With the rising cost of AAA games meaning that less of them exist and the ones that do are often broken or disappointing plus the myriad of indies that would run on a £200 netbook, consoles are loosing their appeal. The games you buy a console for are running dry, evident by the rampant re-mastering which can only be justified if there is a significant upgrade in performance or resolution. In stark contrast to PC where the big and small, the technically powerful and incredibly simple, everything from DOS to Windows 10.

Backwards compatibility in something they (especially Microsoft) should have focused on from the start. Lets think about the benefits of the added cost and development time it would cause.

• Allow 360/PS3 owners to feel safe about transferring over to the new generation, creating a much, much larger install base much quicker
• Allow those without much money to sell their old console in order to buy the new one, safe in the knowledge that most of their old favorites will still be playable.
• Make it less annoying for those of us who want to be able to play the odd Xbox 360/PS3 exclusive without keeping those beasts hogging an HDMI input or having to get them out and plug them in.
• Allow the playing of arcade games that have no right not to run on the newest hardware
• Come across are very customer friendly, allowing purchased content to be playable still, improving the standing of the brand (something that would have helped Xbox)
• Extending the marketing synergy that describes these brands as THE place to get all Xbox or Playstation media
• Drastically increase your library of games and continue to milk digital sales (something steam has had great success with), great for devs and publishers.
• Allow the potential transfer of save game data in story focused games like The Witcher and Telltale's The Walking Dead

It really does seem strange that in an age where everything has to be cohesive, accessible and instant (Netflix, Amazon Prime, Spotify) the new consoles decided to scrap the momentum they had gained in favor of taking less of a loss on hardware out of the gate. I think they made the wrong decision, the average player isn't going to understand why his well worn copy of modern warfare won't work on the NEWER consoles, it just has to happen. I think the consoles should have been built with backwards compatibility in mind, even if it meant releasing later, scrapping Kinect or having slightly less powerful hardware. Just imagine signing into your Xbone to have all your old content downloading in the background for playing at your convenience. it's more important that these consoles just WORK and provide a comprehensive, instantaneous experience than it is that they run at 1080p and render dynamic hair physics in real-time or whatever. These consoles should have been all in one boxes, the definitive version of themselves, an all in one experience that's the last one you think you'll have to buy.

Sony's ahead of it's time Playstation Now service seems defunct already, although apparently PS1 and PS2 emulation is in the works. Though I doubt anyone will ever get PS3 games to run well on the drastically different PS4 architecture. Especially after seeing how hard it was to even just remaster The Last of Us for PS4. If Sony dumps it's PS3 exclusives onto PS4 in remastered form along with older emulation which could significantly soften the blow, especially if they offer discounts for those who owned the PS3 versions of said games although that seems unlikely. At least progress is being made in the direction of modern media platforms. We can at last all play Mass Effect of our Xbox Ones!