| Marks said: Yeah backwards compatibility would be great. If the PS4 uses Blu-ray discs as well then I don't see why it would be hard (or expensive) to make it play PS3 games. |
I will explain why it can be hard AND expensive.
The PS3 architecture is very different from every thing else in the market, and according to ALL the rumors the one that is going to be used for the PS4 is more standard, so the hardware itself cannot play the games straight forward. That leaves 2 options to Sony, first include parts of the PS3 inside the PS4, that would be easy but not cheap at all, they will have to include the components in the price (around 100 dollars extra), make a bigger case and maybe consume more energy. Second is to emulate, but the PS3 architecture is not easy to emulate, the CPU is very fast, powerful and complex, the GPU is a little more standard, but it will require a lot of development time to build a basic emulator lets not mention a perfect one, so this option will be hard and expensive.
It can be done, but the easier alternative is using Gaikai for it, and that is a hard sale for some of the owners of a PS3, that will most likely wait till they finish their games before upgrading, and may bring a slower adoption rate than desired. But they can manage.
