Recently I saw an editorial by G4TV’s Adam Sessler where he talked about backwards compatibility and the PS3 Slim’s lack of it. He gets into the reasoning behind their decision and I have to agree with him on it. Most games I believe don’t spend their time replaying old games. From a nostalgic viewpoint though, there is a market for it. I have to admit, when Wolfenstein 3-D was released on the Xbox Live Arcade, I immediately purchased it and spent a few hours playing it. I think I made it through the second of six episodes before I was satisfied and put the game down. I haven’t picked it up again since then, but I’m sure sometime in the future I probably will.
With that said, I still think there’s a market for a few games that could be re-released again as digital downloads. The first that comes to mind is the first two games of the Halo franchise. Halo: Combat Evolved and Halo 2 were both released on the original Xbox, with only Halo 2 being Xbox Live capable. These two games were the driving force behind the success of Microsoft’s new gaming console. For me, they were the only reason I purchased an Xbox and sold my PS2. Even today, Halo 2 is still the most played game Original Xbox game on Xbox Live.
The reason these games are so enduring is really due to just a part of the game though — the multiplayer part. Gamers like playing games against each other. People aren’t playing Halo 2 still for it’s single player campaign. They’re playing it online against other gamers. The biggest downside to these games right now is their lack of compatibility with the current Xbox Live architecture. Some even argue that Halo 2 is the sole reason why the friends list on Xbox Live still has the 100 person maximum.
I would love to see Microsoft pay to have developers go back and rework the original Halo: Combat Evolved and Halo 2 and re-release these games on the Xbox Live Arcade. They wouldn’t even have to bother with the single player campaign but could focus solely on the multiplayer parts of the game. These are just two games that would sell like crazy simply for the nostalgia factor.
Cross posted at CodeMonkey’s Foobar