Well why did Sony bother with PS2 emulation and hundreds of PS3 games on PS Now? Because old games can be monetized.

BC isnt just about selling hardware and not every exclusive is gonna sell hardware either. But all of it combined is more notable content to access. And again, emulated content can also help push a Game Pass type of service or given out on PS+.

MS just gave out an OG Xbox game on GwG, I'm sure they will continue to do so. Meanwhile Sony is about to end PS3 free games because its useless on a PS4 even if it was notable content.

It is sold at 15-20 $ (gamestop as an example always raise prices of new bc games).

I don't really get trying to spin it in a negative way,  MS does the work and make it bc and Activision says yes you may make it BC Microsoft... and in the worst case Activision only made a million $ from it.  Gamers clearly wanted it and publishers make money with it.

Sony could do this on the PS5 in a heartbeat: It's called PS Now. Only "tech" they'd need to add to the Now service is to recognize a digital purchased PS4 game, or inserting a physical PS4 game disc, and then granting free access to that same title in PS Now running on the PS5. They could even keep their current PS Now sales model for all other devices and just give the PS5 an exclusive "backwards compatibility" feature by allowing free access to a PS Now game on a PS5 if the user already purchased a digital of physical PS4 copy.

One revision of PS3 removed the HW but had SW BC, then they removed all BC.

https://support.playstation.com/s/article/Play-PSone-and-PlayStation-2-Games-on-a-PlayStation-3?language=en_US

Old games can be monetized when you resell then either with same code or remastered/remade (much higher sales). Just giving free BC on PS5 won't grant much extra sales of SW (and probably a lot of second hand) though.

Then I'm impressed.

I wasn't trying to spin in a negative way if that was the impression you had. I was trying to contextualize. Even more because the previous data we had from MS themselves on the usage of the BC didn't sound much impressive.

Microsoft also gave out a game it has given out for free previously, this month.

Microsoft's Games with Gold is terrific, minus this months minor transgression... The fact they generally make all GWG games backwards compatible is what makes the service worthwhile. (Plus you actually own the Xbox Original/Xbox 360 games.)

It is certainly a shame that Sony hasn't taken note.

Sony would need to see the revenue in it instead of just pleased fans. Perhaps if MS was more open with their numbers Sony would see the profit they could make by improving PS+ (they basically only remember that when PS+ gave good games they had 2M subs, when they had bad games but demand for online it grow to 40+M)

I didnt realize that. I suppose you could argue many could have missed it years ago but it sucks for long time subscribers that grab everything. Very odd given there is 1st party content that would have been fine.

On PS3 I have to stay a subsciber to access my content I guess. It sucks but I guess it the same with X1. I wish they made a deal for retired platforms to be titles I now own.

PS+ games you got for free will be locked when your PS+ expire, but once you renew (so far no one have seem a limit on how long you can stay expired without losing the games, but seems like no limit exist) you can regain access - perhaps when PS3 server support is cut you'll have issues to download it on anything until they have BC on another platform and access for these unified.

On Xbox Games with Gold, all og and X360 were yours for life.

You gave the awnser yourself, in the past BC was a hassle but with x86 becoming a standard it should be much easier to make Ps5 and Xbox Two "natively" backwards compatible.

As for your previous post, I believe MS has to ask publishers the permission to release thier BC games because technically those game are emulated and this could cause come legal issues. If you are playing an emulated game you aren't just running the original code but your also running the additional emulation code plus maybe some patch or fix to make it run properly. I believe this leaglly colud be seen as an alteration of intellectual property. It would also expalin why BC on Wii and PS2 did not need permissions, since in those cases you were playing just the original code.

PS3 done SW BC on one of the versions both for PS1 and PS2 games.

The biggest problem imho is that on X1 you need to download the game on the XBL, so they need permission to make it available.