dsgrue3 said: I thought backwards compatibility was a big deal and was upset when PS3 got rid of it. Having said that, not having it made me realize it isn't a big deal at all. Not once have I loaded up my PS2 to play one of those games. It's a nice feature, but one that isn't really necessary. Maybe I'm in the minority? |
It is not a big deal, but is an important feature... specially for the early buying of the console. The first couple of million buyers are people who will buy the console yes or yes (even if it cost a lot, or does not have good games on the market), the next couple of million is harder to sell, because is people who may like to buy it but does not have the money ready and/or have the PS3 and want to upgrade but still have some games pending to play.
For that second group backward compatability becomes an important matter, if they can sell their old console to buy the new one and still play their pending games, it will mean they will buy faster, otherwise they may hold their purchase till their backlog is smaller or they get more money to expend, and that can hurt the sales early on. It also affects if te support does not dry fast enough, because some of their favorite games may not have PS4 versions already and they still want to play them.
Beyond the first year it becomes less and less relevant as the mayoritiy of the new games will be comming to the console, the pending backlogs are smaller, and of course the price cuts start to appear.
So backward compatability is not a very big deal, but is an important one, specially early on.