Irridium said:
They're not much better. I know, I play on the damn thing. While sites like GoG [http://www.gog.com/], which is awesome and deserves all the money by the way, makes things easier, you still have the classic computer problems which are caused by the game itself/operating system/drivers/phase of the moon which then take you across the internet to a backwater forum where someone had the same problem as you, and there's no solution posted. It's almost always "Oh, I fixed it" without explaining how or no solution presenting itself.
But at least on the PC we have the option. With enough determination, you can more-often-than-not get something working. More than can be said for consoles, where you get the games they give you and have to deal. Still, at least they'll work without much of a problem.
With Nintendo consoles the games from the previous console (WiiU will play Wii games, Wii plays Gamecube games, 3DS plays DS games, DS plays GBA games, GBA plays GB games) will work on the next. Which, admittedly gets ridiculous when you have lots of systems. Better than the PS3/360 though.
The PS3 is only BC with PS1 games. Earlier models have full BC, but good luck finding those. And that's better than the 360, which stopped making things BC back in 2007.
Hm, seems no matter what system you have, it boils down to "pick which batch of problems you feel like dealing with."
Videogames, folks!
That's a bit disingenuous to say that Microsoft "stopped" making things BC in 2007. With the 360, they had to patch every single original Xbox game personally in order for it to be playable, for technical reasons. They made hundreds and hundreds of games, though generally only for the more-popular ones, backwards compatible that are still backwards compatible today.
It is by no means their entire library, no, but it's over half of their full library, and nearly all of their top-sellers. I'd say it's better to give the same BC-opportunities to all of their players than to pull a Sony and only give FULL BC to their first few batches of systems, and none or nearly-none for the rest. And given that it took actual resources to make stuff BC for the 360, I'd say it's a step up from Sony. Not that it's a pissing match or anything, but at least Microsoft had a reason for it.
Still, I'd wish that they could have just kept or developed a way to use the original Xbox framework as an emulator so that you wouldn't need to patch each game individually, and that could be a legit argument towards greed/laziness on their part.
