Emulation is a solution to gaming’s education problem, according to Xbox boss Phil Spencer, who spoke out in favor of the practice.<\/b>
\nLike any creative medium, video game developers rely on a certain amount of riffing on other people\u2019s ideas. But in order to evolve an existing concept, people need ways to easily access older works. That is something that is more challenging in video games due to the nature of software and hardware compatibility. And Xbox boss Phil Spencer wants the industry to embrace emulation to solve that problem. \u201cMy hope \u2014 and I think I have to present it that way as of now \u2014 is as an industry we\u2019d work on legal emulation that allowed modern hardware to run any (within reason) older executable allowing someone to play any game,\u201d Spencer wrote in a message to Axios. This is something that Microsoft\u2019s gaming division is already doing with its software. The company\u2019s latest gaming hardware, the Xbox Series X\/S, can run many games originally released for Xbox 360 and the original Xbox. That is all thanks to software emulation that Microsoft built internally. According to Spencer, emulation is valuable because it makes more of the history of gaming available to individuals. And that is crucial for creating something akin to a modern public library for gaming software. \u201cI think we can learn from the history of how we got here through the creative,\u201d Spencer said. \u201cI love it in music. And I love it in movies and TV, and there\u2019s positive reasons for gaming to want to follow.\u201d The most obvious positive reason is for educational purposes. Empowering a student to easily access older games to learn design and mechanical lessons could lead to better games in the future. And that benefits everyone. Emulation, of course, is already legal in most cases. The complications come from distributing copyrighted software, which enjoy lengthy legal protections.<\/p>\n