True.
And even if you back up the disks or DL new images from the many online libraries, it can be a problem to acquire new physical floppies. 3.5" is walking in the footsteps of 5 1/4" in this regard. Can't remember when I last bought a new floppy. It's a dead medium.
But there are some solutions from companies like induvidual computer (thinking of their C64 products with memory cards etc).
And then there are emulators of course.
I agree. Floppies slowly dying out. You can still buy them but I decided it wasn't worth the hassle any more. thats why I bought the HxC and did away with a physical drive. Same with the HDD it was just easier to work with a CF HDD then mess around with a clunky physical drive. To be honest the last few games I bought were defective and I ended up getting more use out of the manual than the disk.
it's not just magnetic mediums that are dying out. As reliable as cartridges are they too are dying out. All it takes is for some moisture to get in, for corded contacts or even a electrical fault in the system (My snes popped it's pico fuse ruining a copy of Desert strike) and the cart is gone. CD's and DVD's can only need one scratch and they are dead too.
Thats why I thankful for preservation projects that work to maintain healthy images of stuff.
I think there is a lot of "politics" (or "business"/"sponsorship" if you like) involved. There are several cases where Xbox "mysteriously" got a lot higher priority at some game publishers.
GTA 4 is a prime example; when this much anticipated new version of the once *PS only* series of games was first announced, it was suddenly rumored that it wouldn't be released for PS3 at all, but in reality it *was* released, but with a few months delay.
Why, you ask?
Because of a $50,000,000 MS deal?
Not realistic, some might say. Well, look at the Commercial Success it had, setting at least two new world records in this regard (the best single day sales, and the best 7 days sales).
The tactical/strategic benefit MS/Xbox got from this single (and rather cheap) $50 million deal is probably enormous.
I agree. There is obviously a lot of politics going on with these things. I read Games TM and the amount of stuff that you read is shocking about what goes on in the games industry. in the end it's the consumer that gets stiffed.
On a lighter note I have been enjoying Perihelion. I found a guide that contained all the glyph codes for the spells in the game. I have also been enjoying a much smoother gameplay experience with Frontier Elite II with the 1200. So much space and so little time to pirate.