There are many reasons why PC is my main platform by a large margin. One of the reasons is backwards compatibility.
| OneTime said: Is anyone really buying a PS5 to play PS4 games? Backward compatibility is largely driven by what hardware upgrades a console gets. PS4 and PS5 both contain standard PC parts: an x64 processor with AMD GPU, so you can do backward compatibility fairly easily. The PS3 had a custom IBM Cell processor so it couldn't. From a consumer's perspective, if you already have a PS4 then you don't need PS5 to play PS4 games. When you upgrade, you probably want to play PS5 games anyway. If you want to sell your PS4 for money, you'll need to include a pile of games to make it worthwhile. So backwards compatibility actually doesn't actually matter much more than a advertising checkbox if you think through it... |
Of course no one's going to buy a PS5 to play PS4 games, at least not in a long time (if ever). However, being able to play older games is quite convenient, because then you don't need several consoles for playing older games. I don't know about you, but my living room has only so much space for consoles, and isn't getting smaller - quite the opposite in fact. I simply can't keep every console ready to play or even reserve room for a console because I don't have enough suitable room for that. I already have PS3 and PS4 taking up most of the space, so yes, backwards compatability is pretty big. I also have some PS2 games I'd like to play some time but alas, there's no room for a PS2 as well.
Backwards compatibility is handled really poorly on most consoles at the moment, except for Microsoft's (and trust me, I have no love for Microsoft, but I do appreciate what they've done with backwards compatibility even though I don't own any Xbox console). Poor backwards compatibility on Sony's consoles is a major reason why I'm not interested in a new PlayStation whenever one comes out, and it affects how much I'm willing to pay for a console. It's also why PC has cemented its place so strongly as my main platform - I simply have no trust in longevity on Sony's platforms. Especially after Sony sold PS1 games on Store for PS3, the lack of PS1 support on PS4 was a huge disappointment for me - and I'm also quite disappointed by the lack of PS2 support on PS3 and PS4.
