With all the 40GB PS3 hooha going around, it brought up an interesting point:
How important is backwards compatibility?
Back in the NES days, I never had backwards compatibility. My mom forced me to give away my NES when I got my SNES. Although I missed my NES, I had enough games on the SNES to keep me going (Mario Kart FTW!) Soon after I got the N64, I let my cousin borrow my SNES and it was stolen from him. With my teenie tiny N64 collection, I was so mad.
When the PS2 announced PS1 backwards compatibility, I laughed. I thought it wouldn't be a big factor. I mean, you want to play PS1 games, you have a PS1 right? But friends who bought it told me they could use the other advantages of the PS2 (DVD playback, mainly) in the meantime. That is, they could treat it like a fancyman's PS1 while waiting for the PS2 library to get good. They didn't assume the PS2 game lineup would be immediately awesome. That was only 7 years ago.
I remember when Nintendo published the Game Boy Color and announced backwards compatibility (and pallette tinting, whoopie!) I didn't have many Game Boy games (allowance was tight) so it didn't affect me much. Then in college the Game Boy Advance came out and BAM! BC with GBC and GB games. I played the crud out of Dragon Warrior 3 (The GBC remake) at least 3 times on my GBA. I don't care how much the cartridge stuck out of the back. But...that's the only GBC game I played near the end of the GBA's lifespan.
When the Nintendo DS was announced to have ONLY GBA backwards compatibility, I was dissapointed. Then I realized the only GBC game I played was a long time ago. Heck, I don't even play GBA games anymore (I really should borrow FF6 from my roomates, heh.) But it was good to know that I didn't have to drop my entire collection just because of a hardware upgrade.
Another issue is living room space. If I only have enough room for one type of console, then I'll only keep the games for that console. For my PS2, it was an easy choice to simply pack my PS1, never to be touched again. With my Gamecube I flat out stopped playing my N64; too much time and hassle to hook it back up when I needed it. Backwards compatibility made it easier to find room for consoles in my living room: I could swap the old model for the new one that played all the games I own AND the newer spiffier games I would eventually buy.
From a product innovation perspective, it's pretty interesting how the innovation -> imitation -> saturation loop is being broken by technology. The PS2 brought BC to home consoles, so the competitors tried to include it into the next generation. The X360's graphics architecture is completely different, so that caused issues when they tried to BC stuff. The Wii is a Gamecube on turbo so they have the elegant solution of using the same hardware. Sony has the hardware, but needs to cut costs so they emulated it. And now they may be dropping it to save more money. Looks like BC is harder to add than people thought.
Sorry for the aimless...post here. But how important was backwards compatibility to you? How important do you think BC is for console manufactures versus the design cost? Try to avoid a "PS3 SUX" flamewar...if you can.
There is no such thing as a console war. This is the first step to game design.
