[game_preservation] Generations standards?

[Andrew Armstrong]

On 16/04/2010 19:54, Martin Goldberg wrote:

> When people stopped using it would be, but save for the more obscure

> consoles, actual company support shouldn't be hard.  Most of that was

> usually announced.

Yeah, the news should contain most details of that - I'm interested in 
seeing both when warranty repairs end (the usual "end of life" as it 
were, although some home computers had repair parts continually sold 
after I guess if stock was left, and some systems were merely upgraded 
and so forth) and the, likely lesser announced, last chance to get stuff 
fixed date. There's also, since it existed, internet support end dates - 
like when the systems get their official services turned off (such as 
most recently Xbox Live for the original Xbox), which is something to 
take into account. Then there are manufacturing dates - possibly harder 
to track (not usually in any PR stuff) but interesting to note the dates 
when things were created, the revisions, and therefore determine when 
the last ones were produced so they then ran on warehouse stock only. 
Nuances upon nuances here! Interesting :) especially for some services 
that are country-specific.

(All this is assuming we of course agree on what can be defined as 
separate consoles, revisions, and so forth actually are, I know this is 
up for debate in some cases!).

Apart from that - nothing to add in reply apart from I'd be onboard 
sorting some of this kind of info - it is muddled, you're right - even 
the use of "era" versus "generation" - although yeah, it is typically 
older more broader lengths of time are "eras" and "generations" to 
typically describe more recent and clearly defined ones (now there are 
so few competitors), and then bringing in any kind of marketing is just 
asking for trouble. Need to be a bit more objective then the PR people I 
think :)

Is this something people on this list want to happen in the SIG? We've 
not really been active doing much apart from the Memorials this year, 
and while we can write another white paper I guess, this would be 
something everyone can contribute easily if only by looking over the 
info and fact checking. No doubt the archives and museums on here could 
provide a lot from their own archives too if they had time to 
corroborate facts or provide evidence, especially if it is in a 
non-English speaking location (since I can't exactly read anything else, 
makes it hard to even search the web in other languages for info, and 
Martin is right a world perspective is needed and a lot of it was world 
based).

Andrew