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Forums - Sony Discussion - The PS4 really should have backwards compatibility!

"Allow" isn't the right term at all. They would have to spend a lot of money for a team to reprogram all those games to work with the PS4. They have no incentive to do that, especially not this late in the life-cycle of the PS4.

Microsoft did it as a PR move because they were desperately trying to recover from the XO launch. Sony was never in that position and, to be quite honest, the fact that it didn't hinder PS4 sales probably indicates that it's not all that important to the average consumer. Sony going the Microsoft route at this point would likely do very little to increase unit sales.

If it was going to happen then it would have happened before now.



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pokoko said:
"Allow" isn't the right term at all. They would have to spend a lot of money for a team to reprogram all those games to work with the PS4. They have no incentive to do that, especially not this late in the life-cycle of the PS4.

Microsoft did it as a PR move because they were desperately trying to recover from the XO launch. Sony was never in that position and, to be quite honest, the fact that it didn't hinder PS4 sales probably indicates that it's not all that important to the average consumer. Sony going the Microsoft route at this point would likely do very little to increase unit sales.

If it was going to happen then it would have happened before now.

So, I guess that means then really that if we want the most out of our consoles, that it's better for them to be lagging behind other consoles because that forces them to have to do gestures of goodwill.



VGPolyglot said:
Aeolus451 said:
I don't care about bc as a feature. I'm not a very nostalgic person. If I wanted to play an old game, I would just crank up my old consoles. I buy new consoles to play current gen games. Sometimes, I'll play a remaster though.

It's not just nostalgia, I have a ton of PS3 games that I haven't gotten to.

Just crank up your ps3, put a game in and maybe smoke some hookah. BC not  being on the ps4 isn't stopping you.



Aeolus451 said:
VGPolyglot said:

It's not just nostalgia, I have a ton of PS3 games that I haven't gotten to.

Just crank up your ps3, put a game in and maybe smoke some hookah. BC not  being on the ps4 isn't stopping you.

I wrote in my OP why that isn't the most viable option for me.



VGPolyglot said:
pokoko said:
"Allow" isn't the right term at all. They would have to spend a lot of money for a team to reprogram all those games to work with the PS4. They have no incentive to do that, especially not this late in the life-cycle of the PS4.

Microsoft did it as a PR move because they were desperately trying to recover from the XO launch. Sony was never in that position and, to be quite honest, the fact that it didn't hinder PS4 sales probably indicates that it's not all that important to the average consumer. Sony going the Microsoft route at this point would likely do very little to increase unit sales.

If it was going to happen then it would have happened before now.

So, I guess that means then really that if we want the most out of our consoles, that it's better for them to be lagging behind other consoles because that forces them to have to do gestures of goodwill.

That's the way it's always been and it's true of most markets, not just gaming.  In order to increase market share, businesses often try to one-up those higher in the hierarchy, which sometimes forces those changes to become industry standards.  



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It would be great but I'm honestly not losing sleep over it. I can emulate PS2 titles on my PC if I want to play them and my PS3 is still working. Once I finished a game, i rarely ever pick it back up so I'm not interested in replaying some PS3/PS2 games.



"Trick shot? The trick is NOT to get shot." - Lucian

pokoko said:
VGPolyglot said:

So, I guess that means then really that if we want the most out of our consoles, that it's better for them to be lagging behind other consoles because that forces them to have to do gestures of goodwill.

That's the way it's always been and it's true of most markets, not just gaming.  In order to increase market share, businesses often try to one-up those higher in the hierarchy, which sometimes forces those changes to become industry standards.  

I'm not disputing that, I'm mainly thinking of how that mindset would affect the views of people here, essentially we should actually want them to be behind in sales rather than ahead.



Lack of BC for console doesn't annoy me. I only have a PS4 for the 1st party exclusives, which is a tiny amount of titles. When PS5 comes out, I'll probably buy the remasters just to be able to play them on 60FPS(which is just 30 on PS4).

All multiplats I just get on PC which has unlimited backwards compatibility for pretty much every game since PC gaming inception.



Think of all the sales they would lose without Last of Us Remastered, Nathan Drake Collection, God of War 3 Remaster, Shadow of the Colossus Remake and so on...
It’s sad but Backwards Compatibility is just nota smart business decision for Sony...



I make game analyses on youtube:

FFVI: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mSO6n8kNCwk
Shadow of the Colossus: https://youtu.be/9kDBFGw6SXQ
Silent Hill 2: https://youtu.be/BwISCik3Njc
BotW: https://youtu.be/4auqRSAWYKU

The lack of backwards compatibility is probably my biggest single complaint about PS4 and also the biggest problem I have with consoles in general. I'm OK with the lack of backwards compatibility with PS3 games due to technical difficulties (although it would be nice to have for sure), but the lack of backwards compatibility with PS1 and PS2 games is just inexcusable. They both largely exist already, we just don't have it.