preservation scene is alive and well you just have to look for it. The preservation of the physical media and consoles is not terribly good considering that the things break with time though.
"But you also have to consider the current trend of the decreasing popularity of home pcs." Uh... what? Sure, phones and tablets have gotten a lot more common in the last ~10 years, but pretty much everyone still has a PC, and I don't really see that changing anytime soon.
Well at least in the US where I live almost everyone I know has stopped using the desktops. Statistics also show a fairly rapid decline in usage. Also look at other countries and what people have are smartphones, not desktops. Powerful Desktops with the full OS will not disappear anytime soon sure, but they pretty much will. People will probably be hooking up their phones to a monitor and using that, in fact people already do that.
I think a more pertinent threat is the death of the CRT. Sure, people can use LCD monitors and emulators, but for a ton of speedrunners or retro games, running without using a CRT isn't worth it. CRT's have a lifespan and aren't being manufactured anymore. I wouldn't be surprised if in the next 30 years it became much, much harder to find a CRT monitor. Here's an article I like that explains it all in a bit more detail: https://venturebeat.com/2017/03/03/what-the-death-of-the-crt-display-technology-means-for-classic-arcade-machines/ (I understand Twin Galaxies is mentioned a bunch, that doesn't make it a bad article).
I personally don't use a CRT, I use a bunch of upscaling equipment and a low latency monitor for future proofing, but the issue is that these are expensive tools. You need an OSSC or Framemeister (hundreds of dollars), usually with an HDMI capture card (at least another 100 dollars), plus a good monitor (hundreds of dollars), which is significantly more than the cost of capturing gameplay for most people.
The "death" of consoles isn’t as big of an issue but it’s still an issue. I personally disagree about video game preservation. At least for the more popular consoles like the SNES, it’s hard to find a game with a non-working ROM for all the regions it was released in unless you go really, really obscure. There are tools such as flash carts and emulators that will allow us to keep playing these. And while they act like emulators, there are tools being manufactured like the retron 5 which play retro games. I think there will be enough demand for clone consoles even as time goes on, just because it isn’t as significant of an investment as making CRTs.
I think what is going to happen far in the future from these two issues is that 1) people are going to be playing classic games less, since retro in 2080 will be games from 2040, and 2) if they do it’ll just be more accepted to use emulators. In 50 years the SNES and other emulators will have to be essentially perfected, right?
@theripper999 I mean the vast majority of people mostly use technology to browse Facebook and watch Netflix, so yeah if you look at it from a very broad perspective it might look like PC's are going away, but if you want to actually do something (like writing a 50 page report, creating digital art, writing code, playing a game with more than 2 buttons, etc), then a tiny touchscreen interface is going to be horribly inadequate.
@Picante"“It’s just not gonna feel as nostalgic,” Ware tells GamesBeat when we asked him about the problems with the modern display technology. “The pixels will be sharper on an LCD, but they may not be 100 percent accurate. Colors won’t be quite as vibrant.” Additionally, Ware explained that the refresh rate on an LCD may not play well with an old game’s code that is expecting a much more responsive CRT monitor. It could cause unsightly screen tearing that looks like one half of the screen is occasionally redrawing before the other."
There are a lot of very good TVs and monitors out now with super fast refresh rates and a huge range of colors. No tearing and super vibrant colors. Old classic games have never looked better. Get a cheap knockoff LCD I could see some issues though. Getting that old nasty CRT look though might require some finagling and filters of some kind.
"Well at least in the US where I live almost everyone I know has stopped using the desktops. Statistics also show a fairly rapid decline in usage."
I'm sure that's partially due to smartphones taking off, as implied, but also in large part due to laptops reaching parity with the average desktop, with the added benefit of portability. When upgrading a computer, that's a real tangible benefit and current laptops exceed the desktops of yesteryear. At least for me, I see a few desktops around homes and those that have them often have a laptop as well. And a good laptop these days can run a PS2 emulator fairly well, and this is only going to get easier with further technological advances.
@theripper999 I think you are focusing on the wrong part of the article. I mainly linked it since it talks about the decline in manufacturers of CRTs and what that means about the supply.
I don't care about a lack of CRTs because games wont look nostalgic. I care about them because 1) a ton of speedrunners find any form of input or display lag unacceptable and would much rather play on a CRT because of this, and 2) most monitors don't have a spot for composite or other outdated video inputs (besides VGA), which requires console owners to either buy fancy upscaling equipment or heavily modify their consoles for HDMI out if they want to be able to still be competitive using their consoles off of a CRT, which is a legitimate issue. Newer TVs are not being made with composite inputs either, and most HDTVs have pretty bad display lag (think 2+ frames), with cheap upscalers adding significantly more lag.
@Picante Yes, bad tvs/monitor and such do have large millisecond lag. There is a definite drive for newer technologies to be more responsive. In the past year high refresh and response rates of tvs/monitors alone becoming more affordable is amazing. Down the road I would not worry about it too much. Right now you can buy super fast response time products with 1 ms like below. Not that you probably would even notice a 5 ms or a 10 ms response time montitor/tv.
The lack of support for older inputs does suck though. I am not even sure how i would plug up my NES now. I would also have to check if any converters don't add lag too much themselves.