We’ve known for a good while now that Sony has established a team within PlayStation that’s specifically concerned with preservation.
Spearheaded by Garrett Fredley (Senior Build Engineer, IP Preservation), the team’s work is predominantly about archiving PlayStation’s historical games and related materials.
The idea is that doing so allows for much easier access to source code, documentation, assets, or whatever might be needed, and even lays some of the groundwork for potential re-releases.
Fans were reminded of this work today, when Fredley shared the below post:
“PlayStation’s preservation journey is on its way, and we’re not looking to stop anytime soon,” he writes. “Being able to share our vision, work, hopes and dreams with Sony leadership was a special moment for our team, and I’m excited to see where we go from here.”
With a presentation all about preserving Sony’s wealth of video game IPs, it seems the company’s higher-ups have been briefed on the work his team is doing.
It’s not anything we didn’t already know, but it’s at least encouraging to know that these preservation efforts haven’t fallen by the wayside.
Fans will no doubt be excited to see several legacy franchises on the slide in the above image; it features Sly Cooper, Ape Escape, WipEout, Killzone, and more.
This isn’t some sort of promise that these series will be returning, but the hope is that the hard work being put into this archiving and organising of historic materials may make those comebacks that bit easier.
Fredley previously shared he and his team had successfully stored more than half a petabyte of data, and that figure will of course be much higher by now. A petabyte is 1,000 terabytes, by the way.
Anyway, it’s good to hear this work continues in the background; it’ll probably lead to some fun re-releases in future. We can cross our fingers, at least.
