No Backwards Compatibility - One of the many signs of industry greed?

[zerobudgetgamer]

Kids...

Backwards compatibility was toyed around with in the earliest gaming systems and given up. It was given up until the PS2 came out. The PS1 chips where remarkable compatible with the PS2 hardware, it basically had a PS1 inside, thus backwards compatibility was in. The Wii works the same way with gamecube games as the PS2 did with PS1 games.

That was also during a time when phones couldn't send text, play music, run a thousand little niche apps that have little or no real-world use, but you tell any iPhone user that any of the above was NOT going to be in the next model, and they'd go apeshit crazy about it.

Backwards compatibility, regardless of the reasons for its inception, ended up being a critically acclaimed feature. People enjoyed having a SINGLE console that could play games from any version of said console, past or future. Regardless of how often they used it, the fact that it was there should they ever choose to was invaluable.

Backward compatibility is a stop-gap measure during a modern console's early years that is removed in later iterations of the hardware when the platform has a self-sustaining number of games.

See: Playstation 2, Gameboy Advance, Nintendo DS, Playstation 3, Xbox 360, Nintendo 3DS.

If you're referring to them DEVELOPING games for the prior console, then you may have a point. But you are grossly misinformed otherwise. PS2 and GBA never "removed" their backward compatibility, and technically the DS only did it when they went to DSi, and I think that might have been because they needed the space the GB/A slot was taking; plus, I don't think the 3DS is ever going to be incapable of playing regular DS games, or else Nintendo's going to go even further into the red than they already are. The main culprits here are Playstation and 360, and considering the former of those two's prior console gave full and unrestricted backwards compatibility throughout it's ENTIRE cycle, it just seems like bad form for Sony to change that and remove it in their current console.

 

[Jacen Warriner]

LOL!
The 60GB PS3 (backwards compatible) had a 99% fail rate. They had to change the drive speed of the blu ray player to make it work. Those changes caused the failure.

How far back do you seriously expect any new technology you buy to backwards support?
Are you suggesting that dvd players should accept vhs or betamax tapes? your mp3 player, should it take cd's? Cassette tapes? Vinyls? How useful would that seriously be?

The only people who would be able to use backwards compatibility are the people who bought the original format to begin with AND don't have the original system to use it on any more.
It's called change, it happens all the time. Accept it and get on with enjoying the exciting new technologies that come out.

If there is enough of a market for it, some games will be released for the new technology. Not only for the nostalgia crowd, but to show newcomers what was great before they knew about it!
I'd love my kids to be able to see/play some classics from my childhood!

I'm not negating the fact that all consumer products are fiscally driven, it's the world we live in. Games are a leisure good, similar to movies/music. If a product doesn't make money, more of it will not be produced, if a product DOES make money, more of the similar will be made.
As consumers, all we can do is make good choices about what we buy!

 

[DracoSuave]

Bottom line.

PS2 emulation was shit. It was utter and complete shit. It was unreliable and didn't work for most games.
XBox 360 emulation wasn't even good for farkin' Halo for gossake.

Stop pretending that it was ever good. You're just lying to yourself.

Again, why are we douching on Sony for this when it's Capcom making the money? "Remakes are bad so Sony Sucks!" but it's Atlus "Let's make three remakes of Persona 3 in two years, and oh, now two remakes of Persona 4 are in the works" doing it. I mean, how many relreases of Metal Gear Solid has Konami done?

Like seriously, if it were THAT huge a cash grab for Sony, don't you think Final Fantasy 10 would be on the list? Or... any game made by, I dunno, SONY!?!

 

[Agayek]

Wait, they HAD backwards compatibility and they took it OUT?! That's even worse! Now I'm convinced it IS extortion. Also, I only have a 360. Was cheaper at the time.

They did remove it, but it's not extortion in any sense of the word.

Backwards compatibility requires an emulator, and that is one of the most time intensive and ridiculously complex things you can possibly do with a computer. To get an emulator exact in all cases, they would have to include the hardware and software for the original system in their new system, and that just isn't feasible.

What they did instead was software emulation, which is, as mentioned, ridiculously expensive to create, and even then it only worked like half the time. It's hard as hell to make a purely software emulator that works for all software in all cases. The backwards compatibility simply wasn't moving enough units to make it cost effective to continue supporting and maintaining it, so they removed it.

It was a business decision mostly based on how much money they make, yes, but it wasn't an unreasonable or excessively greedy decision at all.

If you're going to complain about anything on consoles complain about why they insist that the same 5 year old hardware is going to last another 5+ years. That's the greedy decision. The manufacturers lose money on every console sale, and so they want to push the new generation back as far as they can, and it's reached the point where the available hardware is so much better than console setups that it is actively holding back the performance of most games. I won't make any judgment on quality of play, but the technical quality of games is severely limited by the current console hardware.

 

[thePyro_13]

Sounds painful, I like the Wii for doing this, as their games go way too far back for them to be compatible, they sell them online. Yet it maintains perfect compatibility with the GC disks.

I main as a PC gamer, so anything that the company refuses to fix, the community can(Thank You 'CNC: The First Decade' community! ).

 

[ACman]

This is the real reason that the PC is the home of the Gaming Master Race.

Except the games that I want to play came with 16 bit installers and now that I have a 64-bit OS it's impossible to play them.

Out of interest which games?

 

[Stocky37]

What they did instead was software emulation, which is, as mentioned, ridiculously expensive to create, and even then it only worked like half the time. It's hard as hell to make a purely software emulator that works for all software in all cases.

It was also never purely software emulation. Sure they emulated the CPU but they always left the GPU in there to do the bulk of its processing. For some reason no-one seems to remember this.

 

[Sexual Harassment Panda]

If you're going to complain about anything on consoles complain about why they insist that the same 5 year old hardware is going to last another 5+ years. That's the greedy decision. The manufacturers lose money on every console sale, and so they want to push the new generation back as far as they can, and it's reached the point where the available hardware is so much better than console setups that it is actively holding back the performance of most games. I won't make any judgment on quality of play, but the technical quality of games is severely limited by the current console hardware.

How many ps3 games are really using the full power of the Ps3? And really I think he focus on graphics is causing other areas to suffer (Final Fantasy 13 had a much larger budget than FF6. Which game has better characters, story, pacing and polished gameplay?)

There's not that much headroom, that's why all the games run at 720p resolutions and look shitty on large televisions.

 

[MorphingDragon]

LOL!
The 60GB PS3 (backwards compatible) had a 99% fail rate. They had to change the drive speed of the blu ray player to make it work. Those changes caused the failure.

How far back do you seriously expect any new technology you buy to backwards support?
Are you suggesting that dvd players should accept vhs or betamax tapes? your mp3 player, should it take cd's? Cassette tapes? Vinyls? How useful would that seriously be?

The only people who would be able to use backwards compatibility are the people who bought the original format to begin with AND don't have the original system to use it on any more.
It's called change, it happens all the time. Accept it and get on with enjoying the exciting new technologies that come out.

If there is enough of a market for it, some games will be released for the new technology. Not only for the nostalgia crowd, but to show newcomers what was great before they knew about it!
I'd love my kids to be able to see/play some classics from my childhood!

I'm not negating the fact that all consumer products are fiscally driven, it's the world we live in. Games are a leisure good, similar to movies/music. If a product doesn't make money, more of it will not be produced, if a product DOES make money, more of the similar will be made.
As consumers, all we can do is make good choices about what we buy!

I refuse to take this BS.

Virtualisation and Emulators means I can play Commodore 64 games and Windows 95 games.

There is no excuse for not including backwards compatibility, barring an actual hardware limitation like say the Wii motion hardware or a cartridge slot.

Are you going to look me in the face and say the architecture in current gen consoles can't emulate past-gen? I have a PS2 library of games that tower above current games in quality, yet I'm supposed to take it when it finally dies and I can't get a replacement?

Fuck you.

 

[Blunderboy]

Oh joy. Another thread about the 'evil' corporations.

I'm pretty sure you can buy the old consoles for about a tenner if you're that fussed.

 

[Spud of Doom]

It does make me sad that they PS3 can't play PS2 games. Mostly because I never owned a PS2, and the best solution for me would have been a PS3 and buying PS2 and PS3 games for it, so I don't need 2 units. However, all the PS3s in the last 4 years can't play PS2 and it's not worth getting those old ones used, they're like the same price as a new one with a HDD 3-4x the size.

 

[Rawne1980]

I agree, fight the power.

Completely pissed I can't play my old Atari 2600 games on our 360 aswell.

As technology moves on, things of the past are forgotten. If you want to play old Xbox games then get an old Xbox.

 

[MorphingDragon]

I agree, fight the power.

Completely pissed I can't play my old Atari 2600 games on our 360 aswell.

As technology moves on, things of the past are forgotten. If you want to play old Xbox games then get an old Xbox.

And what if we can't.