PS3 and PS Vita stores no longer closing

[Pemalite]

DonFerrari said:

Pemalite said:

Just can't see why Sony doesn't just emulate the PS3 on the PS5 and roll the store into it's own separate section and continue to profit from the platform.

But good news for the older platforms, lets keep them around for as long as possible.

Well Sony certainly could do the emulator (and possibly have something on that regard), but from their several speeches they have mapped that although highly asked for it is rarely used so it is unlikely that they will put it until they can see that let`s say on Xbox a lot of people are using it. They make a lot more money selling remasters and remakes.

The most reliable data point (Rather than an arbitrary statement by Sony or Microsoft) is "Xbox 360 games account for 2.3 per cent of total backward compatibility playtime."

That was data obtained via Ars Technica.
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/06/xbox-unleashed-our-deep-dive-study-of-how-millions-use-xbox-live/

However Ars also goes on to state that their numbers could be skewed incorrectly.

However... Whilst Sony states that Backwards Compatibility is "insignificant" Microsoft goes on the books to state: "Usage remains high” and that quality games last and are worth playing”."
https://www.mcvuk.com/business-news/publishing/data-questions-popularity-of-xbox-backwards-compatibility/

Xbox chief marketing officer Mike Nichols pointed out that around half of Xbox One owners have tried backwards compatibility, clocking up over 508m play hours in the process, which does seem to be a pretty good uptake.

So who do you believe? I personally believe neither because it's irrelevant.

Sony hasn't had reliable backwards compatibility uptake numbers in modern times as the last console that had backwards compatibility were the fat Playstation 3's... That was over a decade ago.
Games are a bit different today, the leaps are not as pronounced between generations.

Either way, my personal view is... I don't care about the business side of the equation, but what is best for the consumer? And that is certainly backwards compatibility.
Thankfully the Xbox Series X is backwards compatible with all Xbox One titles and the Playstation 5 is backwards compatible with all Playstation 4 titles, so obviously Backwards compatibility is important to these companies otherwise they would have walled things off... Making any prior statement about backwards compatibility uptake entirely redundant.

One thing we need to keep in mind is that Backwards compatibility is also about video game preservation...
And let's be frank here, with the Playstation 3 emulators going ahead in leaps and bounds, the extreme maturity of PS1 and PS2 emulators, Sony could take that base, improve upon it and bring backwards compatibility to the PS4/PS5 with relatively little effort and cost... The bulk of the hard work has already been done for them. (Or allow the emulators on the app store or something.)

Either way, just my 2 cents. I'm a PC gamer, so backwards compatibility has been a natural thing for decades now.