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Forums - Sony Discussion - The PS4 really should have backwards compatibility!

GOWTLOZ on 19 April 2018
Pemalite said:
GOWTLOZ said:

The PS4 CPU isn't much more powerful than a Cell CPU not enough to emulate it. My PC argument was to prove my point. There is lots of interest in PS3 emulation and huge support for it but its a difficult job. Sony can't make the PS4 hardware do wonders there are physical limits to what the PS4 can do.

The Playstation 4's CPU is significantly ahead of the Cell in anything that is not single precision, iterative refinement.
That means, integers, half precision, single precision, double precision will all be significantly better on Jaguar.

With that in mind... The overall performance gap between the Xbox 360 and Xbox One is significantly smaller than the Playstation 3 and Playstation 4... Microsoft still managed to pull it off by approaching the issue from multiple different angles.

I think people get the idea that emulating games on console is somehow going to be the same kind of situation on PC, when that simply isn't the case, Microsoft and Sony can get away with allot less overhead in their Emulation attempts.

GOWTLOZ said:

They don't have a magic wand to make PS4 powerful enough to emulate a PS3. I doubt you understand just how weak the Jaguar CPU on the PS4 is and the difficulty of emulating a very different architecture on hardware that's not vastly superior to the hardware you want to emulate.

It would be possible on the PS5 if it has a Zen CPU there's no doubt about that. PS4 just no.

Before you try and insult VGPolyglot's intellectual fortitude... Go look up Binary Translation, Virtualization, Code Morphing... And then come back... Especially look at what nVidia/Transmeta was attempting with Denver.

VGPolyglot said:

The PS4 is more powerful than a PS3, the argument that since PCs can't run it does sound fine, but even original Xbox games don't have solid emulators on the PC, despite the fact that the 360 had some BC support and the Xbox One does too:

 

Playstation 3 emulator is better than the 360 emulator on PC anyway.

DonFerrari said:

From what we know X1 on the months after release of BC had an average of 5m per user who used BC on it.

Hence my "Millions" claim. :)

flashfire926 said:

True. Fair point. But the PS3 and PS2  were very different architectures, so it took much more to implement it. Now, with PS5 most likely going to have X86 architecture with AMD based cpu/gpu (just like the PS4), that cost will likely be well below 50 bucks. Think of how Wii had gamecube BC while only being $249. Or XBO, PS2, GBA, early DS, 3DS, etc.

Just because they retain the same x86 Architecture doesn't mean that native backwards compatibility will not be broken.

There are so many other links in the chain that can break native backwards compatibility... Otherwise Microsoft would have had it baked in hardware from the outset on the Xbox One for the Original Xbox, rather they still had to do a ton of extra work and roll it out for specific games.

Same can happen with Next Gen... Especially as Ryzen is a significantly different uArch to Jaguar... And Navi could have some major deviations from the Graphics Core Next 1.0 derived parts on the Xbox One/Playstation 4.
Plus you have some custom parts of the SoC's as well, which may be removed. - For example on the Xbox One, Microsoft retained native hardware support for a few Xbox 360 features, some Xbox One developers may leverage some of that to a degree if it is exposed and beneficial.

Plus we may see a dramatic shift at the API and hardware level as we transition to Ray Tracing.

I didn't say that Jaguar isn't more powerful than the Cell but the performance difference isn't there to emulate the Cell architecture and it is known to be very complicated and more different to the x86 architecture than the PowerPC architecture in the 360. Where did I insult his intelligence? He seems to not have knowledge about various architectures which I do to some degree and appears to consider emulation to be independent of the ability of the hardware which it is not. I was just telling him that, it surely has nothing to do with intelligence as microprocessor architecture isn't common knowledge.



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CartBlanche on 19 April 2018

I totally disagree! BC hasn't helped Microsoft sell more Xbox Ones (which lots of people believed would happen). Which reinforces my belief that BC is a NICE to have, rather than a MUST have. If you have NO interesting games then BC is a great distraction and keeps you using your console, but I'd rather Microsoft spent the money, man and brain power behind BC to create NEW IPs for the Xbox One. Also when I had the original PS3, with the PS2 chip built in, I think I played 1 of my old PS2 games. I honestly didn't miss any of the PS2 games. This tells me that gamers buy new consoles to play new games, not old games. If you want to play old games you install MAME and go all gooeyed about retro stuff. But new consoles should be for new IPs and new experiences, for the most part.

I like Sony's idea of having curated Remasters, that they know people will re-invest in. I see no point in having blanket BC because most games in any generation are totally crap! While selecting the really good ones, that have great gameplay and story and already have a wide fan base, Sony know that the small investment of updating the game will pay off with gamers buying it again, if it offers at the very least a new look. Shadow the Colossus comes to mind.

The only way Sony will have BC is if they use pretty much exactly the same HW as the PS4, in the PS5, but just beef up everything, so everything just runs, with little to no changes by the developers. Something that bumps up everything to 8k with no developer changes would be good, but it wouldn't stop me from buying a PS5 if they left that out.



Pemalite on 19 April 2018
GOWTLOZ said:

I didn't say that Jaguar isn't more powerful than the Cell but the performance difference isn't there to emulate the Cell architecture and it is known to be very complicated and more different to the x86 architecture than the PowerPC architecture in the 360. Where did I insult his intelligence? He seems to not have knowledge about various architectures which I do to some degree and appears to consider emulation to be independent of the ability of the hardware which it is not. I was just telling him that, it surely has nothing to do with intelligence as microprocessor architecture isn't common knowledge.

Who says you need to emulate anything? Did you not look anything up? (Binary Translation, Virtualization, Code Morphing)

If you think Microsoft is emulating every single aspect of the Xbox 360 on the Xbox One, you are kidding yourself.
I think people conflate how emulation is done on PC to how it should be on consoles, there is more than one approach to achieving backwards compatibility...

The Cell is PowerPC based, just like the Xbox 360.



--::{PC Gaming Master Race}::--

reviniente on 19 April 2018

reviniente said:

Ironically, the only ones paying (again, I might add) are the ones having to buy games they already own.

And those who buy it again chose to. If someone doesn't want BC on the console he can't buy it without (at least there haven't been options with or without being sold at the same time... well except old stock from PS3 when it transitioned).

1. If given the choice, most people would choose free, don't you agree?

2. This is parallel universe material. Are you trying to say Xbox owners are somehow paying extra for this feature? If someone doesn't want backwards compatibility, he/she doesn't have to buy/play backwards compatible games.



DonFerrari on 20 April 2018
reviniente said:

And those who buy it again chose to. If someone doesn't want BC on the console he can't buy it without (at least there haven't been options with or without being sold at the same time... well except old stock from PS3 when it transitioned).

1. If given the choice, most people would choose free, don't you agree?

2. This is parallel universe material. Are you trying to say Xbox owners are somehow paying extra for this feature? If someone doesn't want backwards compatibility, he/she doesn't have to buy/play backwards compatible games.

Shall you be teached on the matter that there is no free lunch? BC have a cost, you may not pay it directly but you pay it, because the company doing the R&D need to recoup the money.



duduspace11 "Well, since we are estimating costs, Pokemon Red/Blue did cost Nintendo about $50m to make back in 1996"

http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=8808363

Mr Puggsly: "Hehe, I said good profit. You said big profit. Frankly, not losing money is what I meant by good. Don't get hung up on semantics"

http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=9008994

Azzanation: "PS5 wouldn't sold out at launch without scalpers."

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reviniente on 21 April 2018
DonFerrari said:
reviniente said:

1. If given the choice, most people would choose free, don't you agree?

2. This is parallel universe material. Are you trying to say Xbox owners are somehow paying extra for this feature? If someone doesn't want backwards compatibility, he/she doesn't have to buy/play backwards compatible games.

Shall you be teached on the matter that there is no free lunch? BC have a cost, you may not pay it directly but you pay it, because the company doing the R&D need to recoup the money.

This is the first time I've seen you give up on a discussion. Maybe it's for the best, really.



DonFerrari on 21 April 2018
reviniente said:
DonFerrari said:

Shall you be teached on the matter that there is no free lunch? BC have a cost, you may not pay it directly but you pay it, because the company doing the R&D need to recoup the money.

This is the first time I've seen you give up on a discussion. Maybe it's for the best, really.

You probably didn't understand my answer. No biggie.



duduspace11 "Well, since we are estimating costs, Pokemon Red/Blue did cost Nintendo about $50m to make back in 1996"

http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=8808363

Mr Puggsly: "Hehe, I said good profit. You said big profit. Frankly, not losing money is what I meant by good. Don't get hung up on semantics"

http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=9008994

Azzanation: "PS5 wouldn't sold out at launch without scalpers."

FloatingWaffles on 21 April 2018

I would love to see BC on the PS4 since there's plenty of PS3 games I want to replay.

If it's because of the PS3's architecture as to why the PS4 can't do it then fine, I think that's understandable. If their 'solution' to it was to have people give them even more money just to stream the games they already owned, that's laughable in comparison to how Microsoft did it all for free. 

Last edited by FloatingWaffles - on 21 April 2018

CartBlanche on 02 May 2018

There's always PlayStation Now - http://www.vgchartz.com/article/276131/playstation-now-getting-ps2-games-this-month/



Madword on 02 May 2018

Personally I would rather have remasters... but to be honest I would rather have it on the PS5 than the 4... so they can do a proper job of it.

Still surprised Sony havent started bundling PSNow with PS Plus, they have so much content, its about time for a single Netflix type service with games, movies and music, it would be amazing.



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