Can MS & Sony just simply make next gen fully BC?

[Mr Puggsly]

DonFerrari said:

 

 

Mr Puggsly said:

I absolutely agree the motivator of BC is monetization, if they couldn't find a way to make it profitable there would be less or no motivation to do it. But there are some holes in your argument.

The reality is the way MS is handling it, packaging the games into new digital downloads and selling games digitally, this all requires consent of the publishers/developers or who ever owns the games. If they made a basic emulator that pretty much only runs disc, I don't think they would need permission much like the OG Xbox emulator on 360. However, their selection OG Xbox actually in the store was very small. No money is being made if people are simply using old discs.

However, it worth noting there are some games that are on BC that are only available on a disc. That means MS is actually making the effort to add games to BC they can't even monetize. Now you must admit that's actually pretty nice.

I think most people agree its probably impossible for the PS4 to handle a PS3 emulator that can run all games at full speed. So they can't really monetize PS3 games on PS4 the same way MS monetizes OG Xbox games and 360 games on Xbox One. Most people who use BC are likely using old discs and old digital purchases, but MS is still sells over 500 games previous gen games in their current store. Its not just a nice gesture from MS, its being monetized. Anecdotally I've bought numerous OG Xbox and 360 games in the Xbox store thanks to BC.

You exaggerate how many remasters we actually get. Just take into consideration most of the games on Xbox BC don't have remasters. There are many studios that would be happy to keep selling a previous gen game without having to actually port or remaster it. That's where BC comes in.

If X1 which is weaker than PS4 can run X360 games that are on par with PS3 (some even performed better) then certainly if Sony wished to put the effort they would be able to do BC.

As explained by Pemalite in some threads. PC emulation of consoles need a lot of overhead and muscle because the creator of the emulator doesn't really need the internals of the HW. Sony knows it all. So if they wanted they could do BC of PS3 on PS4. The fact PS4 doesn't BC even PS1 show it have nothing to do with power. PS4 reads CD and DVD, they sell classic PS1 games and remastered PS2 games.

They wouldn't profit from free BC of PS1 and PS2 games (and considering data and PR probably most users wouldn't even use it much), but they got good revenue stream from selling these at cheap on PS Store with trophies, upped res or whatever.

Well emulation is more CPU heavy so PS4's superior RAM and CPU doesn't quite matter there. Its already been discussed in this thread that the emulation of 360 games on X1 isn't done entirely by emulation. There are actually a few things being handled natively by the X1's APU, some baked in features likely intended for BC down the road. Basically that reduces some of the overhead of emulation alone (so less CPU power needed).

The PS3 actually had a more capable CPU than the 360 and many believe it would require more CPU power to emulate the cell versus 360's CPU. Whether or not that's true, there is evidence that X1 is not using just brute force power to emulate the 360.

Sony has made (or ported) a PS2 emulator to PS4. I own numerous emulated PS2 games on PS4. Not quite sure they would skip PS3 emulation if demand is so high, probably because they can't do it?

Eitherway, its likely PS5 will have the CPU power needed to emulate PS3. Which would be great even if they don't want to add BC per se, I would buy some emulated PS3 games with improved performance and resolution. Maybe even make other graphical improvements like Xbox One X does for some games.