Here's an actual problem of consoles: Sony doesn't need to make them available to transfer between console generations to force you to buy them again if you want to play them on a PS5. I doubt they will do so, though.

Another question is if they will include BC at all as it's much more profitable not to and just resell or remaster them and then sell them at full price.

They have to ask because they need to make changes to the game code in oder to make the games run on X1. That requires permission.

Here's my counter argument. Is it more profitable for Sony and MS to ignore BC to push remasters. Or is it instead more profitable to sell hundreds of BC games on new consoles and use them on subscription services?

MS has essentially handled this in an ideal way. They allow people to use their old discs and digital purchases, but they also allow people to buy virtually any game on BC digitally. They are also adding games that were never available digitally before on Xbox like Rage, Lost Odyssey, and Final Fantasy XIII. Its possible MS still sells millions of OG Xbox and Xbox 360 games digitally. BC content is also content used for Game Pass and Xbox Live. I think for the first time this month an OG Xbox game was used on Games with Gold.

It seems to me Sony selling PS1 games on the PS3, PSP and Vita was successful enough. You can even buy notable PS2 games on PS3 and PS4. But they don't put the same effort on getting content and frankly I don't think people have the same enthusiasm about 5th and 6th gen as much as 7th gen. Sony instead uses PS3 content on PS Now, but that's too expensive and streaming is not ideal for overall fidelity.

I think there is gonna be huge demand for BC on 9th gen consoles and that's why both Sony and MS are going to do it. It would also look bad is one offers it and the other does not.

I think its the digital aspect that's making this complicated.

Xbox 360 and PS3 (before it was eventually removed) both used software based 6th gen emulation. I don't think they were getting any permission to emulate those games.

X1 is handing this very different. Nothing is being emulated using the data on an actual disc and MS is trying to make everything available digitally. I think these two things are what requires permission. Hence, if the X1 had a simple emulator that only read discs, its likely no permission would be required to support games.

I don't see why not, given that they're using x86 CPUs and almost off-the shelf GOUs. I would even say that, unless they jump to ARM processors or change the GPU provider, it would be harder to block backward compatibility rather than to allow it.

I honestly can't care less about b/c. Once the first few months of a gen are up, there should be plenty of stuff from this gen to play.

Can they? Yes

Will they? Hard to say. If one does it and the other does not, whoever does it wins by default as long as it is out of the gate like it used to be (X1 BC was too little too late). People are looking at consumer friendly policies now more than ever, so one slip up could impact sales in a big way. However if neither of them do it, consider BC lost to the sands of time.

1. More options (games) is better than less.

2. People may still enjoy playing old and new games. That's clearly evident by popular 7th gen games that show population counts.

3. There are tons of notable games in all generations I still haven't played. Gamers younger than us also missed notable games in previous gens.

BC is not just about revisiting old games, it could also be playing them for the first time. For example, I have a huge backlog of old movies I'd like to watch. Many of which are much older than me. There isn't a lack of new movies for me to watch, but its not equal to old stuff.

Next architecture being an evolution of current one should make it easy. Legally there's no problem, it actually widens the potential user base that can buy and play existing games without the need to port them, so it's a pro-consumer feature that gives devs some advantages too. It makes more difficult to sell the same game twice to the same person, but this OTOH is an anti-consumer behaviour that no sane dev or publisher, even desiring it, will want to be caught openly defending it. Pressures are possible, but they won't go very far, and anyway remastered and enhanced PS5 and XBTwo ports will be definitely possible and people won't consider them negatively as trying to block BC for existing versions. As for digital market BC, PC and Android already solved the issue in a totally pro-consumer way, while consoles already have mildly satisfying policies that can improve, nothing forbids it. Last, but not least, if console market is roughly as large as total (dedicated plus casuals) PC gaming market and three times larger than dedicated PC gaming market, Android market is far larger than total PC and total console ones, so Android plus PC definitely made BC a feature that the vast majority of gamers considers almost granted, consoles resistance would be futile.

Ever heard of a thing called Shader Code? Unless develpers have been distributing their games with its shader code as source (almost certainly not the case, always binary), there is no way for full BC. It is very unlikely that the next gen gpu architecture fully "understands" old shader code (with all the timing problems as a supplement not even mentioned. Well k I just did..).

(That is likely the thing with "no full X360 bc on X1", there are games that just can't be emulated/reverse compiled unless MS gets access to the shader code.)