PlayStation has a preservation team to ensure "history isn’t forgotten" [updated]

Update:

The PlayStation game preservation project was indirectly announced by a new senior build engineer earlier. Now it has been reigned in as he clarified his role in the potential PS1, PS2, PS3, and PSP emulation rumours that started circulating.

As noted by Garrett Fredley, the new hire for the game preservation project at Sony, his role is not a forward-facing one. This will be a project abouttaking old games and the way in which they were created and then ensuring safe archival. This would allow companies to restore games in the future, but that is not Fredley's role. The GDC talk gives a technical overview of the process, one that I am too dumb to comprehend.

His "larger in scope" role for the PlayStation side sounds like it will just be archival for now, so Fredley won't be trying to get Resistance 1, 2, and 3 running on our PS5's just yet — something Sony is surely channelling all of its mighty power and many billions of wealth into doing in the future.

What do you think? Will Sony look to get these games out of the cabinet at some point? Let us know in the comments!

Original Story:
Sony has set up a preservation team for PlayStation titles, according to a recently hired senior build engineer on the project.

Garrett Fredley, a former game preservationist for EA and build engineer for Kabam, has claimed he has been hired to be a part of a "newly created preservation team" (as spotted by VGC). Game preservation has long been an issue on PlayStation, particularly regarding PlayStation Vita and PS3 games after Sony tried to close the online stores for both consoles. In addition, the PS3's unique CELL architecture has made it tricky to emulate games for preservation without source code.

Over on LinkedIn Fredley expanded on what the team will be doing. "Game preservation was my first career passion," he says. "It was my first foray into the world of software engineering/dev ops, and into a world that so many are unaware of. [...] Let's go and ensure our industry's history isn't forgotten!"

Resistance 3, please

No further details have been given about what games this team will preserve, or what the eventual consumer-facing result will look like. The first point of reference, though, will be the new PlayStation Plus Premium tier that currently offers PS1, PS2, PS3, and PSP games — but PS3 games can only be streamed. It is possible this is an effort to save those games more permanently than on the PS3 hardware that currently clogs up server farms, so players can actually enjoy those experiences natively.

What do you think of this news? Any speculation on the target for the new preservation team? Let us know in the comments!

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Written by Kes Eylers-Stephenson

Editor Kes is our resident expert in PlayStation and other gaming news. He writes about PS5 exclusives like The Last of Us and Horizon, PS Plus news, and his favorite games — The Witcher, Assassin’s Creed, and God of War — before an evening swim.