Re: seems like only the popular games are removed

Yeah but the game companies aren't making money from used games either. That's why an all digital future sucks if they are the only providers. One, they get to pick which titles to preserve, two, the price is usually too high, three, you don't even get to own it, four, you need to keep paying every year to play them, five, you can't trade the game in at a store or buy used games at a store or trade with your friends, six, some game companies no longer exist and therefore the games they make will be lost to time, seven, altered versions of those games for whatever reason be it censorship or balancing the gameplay more by eliminating oldschool cheats or broken fighting mechanics, you get what i mean. If these companies could, they would eliminate used game stores but they don't have to because those older games and consoles are wearing out over time and the only copies available are going up and up in prices on ebay which also increases the value of the IP. It somehow works out for the companies because then the players start demanding the games more and the companies can set whatever price and choose to put the game on a service. Top that off, we need roms and ISOs on these sites for modding and translating purposes. There's so many good hacks out there that removing the roms that you need to patch would only make them harder to play. It hurts the fanbase but not the companies. They treat the rom hacking community like Chinese bootleggers.

true, it seems they just hate data preservation. besides, it seems to me like that's why consoles only get added here when they're 2 generations old