Backward-compatible video game standard

Re “Game plan: Learn from Hollywood,” Opinion, May 9

If Nintendo President Satoru Iwata wants to take a lesson from Hollywood, try this one: I have a VHS machine from 1990 that still plays any tape manufactured by any studio. I have a DVD player from 1998 that still plays any DVD manufactured by any studio. When I get a new machine, I don’t have to throw away all my older tapes and DVDs.

Meanwhile, my Nintendo video game consoles from those years will only play games made by Nintendo for those specific machines, and Iwata’s company no longer makes games for them. And when they break, they can’t be replaced. Today, those machines are nothing more than doorstops, and the game cartridges are landfill fodder.

Until there is a single backward-compatible game standard, video games will never have the lasting mass appeal of movies or TV.

BOB GALE

Pacific Palisades