In the short term backwards compatibility is something developers don't want to do as it is thought it hinders and it cloggs up the performance and progression if the new. But is that so? Perhaps it is. It should not have to be.

In the long run lack of backwards compatibility will make older games less accessible or even lost to us. We are now at a point in time where some systems are showing where all systems are invariably heading - death. Just look at the Sega Gamegear with their shot screens and soundless gameplay due to rotten capacitors. There are more examples of systems dying due to cut corners or hardware / design failures. If games remain on these proprietary systems/formats and these formats die due to hardware failure or sheer old age and TVs not supporting the signals the old RF modulators are putting out. Thus these old games are rapidly becoming more inaccessible. Hanging on to the old systems or putting it in a rubbermaid container just isn't enough. I wish it would but not everything is built like a brick...

If video games are a true cultural art form perhaps they should be platform agnostic or made accessible on future platforms. Perhaps this is where emulation comes in? Or live in the here and now and let things slip into oblivian... Hey wasn't that some game I used to play?

Hmm I forgot

Brainfarthing here ;)