11 gaming trends the industry can lose or embrace in 2018

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A collage of Xbox game pass games
Credit: Xbox Game Pass /

Embrace: Backwards compatibility as a focus moving forward

I do love a good high definition remaster as much as the next guy. The idea of the Super NES Classic is also rather rad for collectors, but it is beyond time for publishers, where possible, to start listing old titles as available for play.

Each manufacturer has positioned their hardware to be long-lasting. Bethesda support there has shown that even a big budget AAA title on PC and other consoles can go down to the Nintendo Switch and run even if scaled down. As such, it is about time we all got together and had a little kumbaya in the name of preserving access to much of this great tradition where possible.

It is inevitable games like Rock Band or Guitar Hero will become relics because the music licensing for those games make them cost a fortune to continue to license well beyond their peak years. It happens even in movies where re-releasing the movie means re-paying licensing fees and in some cases, it is not worth it consistently.

The gaming industry has all of the ideas in place to sustain these things with network subscription models, in-game purchases to keep a fandom engaged, etc. The Xbox Game Pass looks like it will become the closest to achieving this the fastest, which is truly a shame as no infrastructure to really accomplish this at Microsoft even existed prior to 2015 and now they have the most robust offering of a service that offers older and newer titles.

Sony and Nintendo both have or had offerings that were exciting for players and they have since had to rebuild them for their new consoles to become as robust again. Here’s hope they take 2018 as a real opportunity to do so while Microsoft continues to expand their own.

Besides, it is not like we need EVERY game ever on these platforms. Which leads me to …