PlayStation Is Finally Taking Steps To Preserve Classic Games

As old as it may make us feel, video games have been around long enough now that they need archiving and preserving. If you’re a PlayStation fan, the overhauled PlayStation Plus’ access to PS1 and PS2 titles may be an incredibly exciting prospect, but it simply highlights that unless you’ve got quite the enviable physical collection of first and second gen titles, they’ve been relatively hard to access up until now.

The announcement of the overhauled PlayStation Plus gave us an inkling that PlayStation was taking more of an interest in its legacy titles, but now we have confirmation that the company is undeniably looking into preserving its extensive archive of games.

If you fancy a trip down memory lane, take a look at Grand Theft Auto V's new-gen PlayStation 5 graphics compared to its PlayStation 3 counterpart.

According to a post on LinkedIn, PlayStation have hired Garrett Fredley in the position of senior build engineer. Talking about his new position, Fredley confirmed that he would be working in a team focused on game preservation within the company.

In the post, Fredley wrote, “Today is my first day as a Senior Build Engineer for PlayStation, working as one of their initial hires for the newly created Preservation team! Game Preservation was my first career passion. It was my first foray into the world of Software Engineering / Dev Ops, and into a world that so many are unaware of.”

He went on to explain, “I was just a novice back then, contributing any way I could regardless of my inexperience. Now, I'm back to it, no longer the novice I once was. Thank you Mike Bishop and the team for bringing me on board for this adventure. Let's go and ensure our industry's history isn't forgotten.”

It’s not yet known what this “preservation” will look like in practice. Outside of building a general archive, it could allow for easier emulations of previous consoles and titles. Fredley previously worked at Electronic Arts on “the preservation efforts for the FIFA franchise, resulting in the complete archival of multiple titles.” 

You’d expect Fredley’s role to somehow tie in to the availability of PS1 and PS2 era games on the new PlayStation Plus. Perhaps as PlayStation archives titles, more options will become available on PlayStation Plus. Simply as a fan of video games though, it’s good to know the industry’s heritage is being preserved.