With all the 40GB PS3 hooha going around, it brought up an interesting point:

How important is backwards compatibility? 

Back in the NES days, I never had backwards compatibility. My mom forced me to give away my NES when I got my SNES. Although I missed my NES, I had enough games on the SNES to keep me going (Mario Kart FTW!) Soon after I got the N64, I let my cousin borrow my SNES and it was stolen from him. With my teenie tiny N64 collection, I was so mad.

When the PS2 announced PS1 backwards compatibility, I laughed. I thought it wouldn't be a big factor. I mean, you want to play PS1 games, you have a PS1 right? But friends who bought it told me they could use the other advantages of the PS2 (DVD playback, mainly) in the meantime. That is, they could treat it like a fancyman's PS1 while waiting for the PS2 library to get good. They didn't assume the PS2 game lineup would be immediately awesome. That was only 7 years ago.

I remember when Nintendo published the Game Boy Color and announced backwards compatibility (and pallette tinting, whoopie!) I didn't have many Game Boy games (allowance was tight) so it didn't affect me much. Then in college the Game Boy Advance came out and BAM! BC with GBC and GB games. I played the crud out of Dragon Warrior 3 (The GBC remake) at least 3 times on my GBA. I don't care how much the cartridge stuck out of the back. But...that's the only GBC game I played near the end of the GBA's lifespan.

When the Nintendo DS was announced to have ONLY GBA backwards compatibility, I was dissapointed. Then I realized the only GBC game I played was a long time ago. Heck, I don't even play GBA games anymore (I really should borrow FF6 from my roomates, heh.) But it was good to know that I didn't have to drop my entire collection just because of a hardware upgrade.

Another issue is living room space. If I only have enough room for one type of console, then I'll only keep the games for that console. For my PS2, it was an easy choice to simply pack my PS1, never to be touched again. With my Gamecube I flat out stopped playing my N64; too much time and hassle to hook it back up when I needed it. Backwards compatibility made it easier to find room for consoles in my living room: I could swap the old model for the new one that played all the games I own AND the newer spiffier games I would eventually buy.

From a product innovation perspective, it's pretty interesting how the innovation -> imitation -> saturation loop is being broken by technology. The PS2 brought BC to home consoles, so the competitors tried to include it into the next generation. The X360's graphics architecture is completely different, so that caused issues when they tried to BC stuff. The Wii is a Gamecube on turbo so they have the elegant solution of using the same hardware. Sony has the hardware, but needs to cut costs so they emulated it. And now they may be dropping it to save more money. Looks like BC is harder to add than people thought.

Sorry for the aimless...post here. But how important was backwards compatibility to you? How important do you think BC is for console manufactures versus the design cost? Try to avoid a "PS3 SUX" flamewar...if you can.

for me personally it was never really important im the kind of person who traded in all my old games once a new system comes out..

For me backwards compability is a very good point because I don't like having too many consoles at the same time, and you don't loose all that money you paid on previous games.

There's no bad point for BC.

It's not important to me. As I posted in another thread, I put in my games to see if they would work, but have not ever gone back to play those PS2 games in the PS3.

Its not that important with me


btw, PS3 and 260 are going to steal some hella marketshare from the Wii with their entry level models

Multiple perspective to consider ...

The Retailer: From a retailer's perspective backwards compatibility is huge. Backwards compatibility makes it far easier to sell a system (the PS3 is compatible with over 1000 PS2 games for little Johnny to play) and allows them to continue the infinite-loop money maker of selling used games (they can buy a used PS2 game for $5 and sell it for $20, only for the game to be returned 2 weeks from now to be bought for $5 and sold for $20)

The Publisher/Developer: Right now there are probably a hundred development teams that were intending on starting a PS2 project in 2008 to be completed in 2009 knowing there would be millions of compatible PS2 and PS3 owners to sell their game to. Most of these publishers/developers are now wondering how big the demand for these games will be and whether they should choose another platform (most likely Wii).

Consumers: As a rough guess 75% of gamers don't spend $400+ on a console and really like cheap games; they like platinum hits, previous generation games and used games whenever they can get them. If the PS3 is to ever become more than a niche product they need a lot of gamers they hurt today.

I'm still going to be playing PS2 games for a while, but I have a PS2 for that. If I get a PS3 I'll get the cheaper 40GB in all likelihood. I use BC in the consoles that have it, but I usually forget about that option after a year of owning the system, and almost always I have the previous system that can play the old games anyway. Not a big deal for me beyond a little convienence.

It's important to me. I'm a game collector of sorts. Once I buy a game, I rarely get rid of it, and I often buy games from past gens in the new gen in order to get the backstory of a series. For instance, I didn't get MGS1 until recently.

However, most of my friends don't really care about BC. Once they get into the next-gen, they get all into the fancy visuals and never look back. I think that BC won't matter to the more causal crowd, but will matter to more hardcore gamers like me who play could be playing games from many generations at any given time.

Edit:  Hell, I still have my n64 hooked up, lol. 

Some games are immortal, and I want to play these games without having a billion consoles attached to my Tv

I think that it is important, but its importance diminishes after launch (for PS3 it will go when FF XIII comes out). By now, there are no games on PS2 that are better than what's avaliable on PS3 apart from a few exceptions. (ones that come to mind are GTA SA, FF XII, GoW (maybe HS is as good) PES 6 (certainly for Europe) Jaks, R & Cs MGS and a few more) I think that they should not have got rid of it for at least another year.

I personally sell most of my games, but keep all the classics (still have GTAs, FF X - XII, and some other PS2 classics) but I rarely play them, so after 26th October (when PES 08), I don't think it would have mattered to me (if I didn;t have one already), especially as I have a slimline PS2 and plently of room to keep it