Why Backwards Compatibility is Crucially Important

While I don't think backwards compatibility is a deal-breaker kind of thing, I do think it is a very, very practical thing that I would love to have on my PS4. Since buying it I've gone back to the PS3 to play Demon's Souls, South Park and some PS+ games. It would have been great to just use the PS4 with the better controller and UI.

A relevant point that is missing in this conversation though is the case of people who don't own the previous console. For example, a Wii U is an extremely attractive deal to me, because I have never owned a Wii. With it I would instantly have a pretty big line-up of great games at my disposal, even if the Wii U itself would be lacking on that front. Even though I believe that the Wii U has some pretty cool games, I would probably never buy without this feature.

I like BC - but my old systems don't just spontaneously combust when a new one comes out. My PS3 is still there, I still use it.

Sony went down a hardware dead-end with the cell, and had to get out, and the price of that was backwards compatibility. Playstation Now is honestly, a bad deal. The prices are too high, the selection too low. Had Sony opted for a system that detects discs and or digital licenses and lets you play games you own for free (or even with a PS+ sub) it might have been a better system.

Microsoft spending 'time' doing BC is actually incredibly smart of them. The people doing that aren't building games - pretty sure its the people who do the UI updates that'll be working on BC stuff. And for a marginally small cost, MS has been able to pull off a big win in terms of consumer relations. The system's a bit heavy on the HDD usage, but so is everything on the One. The biggest win? You don't need Gold to do it.

Nintendo? Well, nintendo's BC efforts work great. But they could be so much better. Virtual Console has offered great promise...but nintendo always gets bored and drops it, only to pick it back up whenever theres new hardware that needs games. Why build a collection of these if i'm going to be asked to re-buy it on every new platform? Between this and games trickling out so slowly, it kinda kills my interest when I could just emulate or play the originals on a Retron console.

Right now, MS seems to be doing the best of the three on BC. Every game that is playable will likely be buyable digitally, which Nintendo doesn't do for Wii titles, some of which are super rare these days - and the system doesn't need a connection to the internet post-install, or an added cost - which is not true of Playstation Now.

It's pretty great being able to hit play, at any time for Max Payne or Max Payne 3. They're also both digital though, so even if BC was standard on console, I'd have to keep and rummage through old crap to play it.

I think BC is important for console gamers in general, though I wouldn't personally care unless they were also digital. I would probably mess around with Shadow Complex, but i'm not going to plug in old shit to do it.
Of course, my perfect scenario would be, that they just released it on PC like they should have, in the first place.

If Xbone had this as a feature at launch, I'd bet they would be in a much healthier position right now. I also find it hilarious that console gamers are basically buying the PC version of last gen games as 'remasters'. Not that some devs don't put in some extra effort, but lets be real. I wonder how many people here say they don't care about BC, but have bought a remaster?

@claude: You know you can put that same mod onto the WiiU's Wii channel and play Gamecube, Wii and Wiiu games all on the same system?

For me backwards compatibility is a cool idea but i rarely find myself going back and playing older games. However I have friends who have showed way more interest in picking up a xbone now that they announced backwards compatibility. I see it as more of a marketing pillow, its easier to sell a console knowing that your library will work rather then having that feeling of spending 400-500 dollars on a new console and have noting to play.

I'm curious if they thought about using the xbox360 to emulate the original xbone games that they made to work early in the 360s life.

@bananasfoster: Was not making the case for or against BC. More will buy into the idea rather than the use, its not about gamer demands more a case that MS needs to convince 360 owner to upgrade. Funny thing all of MS core franchises Halo, Gears and Forza have been remastered or have had mutliple sequels, BC seems like a xmas bulletpoint to be forgotten in the new year.

Totally agree with OP. I think BC adds great value to the consumer. I'm not a big console gamer so I've held off on getting a current-gen console still. Main reason obviously being that I'm a PC gamer, but the second reason is due to my last-gen backlog still being huge. I know I'll get an Xbone/PS4 eventually, but I've been in no hurry since I'm not aching to play the newest and shiniest most broken games. Now that BC has been promised I'm thinking more and more about getting one.

I'm not surprised that lots of people here don't care much about BC since we're on a video game forum where the majority of posters are probably early adopters anyway.

I want to put Red Dead Redemption and Vanquish in my PS4 because that would be awesome.

I agree and disagree. I think backwards compatibility is more "hears and mind" than anything else. At its best, BC is more important in the few months, or first year, after a consoles launch: when there are few games released and parents/gamers are worried about not being able to play their existing collections or where parents might be concerned about how much money they would have to spend. Near 2 years after a system is launch most people are more concerned with playing the games that are out than games that are years old. I'm not saying its a waste of time, but its also not something you should be stressing too hard in press releases or anything.

I mean, if you're biggest talking point is getting people to play games from last generation it proves you have nothing from the current gen worth playing.

Speaking as someone with a bunch of old consoles, it's not at all simple. First off, I'm out of inputs on my man-cave gaming TV (a TV which was purchased precisely because it has a ton of inputs). I have to occasionally switch some cords out in the back, depending on what I want to play. Then, because wives oddly don't seem to care for a bunch of controllers being strewn about, I have to dig through a basket full of various controllers to find the right one, and usually have to untangle several from each other. Then I dig through my booklet/stacks of games to find the one I want to play, toss it in, and hope it still works, which often isn't the case. NES games in particular work about 1/10 of the time, my OG Xbox's disc drive ejection just went kaput, I had to ditch the RF adapters entirely on both the N64 and NES because modern TVs basically refuse to acknowledge RF, etc. So, no one has to come to your house and destroy your old console. Over time, they start destroying themselves. Let's also note memory issues. Constantly switching memory cards on the PS2 sure is fun. Meanwhile, my 360 hard drive is completely full, so I guess I can't play anything else there without buying another external hard drive or deleting games. At a certain point, playing old games becomes a logistical nightmare with a bunch of random periphery, power strips plugged into power strips, constant repair/maintenance, etc.

As such, I welcome this development with open arms. Having to deal with all that shit is a pain, and a (prospective) alternative of saying "Xbox, play Red Dead Redemption" sounds fucking awesome. Granted, this doesn't affect the non-360 stuff, but the 360's catalog of games is huge, and I'm excited to both replay some old favorites and have a relatively hassle-free chance to play some of the ones I missed. As much as everyone seems to want to bitch about the supposed lack of great new games (I haven't hit a dry spell yet despite owning an Xbox One since launch), you'd think people would be more appreciative of an effort to ensure there will always be something worth playing. Instead, we've got people quoting Mattrick, as if we should buy into his out-of-touch, apathetic garbage that started sending Microsoft gaming down a shitty path. That is, until they wised up and started listening to their customers, which is exactly how we now get awesome shit like BC. So, yeah, I support this measure for a lot of reasons. Even if no one uses it (which won't happen, a bunch of people are understandably thrilled about this), at minimum, it helps preserve games, which is something we should all support.

This would be more exciting if it wasn't an opt-in process for each game. Currently their is a grand total of twenty one games to play. I know they are touting hundreds of games once this full launches but how many of those games are going to be actually retail games and not just XBLA download games. We know it works so I'm optimistic that they'll get it but I also know games like Gears 3, Crackdown, or other Microsoft published games will probably won't come out. Especially if they have HD remakes in the works.

@notnert427: This is what i'm getting at. You could watch anything form Citizen Kane to Interstellar on a Blu-ray player or streaming/downloading on an ipad. Games are the only medium that require many, many different hardware configurations and controllers which will only get worse over time. Want to play an Original Xbox exclusive in 2015? You're stuffed unless you still have a 360 around to emulate it or want to hook up an original Xbox. At some point it's logistically impracticable to have all the consoles hooked up, the average console buyer probably wont do that at a certain point.

@cairnsythebeard: Have you heard of movies or music? Pretty sure my vhs tapes won't play in my bluray player.

We're kind of entering a time where it's weird if things aren't maintained and saved. Everything can be done and played by an increasingly larger number of devices. Backwards compatibility is part and parcel with moving in that direction with technology.

I still don't really see how this is any different from the last time they did this on the 360, the number of titles that actually ended up being playable was pretty limited, here's hoping they do a little better this time around.

@punched: no but they're available on many different formats, plus that kind of media obsolescence is no longer happening with tv or film, you'll be able to play a film downloaded in 2008 in 2028.

I've owned the same movie on VHS, DVD, and Blu-ray formats, with a digital version being included with the latter. I've owned books in physical, digital (Kindle), and audio formats. I've owned music on LP, cassette, CD, and mp3 formats. In each case, different "hardware" were required to enjoy the same piece of work for each medium; games have never been alone in that requirement.

You don't know what the stand will be in 2028. You can also play a game downloaded in 2008 in 2028.

@sergio: Yeah but if you look at the most recent upgrades they're mostly backwards compatible or forward compatible. You can play DVDs on Blu-ray players, you can play Blu-rays and DVDs on 3D Blu-ray players, when you buy blu-rays or DVDs they almost all come with a digital version now which you can still watch through a service on most blu-ray and DVD players, and music that you purchase on CD can be transferred to digital and played on iPods and phones, vinyls come with digital codes now, etc...

That hardware requirement is going away quickly. I wouldn't expect full backwards compatibility right this second but in the future I'm not expecting less. Everything I buy now should work, in one way or another on whatever dumb device I buy next because that is the direction we've been moving in.

@spraynardtatum:I hope you are right, but I can't shake a nagging feeling that so long as our games are tied to a hardware maker that just isn't going to happen.

I had already thought about Blu-ray players being the only device that is truly backwards compatible when I wrote my comment. However, studios still produce a Blu-ray version because it is a superior product. I dismissed digital versions as not being backwards compatible, but a different format that they are throwing in for free. I can buy a bundle that includes a DVD disc, Blu-ray disc, 3D Blu-ray disc, and digital code. All different formats; the digital code isn't going to work on that Blu-ray player. The closest things we have to that in gaming are Steam where you can get PC, Mac, and Linux versions for the same game, and PSN that might give you a PS3, PS4, and Vita version for select games. (Portal 2 on PS3 even came with a Steam version.) Still, these are different formats, not backwards compatibility.

There's also a big difference between simply including another codec for a device to play a movie or music, and trying to emulate more complex software across different hardware. Software development has been made easier in the tools used to build the same program for different devices, but the hardware requirement isn't going away until it becomes powerful enough to emulate lesser hardware, and even then, there may still be a gap in what may be available.

I don't think games and other medium are as comparable as some are saying. I can pop out my Blu-ray disc out of my Samsung Blu-ray player and pop it in my friend's Sony Blu-ray player, and it will most likely work (still depends if his player's software is up to date). I can't do the same thing between Xbox One and PlayStation 4. The software and hardware for game consoles are more complex and different than what other medium have to deal with.

Meh, I don't really see any evidence that BC matters where the rubber hits the road - people using those abilities and playing older games. BC really seems like an empty bullet point where it matters to some people as a concept, but that is not translating into real use.

Well what kind of searching are you doing for those numbers and how specific do you want that info to be? How would you even be able to gauge it when backwards compatibility mostly hasn't been an option? I don't see how you can claim that it doesn't translate into real use. It's pretty common for people to hold onto their old consoles and continue to play old games. People love PC gaming for many reasons but one of them is because it works with previous generations of games.

I like backwards compatibility, but I wouldn't be willing to pay an extra hundred something dollars to have it. Sadly it's an expensive feature to add, and while I do love console gaming, I'll admit that it's mostly because it is so much cheaper than buying a gaming PC.

It wasn't a big deal for me a good while back but after buying a good deal number of digital games on my PS3, it's been on my mind. I was thinking of selling this PS3 by the time I'm done getting through my backlog to help fund my purchase of a PS4 in a couple of months, but it's a hard thing to sell digital games!

I could technically sell the unit for a higher price with my account still on it, but that's a security risk I'm not sure I wanna take. Selling my account is another option, but I kinda like it too much to part ways with it!

The PS4 having BC even just for digital games would make this decision much easier for me.

Backwards compatibility for me will always be the Number one issue. The PS3 was amazing when it came out cause it could instantly play all the ps1/ps2 games I had. I was playing socom 3 on my ps3 for ages and it was a blast with HD upscaling and a wireless controller and I had also played a ton of Gran Turismo 4 which supported 1080i.

I think corporate greed has gotten in the way of this essential quality of life feature.

I hardly play games at all now cause when I decide on a title to play I cant because its on PS3 or ps2 and I cant just pop the disc into my ps4 and go or download digital titles I already own.

Greed has never been the problem at the end of the day most people don't care especially after the first year.

Maybe it's an age thing, but having grown up with no concept of backward compatibility until PS2. And past that it's been a spotty feature at best that was never quite guaranteed to work for all games. I fail to see how this feature that is both recent and not entirely encompassing is so crucial all of a sudden this generation to warrant such discussion. That's why I say it's an age thing, because I am guessing a lot of the folks arguing for it being such an essential feature are people that grew up with that feature being available. Or maybe I'm just projecting.

For my money though, I would rather they spend their time and money on something that improves the quality of new games than waste it trying to get old games running on the new machines. If I wanted to play old games I wouldn't buy a new console in the first place.