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smroadkill15 on 10 April 2018
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FentonCrackshell said:
The_Liquid_Laser said:

How much does backwards compatibility matter?  Well lets look at the performance of Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft consoles.  Some of them had BC and some didn't.  Below I've ranked each console based on hardware sales and market share on a 1-10 scale.  Obviously I left off consoles that were firsts in their line (NES, PS1, etc...) and I left off Switch because it's so recent.  Here are the results:

Console Sales Performance (1-10) BC? Console Sales Performance (1-10) BC?
SNES 7 N Wii 8 Y
N64 4 N Wii U 1 Y
GCN 2 N GBA 8 Y
Virtual Boy 1 N DS 10 Y
PS3 5 N 3DS 7 Y
PS4 9 N PS2 10 Y
PS Vita 1 N XB360 5 Y
      XB1 3 Y
Average 4.1 Average 6.5  


There certainly is a strong correlation between BC and market success.  It doesn't guarantee market success, but it sure doesn't hurt either.

BC certainly isn't helping X1. And it certainly didn't help WiiU. And I don't know anyone bout any of those consoles off the basis of BC. Inversely no one didn't buy them because they're not BC. I can't imagine someone saying "I don't want an X1 because I can't play my old X360 games on it." That makes absolutely no sense. Also, we're 5 years into the PS4's life cycle and we're still arguing the fact that it doesn't play games that are probably a decade old.

Look, there are always plenty of new games out there to play. Yes it's nice to have BC but it's not a deal breaker to not have it. When I had a 360, a Wii, and a WiiU I never thought once about playing an XBOX, GameCube, or Wii game. I'm sure that's not "just me". The BC/sales correlation is purely coincidental. As a matter a fact, the BC consoles all released at a time when video games had become extremely more popular and had broader appeal. That's why those consoles so more than the non-BC consoles.

BC wasn't added until a few years after for the X1, so it didn't have the initial impact if it had it at launch. If the console would have launched with it, many X360 owners who switched over to ps4 would of had at least a harder decision to make. No one is strictly buying a console for BC but it does play a factor in a decision being made.