I had the whole thing typed up and lost it to a system error. Sorry!
Will return to normal schedule next week!

PSP Games are the same way, for the most part (Valkyria Chronicles 2). And then there are the PSP games that are not on the store at all (Crisis Core!). These significant absences were one of the major reasons for the failure of the PSP-Go, so one wonders how they failed to learn the lesson there.

It’s funny that you should mention Torchlight. I was thinking about that game this evening. Remember how the Mac version was originally scheduled for a day & date release with the PC version? Here we are some two years later and the Mac version has not yet been completed. Looks increasingly like vapourware, which is a pity: my wife bought me a Steam copy (Windows) so that I would have the Mac version when it was released. Seems unlikely at this point!

Unrelated to that, I am very much on board with the ps1 classics on vita thing you mentioned on twitter. That would be outstanding.

1) I expect to play Console games again later. Much later, and many times. I cannot tell you how many times I have played Mega Man 2, Castlevania, or Final Fantasy VII after their systems were made obsolete.

2) I do not expect to play PC games again after they are superseded by another game. After UT2004 came out, we didn’t play UT99 anymore. After TF2 came out, I didn’t play UT2004 anymore. After Borderlands 2 came out, I didn’t (really) play TF2 anymore. After Starcraft II, I didn’t play Starcraft I. After Warcraft III, I didn’t play Warcraft II. Etc.

3) Part of this has to do with the kinds of games that I buy. As a rule, I buy things on consoles if I can, unless they are first-person shooters, RTS games, or MMOs. None of these genres ages well technologically. Moreover, they are all multiplayer-oriented, and the playerbase is typically strongest on the games for which there is current support and development. Trying to find operating UT99 servers would be difficult. Trying to find POPULATED servers would be very unlikely. This is why old games with core audiences usually have to do these things themselves (I’m thinking of XvT here).

4) Another part of this is that my PC games historically had problems working on later operating systems–the farther from the launch version of an OS, the less likelihood that it would work. This was pretty troublesome on PCs but it is even worse on Macs, where the old software was all Power PC stuff that simply *cannot* be made to function under current (and recent) versions of Mac OS since Rosetta support was removed entirely. Now, I *cannot* play the original Starcraft without installing Windows, where it will run (but with a host of problems). Hence, it is easier just to play SC2. And, as above, there are actually loads of people playing SC2.

5) Console support for downloadable titles has been historically terrible (for the short history that we’ve had). Nintendo pulled the plug on its Wii and DS support this month–that’s like, what, eight years of service? I have a LOT of games that are more than eight years old and to which I still desire access. Microsoft pulled the plug on its Xbox service and upset people; it’ll do the same with the 360. Only Sony has kept stuff ticking over. I hope they always do, but it’ll take a long time until I have that confidence because the standard for the console industry hasn’t been very good.

6) On the PC, Steam has been spectacular. Everything is available. Only in rare, exceptional circumstances are things taken down from the Steam store. Valve has put themselves in a position where people trust them to keep stuff available.

So I suppose if I reductively simplify this, the three differentiating factors are: Replayability, Persistence, and Support.

Oh, and you can set the voice of the sword to come through the speakers on the controller. Very surreal.