we all know that apple's OS evolves constantly, but the apps and games by devs and publishers dont as much. This means that eventually, games become unplayable and useless when the OS mkaes these games incompatible. The only way these apps survive is if the devs/publishers spend some money to pay for their programmers to adjust the game to be compatible. Now even if a game sold well before, but is getting less revenue coz it's an old title or everyone almost has it already, there wouldnt be enough budget to upgrade the compatibility and eventually the game becomes unplayable. I was thinking maybe apple can implement what windows does with older programs, where it determines the best OS that can run the titles and run it with those settings. I think, if apple does this, the OS will significantly increase in size. Would it be possible for Apple to implement this? Or would it be possible for a jailbreak tweak to allow compatibility to these older games? Your thoughts?
It would be possible but it would be pointless, time consuming and will introduce old and new bugs. Apple can't keep around APIs forever if some are to be deprecated for a better one. If an app hasn't been updated for 2 years or more, the dev/publisher probabaly doesn't care anymore since it's not making them that much money and Apple don't want to spend time and resources for those kind of things. It seems to be most of the big developers/publishers don't seem to have any future compatibility but it depends on the scale of the app. Some apps work fine though as I still have an app which isn't retina or iPhone 5 resolution supported but it still works on iOS 8.1.3 on iPhone 6.
I get this guys point though, 2 games which have fell under are Black ops zombies & THPS 2, I'm not saying implement a "Run in iOS 4 Compatibility Mode" but something needs to be done about these old apps. Apple should contact the developer with a notice of removal if the app hasn't been updated in X amount of time.
Thanks for the inputs guys. Im actually thinking in the line of "we have emulators for classics." Maybe eventually we can get older apps to run on an "old-iOS-version emulator," which could translate into being an app, which can make it playable on future iOS versions. If i can play nes games at this day and age, surely i would want to play something that's only a few years old. And if its possible to re-live these classics, maybe the answer to this isnt too far back.
It would be nice. As someone very interested in historical preservation of gaming in general and iOS in particular of late, it sometimes feels frustrating how ephemeral it's all treated. The hardware manufacturers, the software companies, and even a lot of players often see entire games like a piece of fruit that goes rotten after a few days. From a business perspective, I understand it. There's not a lot of money in it on the whole. But I wish the medium of games could get to a point where it could afford to be about more than money. Right now, those with the least (indies) seem to be doing a better job than those with the most. And our best historical archiving is being done by pirates. I hope I live to see a day where things get better.
Mentioned this before, i can see it happening for sure Look at the consoles in the late 70's being preserved with emulation, 80's computers, 90's computers and consoles and 00's console games. Even lots of old DOS games etc and MAME. Of course i dont know how they'll do it but i can imagine something in the future so we can play lots of these old games. Look at every other computer/console of the last 30 years, they're practically all playable via emulation. Something will get sorted!
It's really annoying more than anything when an app I've paid a bit of money for still works but aspects of it are broken. SF4 Volt and Capcom Arcade don't work via Bluetooth on iOS 8 and that's actually a fairly important feature of them. I like the idea of a compatibility mode or even something like an iOS "virtual machine" that emulates an older version of iOS. I imagine it would have to be a jailbreak app but it would be handy for iOS gamers in particular.
