A depressing thought for the gaming future.

So, I've been thinking a lot about backwards comp and downloads recently. I've had a ps4 for almost a year now, I love it, but it still really gets my goat that all my PSN dowloadables on my ps3 are stuck there, doing nothing. It makes me worry about the future. Will this happen again in 6 years or so? Will things like Warframe and Octodad just be boxed? What happens when services come to an end? I love video games, but I don't want to have to re buy everything every 5 years. I enjoy a HD remaster every now and then but not if it's for a game that's a year old (GTA 5 being the exception, because I never finished it first time around.) look at Capcom's Devil May Cry plans....sorry it just really bothers me. I enjoy playing old games, and it shouldn't get harder as games in general advance.

Ps. I realise, the answer to a lot of these issues is PC gaming. I know that. But I'm not very technical so it's a difficult bridge to cross.

Don't worry old chum. They'll find a way to remake, repackage and sell you the same game in the future lol.

Even with PC gaming there is a cutoff point where playing old games is just not really feasible; the hoops required to jump through to get some older games playing are considerable. Luckily, many fanbases and companies (such as GOG) will do the groundwork to make it easier.

@panelhopper: Yeah, if our accounts are linked between different consoles it would be easy for them to verify that we've already purchased them. They seem to do that for certain titles but the problem is that they haven't released most ps3 games on the ps4 store. Probably never will for a majority of them.

For instance, if you bought Flower on ps3 than you can download it for free on ps4 (provided you kept your same account). The problem is that they don't have any reason to get every single game that was available on ps3 onto the ps4 store so you're still leaving a massive amount of games behind. And if the bulk of their audiences have already purchased the game and are getting them for free than why would they want to put in the effort to transfer them to the new console? There's no monetary reason for them to do that and they don't give two shits about anything but money in the end.

It's complete bullshit but that's what happens. We'll keep seeing games coming from the ps3 to the ps4 (Journey is one that has already been announced) but at no point will we get everything we've already bought again. Plus they'll most likely "remaster" the games so that you actually do need to repay them to play on the new console.

Digital ecosystems man....they have you by the balls.

It is worth pointing out that the cell processor in the ps3 is a big barrier when transferring games to the new console so maybe the PS5 will have a similar architecture to the PS4 and it'll be a lot more friendly with transferring old games to your new console. But who's to say that they don't do something similar with the ps5 and make it difficult to make those transfers again?

By the balls.

All these DVD players not playing my VHS tapes is bullshit!

Yes the trend with droped backwardscompatable is the absolute worst trend of the this new generation. Gamecompanys simply dont care about old games unless they find away to resell them.

I'm not the most knowledgeable on the tech, but wouldn't the fact that current gen is using x86 architecture mean it would be much easier for backwards compatibility in the future compared to older consoles?

haven't heard this discussion before.

I'm gonna be so bummed out if I have no other avenue of playing El Shaddai due to this. That game has flaws but is a visual masterpiece in my opinion.

Come back to the past! It's great here!

GOG and fans generally use publicly available stuff like BitPatcher (for handling Windows 95/98 era DirectDraw) and nGlide (for games that required 3DFX cards) or DosBox, which anybody with a little time and effort can set up themselves if they own a copy of an old game and don't want to repurchase it on GOG. Modern CPU's, even 64 bit CPU's are fully backwards compatible with the IA-32 standard introduced in 1985, which itself is compatible with most 16-bit 8086 programs dating back to 1978. So PC's are generally backwards compatible on the hardware level, but stuff dependent on specific software like some 1994 version of QuickTime, Win32S runtime libraries and stuff like that take som effort to get working. But really, when we're talking pure MS-DOS software, most runs without any hoops needed in DosBox, some stuff even runs in the Windows NT/XP/7/8 command line.

Consoles are a different beast altogether.

@spraynardtatum: I couldn't have said it better myself

@alistercat: lol, I get what you mean, but at least when people replace their VHS tapes they are getting something that is of much higher visual quality, that is both cheaper and relatively more durable.

You're just now thinking about this?

@frostyryan: no, it's the kind of thought that cycles around my mind over and over, like a clown on a unicycle.

I'm real slow in buying current gen also. The PC route is good buy, but you don't get everything. Thus at the moment I am favoring my PS3 and PC, with the X-box 360 waiting for it's shot, maybe back to Halo HD like I am doing MGS.

Not to shill the PC but I feel it doesn't ditch me.

Yep.

Anyway, I'm not so much worried about games being tied to my account. I just want to be able to play some Sonic CD in 50 years somehow. As Jeff mentioned in the past, people will find a way.

We're still playing Nintendo and SNES games all these years later. Both physically and digitally.

I don't get this argument. Backwards compatibility has always been a hit or miss feature across the entire history of gaming, and games being digital only doesn't really change much. When you got your shiny new Super NES back in '91 it didn't play your NES games. But just as your NES was still there if you wanted to play those games, your PS3 didn't self destruct when you bought a PS4, nor will your PS4 disappear when you buy a PS5 in 6-8 years.

You bring up the digital aspect, but these systems have the functionality to play digital games offline as long you make sure your licenses are on the console. Having to bust out your old machines to play old games is nothing new. It would be nice if the new consoles play stuff from the old ones, but the fact is they don't. If you want to play your old games hold on to your old consoles, that's how it has always been.

I use to worry about things like that but then I realize you could say the same thing about physical games. What if my physical copied games get caught in a fire? What if my games get stolen? What if a giant grizzly bear walks into my house and eats my copy of fear effect on psx? Just go with the flow man and don't be too concerned about the future.

If that's your depressing thought about the future of games then you must be an optimist. There are more worrying things to think about.

My DVD player isn't backwards compatible with my VHS tapes.

Just sayin' its not like the physical world generally treats you much better in this regard.

Wii/GameCube & ps2/ps1 are the more the exception than the rule

Backwards compatibility was a privelage if you ask me.

or you could stop worrying so much. and hook up your ps3.

@panelhopper: why do you have to rebuy anything? The only case that would happen is if they close down the network services and remaster the same game on the new stuff. But then you'd just have to download them to your old console before the network closed. I see no reason why you'd have to rebuy stuff.

When I finally take my PS3 out of commission I'm gonna buy a bigger HDD (I have the 60gb) and download and update every game I digitally own, then box her up and put her away. When the time comes that I have my own place and want to build a mancave in the basement, the PS3 will be prepared and whether the service still exists or not won't matter.

The point a lot of people seem to be missing is that with our accounts being tied across systems it is easier than ever to allow games to transfer onto the next consoles. Wouldn't it be cool if your entire ps3 library transferred over to the ps4?

Cool, yes. Expected, no. It would be cool if my DVD's could become HD too.

The whole idea that backwards compatibility was "the way things were" is a bit of a fallacy. Its track record as being utilized in successive game hardware is spotty, at best. I always looked at it as something to enjoy while and when you have it, but to never expect it.

Personally, I'd rather see game consoles make huge leaps in technology from one generation to the next (even larger leaps than they have been making), and count on emulation and other software methods (or hardware revamps like the Retron, etc) to bring up the rear in terms of maintaining ways of playing older games.

So you know the answer to this is PC gaming and yet you refuse to learn how to game on a PC? Not being technical is not an excuse anymore, gaming on a pc is as simple as installing steam, hell even building a PC (which you don't have to do if you don't want to) is practically plug and play now. If this really worries you this much then take a couple hours and learn how simple it is to game on a PC.

@whitegreyblack: Yep, not counting handhelds, only four consoles had/have it: Wii (plays GCN games,) PS2 (plays PS1 games,) PS3 (some can play PS2 Games, all play PS1 games,) 360 (played some XBOX games.) As far as handhelds go, Nintendo's are the only one's that had/have it: GBA plays GBC and GB games, DS plays GBA, GBC, and GB games, 3DS plays DS games. All things considered, backwards compatibility for consoles only started with the PS2, and during the last generation was already pretty much eliminated on Sony systems.

@sgtsphynx: this is true, it is a relatively new and and shorted lived idea, I just had hope that it would be the future going forward, especailly for downloadable games, which what my OP was mainly about.

@sgtsphynx:

Pretty sure DS can't play GBC and GB games.

I dont really have this problem. I almost never go back to playing older games that I have played. The only exception are some online games that I might be interested in trying out
when expansions come out.

It's like trying to put petroleum in a diesel engine -- game aren't just files that run on magic, they're coded to use the hardware they're made for. And emulation isn't as simple as one console is twice as powerful so it should be able to run a game made for an old system. The architecture between consoles is just too different for true backwards compatibility sometimes. And who knows if x86 will be used in a decades time?

Go look at the emulation scene for the SEGA Saturn. It's a nightmare... that hardware is just too hard to replicate. So you either hold back hardware to run old stuff or push forward and accept the loses. And frankly I'd rather games just kept pushing forward...

Didn't Sony at some point say that only a very small percentage of people actually used that feature in early PS3's and thats why they cut it at some point? If you are one of those people it sucks that you don't have that feature any longer, but I guess I can understand that dedicating a lot of ressources to a feature not a lot of people care about is somewhat reasonable.

I think it would be nice if they found a way to give people that owned the original game a discount on HD-remakes and I honestly think that will happen at some point. Either MS or Sony will intruduce this at some point to get an advantage and the other company will follow. Sort of like on Steam you sometimes get a discount if you own another game of the same developer (Double Fine is pretty good with that).

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If the issue is PC games being forever backwards compatible I don't think you're being fair to the OP.

There are games from the early to mid 2000s that don't work without fan made patches. Anything before then feels like a crapshoot, sure you can generally get stuff to work but a lot of the time the hoops you have to jump through are a tedious bore. I can understand someone not wanting to bother with that shit.

I've had this problem with two games purchased from steam this year (bloodlines and DoW 2) the first one wouldn't work without a fan patch and the second had GFWL bullshit that made it unplayable until it was patched out later in the year.

My answer to the problem is hoard your shit. Set up your old stuff on a spare TV don't let that stuff get boxed up and eventually disposed of.

I'm not a hoarder and I either drop a game because I didn't love it or finish it and move on. I can count the number of games I go back to annually on a single hand, and I just use an emulator for them since I bought hard copies at some point in the past. As for people who play online games and have level and loot info tied to some server that will someday go offline, well I guess yer gonna lose everything one day. There's probably a lesson on life in there somewhere.

That's not really an apt comparison. Do you tie your DVD's to an account where it would be easily verifiable that you owned it?

Also there are avenues available where you actually can make your DVD's HD. Vudu lets you convert your DVD to an HD video for a small fee. Free services like Handbrake can upconvert to at least 720p. You can do that with DVDs.

EDIT: I'd also remind people that you can play your DVDs in your blu ray player.

This is one of the big reasons that I'm reluctant to invest in their system digitally. There's a lot of old playstation games that I want access to and I was sick of worrying about memory cards and disc read errors, and since they were cheap on psn I bought them that way. I felt like that would settle the issue, but it didn't, and I don't want to rebuy games every 6 years so now I'm tracking down physical copies while they're still reasonable.

On no, I'll have to plug in my PS3 in order to play the games I bought on PS3. It's almost like it was every console that existed before the Playstation 2.

How is keeping a hard drive around more difficult than keeping physical copies of games around? I say this as a collector with shelves overflowing. How is it easier to keep copies of Silent Hill, Symphony of the Night and Bushido Blade ready to go in your hot PSone than it is to just keep a PS3?

Physical copies of those three games run $120 in total. Digital versions would be less than $20.

A disc doesn't have moving parts that fail like a console or a hard drive.

This used to bother me but recently I've come to accept that if I really want to replay a game the chances are that you can either buy it for the original hardware, buy it for the new hardware as your being resold it or download and play it via some form of emulation. Sure there are exceptions to the rule (Ape Escape why can't I purchase you on PSN!) of re-purchasing on newer hardware, but the chances are that in one way or another you'll be able to obtain a playable copy of the game.

What bothers me now is what will happen to all of the "free" PS Plus games I've gotten on the PS3 when Sony finally pulls the plugs on the severs but look on the bright side, more and more games are being released each day (both new games and classics) the chances are that one of them will peak my interests.

I don't see how this is any different from having a closet full of old PS2 games in a closet somewhere. When you want to play them, hook up the system and play. Old games get old. It happens.

@spraynardtatum: No, they don't have moving parts, instead they have a thin layer of plastic protecting the data etched on an adhesive plastic on the opposite side. Scratching the plastic layer can prevent lasers from reading the data, and scratching the adhesive full on removes the data. This can happen from scratching, pressure or changes in temperature. Source: I used to work buying and selling 20+ year old games.

Did you just use the fact that consoles break down as a reason to keep an even older Playstation 1 around because you might lose the digital data from the Playstation 3? What if the Playstation 1 breaks down? How is console breakage a good reason to rely on physical media?

How much money will you spend throughout the years storing, maintaining and using these products compared to making a 5-6 dollar purchase on whatever system to play it when you want to? How many times will your massive box of older games be carried by movers, having never been opened, from house to house?

I think I got a little confused. I'm not saying it's easier to use old hardware, I'm saying the opposite and agreeing with you. I just don't think you should have to pay for games you already own now that we're to a point where it's really easy to verify purchases.

@pandabear: oh, I'm not saying software and hardware guys have it easy, far from it, I couldn't do what they do, I they probably do it under massive pressure. I just feel limited by the Sony digital ecosystem sometimes. To be honest, I kind feel bad about starting this thread, I get anxious sometimes, and it makes me melodramatic.

There is still work that needs to be done with the games though. You can't just move a file from the PS3 folder to the PS4 folder on a server and have that shit work. Bandwidth, electricity, upkeep and rnd costs money too. It's far from reasonable to think that the convenience of having all your purchases move over to the next platform should come for free. In fact, I'd go so far as to say it's ludicrous.

@amafi: I feel like that falls more under the banner of PS+. Aren't those the things we're paying for in that regard?

Was that listed under the features you get for PS+?

Sorry, I'm seriously not trying to come off as hostile. I'm trying to make a point. The way we consume things is fucked. The money gets handed over first and then consumers get mad because they expected it to do whatever they wanted rather than what it actually promises it does.