PlayStation has created a new ‘game preservation’ team, according to a new employee.
Garrett Fredleywho had previously worked as a civil engineer for the Canadian mobile developer Kabam, has now joined PlayStation as a senior civil engineer.
Fredley celebrated his new appointment and posted a message on his Twitter and LinkedIn pages, in which he expressed his enthusiasm for joining the new ‘conservation team’.
“Today is my first day as a senior construction engineer for PlayStation, working as one of their first hires for the newly created Preservation team,” Fredley wrote.
“Game preservation was my first career passion. It was my first foray into the world of software engineering / developers and into a world that so many are not aware of. I was just a novice at the time, contributing in every way I could, regardless of my inexperience. Now I’m back to it, no longer the novice I once was.
“Thank you [global head of QA] Mike Bishop and the team for bringing me on this adventure. Let’s go and make sure that the history of our industry is not forgotten. “
Fredley had worked for EA between 2016 and 2019, where he “exclusively led the conservation efforts for the FIFA franchise, resulting in the complete filing of several titles”.
It is not yet clear what his new role will entail, or exactly what the goals of this new ‘game preservation team’ will be.
Last month, Sony announced that it would be bringing classic games to the PS5 via its new PS Plus Premium subscription.
Launched at $ 17.99 / £ 13.49 a month, subscribers will enjoy benefits including access to 340 games from the original PlayStation, PS2, PS3 and PSP generations.
But while the majority of these games will be available for download and play on PS5 via emulation, Sony confirmed that PS3 games would only be playable via cloud streaming.
Sony has recently been criticized for making decisions that are said to be detrimental to game preservation.
Last year, it confirmed it would close digital PS3, Vita and PSP stores in the summer of 2021, news that was met with widespread setbacks due to the number of digital games that would no longer be available.
The platform holder made a partial U-turn the following month, with SIE President Jim Ryan saying it had realized it had made “the wrong decision” in planning to close the stores.
The PS3 and Vita stores were kept open until further notice, but the PSP store was closed as planned on July 2, 2021, which means that around 35 PSP games that are only digital can now no longer be purchased anywhere in any form .