PlayStation has a new ‘game preservation team’ but what does that mean?

A big part of Sony’s new PlayStation Plus Premium proposition is access to over 300 retro games from the near 30 year console archive, so it stands to reason the company would want to look after those classics and maximise their value.

Indeed, it seems the company has gone to the trouble of creating a dedicated team to do just that. A new hire says he’s one of the first for a “preservation team.”

The area of game preservation essentially means keeping the titles in tip-top shape and available for players to acquire digitally and legally, even if their generations have long passed. Considering Sony’s heavily-criticised efforts to shut down stores in recent years, it’s currently an area where the company is lacking.

Which this means for Sony’s library remains to be seen, but Sony has promised 340 games initially from the PS1, PS2, PS3 and PSP generations and there’s likely to be some restoration work to make those play well on the PS5 via emulation. Sony could also look to sell those games individually via a store front to non-PS Plus subscribers in the future.

Today is my first day as a Senior Build Engineer at @PlayStation, working as one of their initial hires for the newly created Preservation team!

Game Preservation was my first career passion, so I'm ecstatic that I get to go back to those roots 😊

— Garrett Fredley (@SomeCronzaGuy) April 25, 2022

So apparently I broke the internet announcing my work with Playstation

For anyone asking what Game Preservation is / what I do, I did a GDC talk a few years ago on the subject when I worked at EA. My work is similar, although larger in scopehttps://t.co/mWNW5u8uXF

— Garrett Fredley (@SomeCronzaGuy) April 26, 2022

There are currently problems with bringing PS3 games to the new-generation console, and right now they’ll only be available via streaming. Work could be done to make these available to download.

The new senior build engineer Garrett Fredley posted news of his new position to both Twitter and LinkedIn. In posts spied by VGC, he wrote: “Today is my first day as a senior build engineer for PlayStation, working as one of their initial hires for the newly created Preservation team.”

“Game preservation was my first career passion. It was my first foray into the world of software engineering / dev ops, and into a world that so many are unaware of. I was just a novice back then, contributing any way I could regardless of my inexperience. Now, I’m back to it, no longer the novice I once was.”