Yep. Flawed Design on their end. *is giving Aster a belly rub*

Unfortunately true, though unfinished games due to deadlines have surfaced long before this. KOTOR 2 and Sonic '06 come to mind

Indeed. I'm not saying patches are a bad thing. More so only when developers use them as an excuse to release games early, which feels all too common with how much more often games seem to be released unfinished nowadays than they used to. It's pretty much going to result in an entire generation of games eventually being utter trash.

I guess they don't care all that much about preservation. Shame but truth. ^_^'

Oh, that's easy. We've already been years into this issue, but the ultimate effect is...for the most...yet to hit us hard.

See, if a new generation wants to play these retro games when the patches aren't available...they simply can't. At least, not in the original form. Sad truth is that modern games are so dependent on the internet, if you literally don't already have the whole code localized, and you get your hands on a PS4 disk in the era of "the future" when that server is dust, that disk is probably going to contain so little, there's literally no game there to begin with.

I've got a PS3 crammed down with a ton of games. All patched up and completely downloaded. Yet...when Sony shuts down those servers and the CMOS goes bad...those are rigged to die. The current gen consoles are even worse. Already proven, when the server's gone, those won't even run disks.

So, when the future generation wants a taste of retro gaming, it's pretty much PS2 and older. Not sure on the MicroSoft side. I hear that the original X-Box has built in components that will eat away at their circuit boards...even if in storage...unless the owners solder in new capacitors, RIGHT NOW!

So, for future generations, it's going to be piracy or remastered games on their current gen hardware...which I suspect will basically be rental service over the internet via some app.

Just a list of reasons why I don't play things that require internet connectivity.

I'm 'almost' done with modern gaming. Like many retro players seem to be, I'm not particularly interested in the bigger trends of today's games. Definitely haven't been building libraries like I used to. And this bit about consoles...be it outright or cloakingly....requiring internet with servers needed for most of the game and remote deactivation is just a direction I don't want to go. So, I'm hard pressed to even want to invest in a PS5/X-Box Series S/X. (Had to look that up.) One of those will really have to have something great. Heck. I might be swaying back to Nintendo since the days that...the PlayStation was released.

I haven't bought a Sony or Microsoft console since the PS3 and Xbox 360, since that was the last generation when I cared to have multiple consoles. I'm at a point in my life where one is plenty, especially since if there's a lack of new games for awhile, there's still hundreds of games I haven't yet played on the consoles I already have that I can look into instead. And I tend to prioritize Nintendo consoles because the games I tend to see for them are much more up my aisle with their less realistic graphics, and lack of first-person prominence. Not to mention Metroid and Pokemon, both of which are Nintendo franchises, are two of my three favorite video game franchises, so that alone makes me prioritize Nintendo's console if I'm only going to be investing in one.

The biggest issue for me is that while I'm getting older, and having less free time, games are getting longer, so oftentimes even if a game looks fun, I have to ask myself if I actually have the time to care. And while if I were a kid I'd love games that last 100+ hours, especially if it were the only new game I'd be getting for months like it used to be, but as a man in his mid 30s I don't want that. So as games become bigger and more advanced, I just find myself more and more playing older games instead.

It is a bit ironic that I have this X-Box...something or other...the high res one...for playing some Read Dead II. And I've hardly logged more then a couple hours onto it. But it does great for viewing YouTube/Twitch/movies. It was something that..at the time...I thought would become a 'gaming' diversion. But, nope. Put a lot more time into Yacht on Switch while waiting at the drive through line that moves like a snail. And the PS4 is for...Dreams. Again...lots of time that I don't give put into it. So, dust collector.

On Switch you can at least transfer patches over local wireless so that system will be impossible to not have patches work with it especially if they all get archived and can be sent out like DS Pokemon Mystery Gifts. So that system is fine. But on PS4/XSX, yeah it can be a big issue: PS3 can be fine if they patch the CMOS battery to not kill the system when it dies, and I think you can update some stuff over USB (only the system stuff tho iirc), but PS4 onwards are gonna be hell since they're hyper encrypted and a lot of people update the gold version of the game before launch, leaving companies like Limited Run and Strictly Limited to focus on just putting full-patched discs out (and even then that's not always perfect if the dev decides to add something to it after, like Blaster Master Zero and the JP Voice acting)