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[Pallas]

Nah the 360 is the better machine but its xenon cpu is quite outclassed by the cell processor in pure power.

Also Sony are no where near as adept at emulation as MS. No way they could have had ps3 bc on ps4 but yes for ps2 they had no excuse they're just lazy/greedy.

While agree, the Xenon was also based on the cell so it took a bit of work to get it emulated on the Xbox one, even crazier that they got the original Xbox emulated on the Xbox One.

Not saying they(Sony) could of done PS3 compatibility on the PS4, but it should be easier on the PS5 I’d hope.

You are right about MS being really adept at emulation, I don’t want to say Sony is not as great at it but the talent on the software side might not be able to do it and have it looking good.

Still, they could of done PS1/PS2 emulation at least but instead used PSNow to stream it instead of properly emulating.

Will that change with PS5 or should we still expect to stream PS1/PS2 content?

 

[Chozofication_]

While agree, the Xenon was also based on the cell so it took a bit of work to get it emulated on the Xbox one, even crazier that they got the original Xbox emulated on the Xbox One.

Not saying they(Sony) could of done PS3 compatibility on the PS4, but it should be easier on the PS5 I’d hope.

You are right about MS being really adept at emulation, I don’t want to say Sony is not as great at it but the talent on the software side might not be able to do it and have it looking good.

Still, they could of done PS1/PS2 emulation at least but instead used PSNow to stream it instead of properly emulating.

Will that change with PS5 or should we still expect to stream PS1/PS2 content?

Honestly I think we're going to be lucky to get ps4 BC. And believe me I'm hoping for it. If they don't it's a pass for me.

Ps5 will definitely be powerful enough to emulate ps3, but I would not expect it lol.

I always thought ps4 didn't have ps1 bc because it can't play cds, so that definitely won't happen on 5 either. They could do ps2 but its a matter of effort on their part.

 

[Three]

You need to chill.

I'm chilled

 

[pramod]

I hope so. There are still some original Xbox games that I still want to play.

 

[JareBear: Remastered]

Sounds like he knows literally nothing.

Both consoles will be backwards compatible, even though that shit doesn't matter.

I think it will start to matter more next gen

 

[Pallas]

I think it will start to matter more next gen

I agree, especially with the trend moving more toward digital, gamers would love to carry their digital library to the next gen.

 

[Deyjandi_Von]

BC will be more of a factor next gen than it has ever been, which is why Sony would be monumentally stupid not to include it. We've all seen how much digital has exploded this generation, so if Sony wants to try and keep its lead, it needs to do everything it can to retain the people it's got locked into its ecosystem with the PS4. The more money people spend on digital purchases, the more likely they are to stick around if they have access to their old content, so as market leader, it's their obligation to keep and grow their userbase. Any other decision from them and they can kiss their lead goodbye, so it's more important to them than ever to make the PS5 BC.

 

[Pimpbaa]

Look at the smartphones market as an example - different OS, different specs, different producers, and yet - all the apps and games work perfectly fine, how? Because it's the same, ARM architecture, hence no emulation is and will ever be required. And same applies to the consoles now since they switched to x86 architecture - Jaguar, Ryzen, Intel's Core, old Athlons, Pentiums etc., all are able to run the same code just like that, the only major difference is the performance level, that's why current PCs can run 20-30 year old games with no additional work required. GPU? The same thing, after GPUs went to unified shaders architecture it's all basically the same hardware, especially on AMD side, where it's the same old GCN architecture for almost a decade, there is virtually zero difference in Fury vs Vega vs Polaris TFlops, Navi most likely won't be an exception either. So yes, overall it IS all the same, spec-wise consoles are now basically PCs with fixed specification, nothing more.

PS. Next Xbox will run on Win10 no matter what, so it simplified things even further.




Because it is. It takes literally one day to port PS4/XB1 games to Pro/X, and also literally just one person to just tweak the config file to adjust the graphics/performance and a newer, more power hardware. And the same situation will happen when next-gen consoles arrive, with the most lazy effort being just setting the resolution to native 4K on PS5/XB2 vs 1800p/1440p/1080p/900p on X1X/PS4P/PS4/X1S. That's all it really takes, people have been doing it on PC for decades. Consoles moved away from exotic, overcomplicated architectures, that's a game changer that needs to be taken into serious consideration whenever discussing BC in consoles now.

Consoles are not smartphones. Both ios and android are designed to work for a variety of hardware (android moreso). Current gen consoles have os' designed or fine tuned for specific hardware and to use as little resources are possible. Next gen consoles wlil have more ram and cpu resources available and their OS' will change considerably. Less so for the next xbox as we all know windows was design to run on a vast range of hardware. But that will still be different enough that xb1 games will not work on the next xbox unless MS' designs it to do so. Same goes for Sony. PS4 Pro and XB1X were just extensions of existing hardware and used the same OS and really has nothing do with with next gen hardware. I mean they even used the same CPUs, probably out of fear of breaking compatibility of with non enhanced games. Basically what i'm saying is next gen consoles won't be backwards compatible out of the box unless Sony and MS' design their OS' to do so.

 

[dirthead]

If they're just PCs like the PS4 and Xbox One were, they better fucking be backwards compatible.

While agree, the Xenon was also based on the cell so it took a bit of work to get it emulated on the Xbox one, even crazier that they got the original Xbox emulated on the Xbox One.

Not saying they(Sony) could of done PS3 compatibility on the PS4, but it should be easier on the PS5 I’d hope.

You are right about MS being really adept at emulation, I don’t want to say Sony is not as great at it but the talent on the software side might not be able to do it and have it looking good.

Still, they could of done PS1/PS2 emulation at least but instead used PSNow to stream it instead of properly emulating.

Will that change with PS5 or should we still expect to stream PS1/PS2 content?

It really isn't emulation. They basically just recompiled the games, which is why you have to redownload them. The Xbox One is not powerful enough to actually emulate the 360 hardware.

 

[Deputy Moonman]

Way to go out on a limb with that prediction. Lol. Does this guy get paid to be really bold?

 

[Redneckerz]

If they're just PCs like the PS4 and Xbox One were, they better fucking be backwards compatible.

PS4/XBO aren't just PC's.

It really isn't emulation. They basically just recompiled the games, which is why you have to redownload them. The Xbox One is not powerful enough to actually emulate the 360 hardware.

They didn't just recompile the games. And its also not emulation in the broader sense of the word. Its a combination of reverse engineering, a virtual emulation stack, a hypervisor and recompilation.

Not that you care giving a better answer, but here is the article, and the video is below.

 

[bhunachicken]

It would be absurd if the PS5 wasn't backward compatible with the PS4 / PS4 Pro. Upgrading to a PS5 and keeping all your own games (with the potential for better frame rates, etc) would be a no-brainer for any PS4 owner.

 

[Deleted member 738976]

“I don’t like it with the Switch that it’s not backward compatible, but when they came out with the Wii U, hey every game on the Wii worked. That should be the way to do it,”

No shit? That's like asking why can't you play Gamecube disc on the Nintendo DS.

 

[JareBear: Remastered]

While agree, the Xenon was also based on the cell so it took a bit of work to get it emulated on the Xbox one, even crazier that they got the original Xbox emulated on the Xbox One.

Really? I honestly never heard that before

 

[Chozofication_]

Really? I honestly never heard that before

Yeah. The cell was well into production and then Microsoft sent their ninjas to IBM to get a similar chip made for 360 behind Sony's back lol.

The cell has one main power pc core, and xenon is basically 3 of those plus hyperthreading.

 

[Panajev2001a]

Really? I honestly never heard that before

If you read the book “Race for a New Game Machine” you can see how the research that created the PPU (CELL is based off one general purpose PowerPC core with VMX, FPU, etc... clocked very high and supporting SMT/HyperThreading and 8 SPU vector processing optimised cores) and especially its very high frequency multithreaded PowerPC core was essentially used by IBM to gain Xbox 360’s contract too. MS got a nice jump forward and worked with IBM to customise it (new VMX-128 unit with extra registers and new instructions, for optimised dot products and other “horizontal” vector operations), work on the bus system to connect it to their GPU, and design the tri-core Xenon chip.

 

[Pallas]

Really? I honestly never heard that before

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenon_(processor)

It’s a good article to read on Wiki. I can try to find other sources if you don’t trust wiki.

If they're just PCs like the PS4 and Xbox One were, they better fucking be backwards compatible.



It really isn't emulation. They basically just recompiled the games, which is why you have to redownload them. The Xbox One is not powerful enough to actually emulate the 360 hardware.

PS4/XBO aren't just PC's.


They didn't just recompile the games. And its also not emulation in the broader sense of the word. Its a combination of reverse engineering, a virtual emulation stack, a hypervisor and recompilation.

Not that you care giving a better answer, but here is the article, and the video is below.

Ah yeah, I should of worded that better. It’s still an achievement in itself though.

 

[Panajev2001a]

Yeah. The cell was well into production and then Microsoft sent their ninjas to IBM to get a similar chip made for 360 behind Sony's back lol.

The cell has one main power pc core, and xenon is basically 3 of those plus hyperthreading.

Both PPU and PPX cores are two way multithreaded cores (albeit an implementation that for more always borders between SMT and Switch on Event/SoE MT as the instructions were not simultaneously fetched from more than one instruction stream). Xenon has three cores yes, but the customisations were down to resources and new instructions (VMX-128 unit with new instructions and 128 x 128 bits registers).

 

[Redneckerz]

Really? I honestly never heard that before

Xenon is based off the PPE used in Cell, its a slightly modified variant.

Ah yeah, I should of worded that better. It’s still an achievement in itself though.

Haha no probs, i was not addressing you, just the guy who routinely makes crappy unnuanced takes. You were on the money though.

 

[JareBear: Remastered]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenon_(processor)

It’s a good article to read on Wiki. I can try to find other sources if you don’t trust wiki.




.

Thanks for the info. At least I learned something today.

 

[Chozofication_]

Both PPU and PPX cores are two way multithreaded cores (albeit an implementation that for more always borders between SMT and Switch on Event/SoE MT as the instructions were not simultaneously fetched from more than one instruction stream). Xenon has three cores yes, but the customisations were down to resources and new instructions (VMX-128 unit with new instructions and 128 x 128 bits registers).

I always thought ps3 was single threaded. Does that mean ps3 has 12 threads available for games?

 

[TeamGhobad]

will that make a difference for the next xbox..

 

[Dontero]

Nothing from Sony leads me to believe they'd suddenly embrace backwards compatibility on their system.

IT will be effectively free because all of them will be using more or less same architectures without changes from past gen.

 

[Panajev2001a]

I always thought ps3 was single threaded. Does that mean ps3 has 12 threads available for games?

You have a single PPU with two HW threads and 8 SPU’s out of which 7 are enabled and 1-2 are mostly reserved for the OS (PPE and SPE is the name of respectivel PPU and SPU each their cache and the DMAC and all the extra logic, the whole whole enchilada ... Element = core execution Unit + cache + DMA + etc...). The SPU’s run effectively a single instruction stream ar a time with the 4-wide SIMD execution units (compared to PS2’s VU’s in the Emotion Engine these units can work with virtual addresses and can effectively self feed using their own DMA controller).

The way most of the advanced engines treated those units (even more so now that we have a generation two of these concepts) is that the PPU was the orchestrator (the main thread) and you split the rest of your workload in a sea of smaller (as independent as possible) 256 KB or less chunks of code and data that the SPE’s available to the game can pick up.

Xenon was three dual threaded cores (each a souped up version of the PPU/PPE cluster in the CELL CPU), so 6 HW threads total.

 

[Gavon West]

Yeah, it'll be interesting to see if Sony includes BC in the PS5. They make a huge amount of money by charging for streaming and remasters. Will they really include it for next gen and lose such a substantial cash flow to be equal with the competition and offer it for free??

 

[bhunachicken]

Same devs have now chimed in to say that they expect the PS5 and Xbox Next to have 8 - 12GB RAM, with 8GB of dedicated VRAM:

https://gamingbolt.com/ps5-and-next-xbox-will-likely-have-8-to-12gb-of-ram-says-hellpoint-dev

In effect, they're suggesting that Sony and MS will move away from the unified memory pool architecture and return to fixed amounts. Sony had this setup in PS1, PS2, and PS3, only breaking the mould with PS4. I believe MS had always used the unified pool idea (Xbox 1 had 64MB shared). I always thought the shared pool was a better idea, handing more control to the devs as to how they can allocate resources.

The total RAM 16 - 20GB sounds about right, however, so I wouldn't be surprised if we actually this amount with the same unified setup.

(the cynical part of me is suggesting that the dev may be making all these statements to raise their profile and remind people they have a game coming out in the next couple of months)

 

[Panajev2001a]

Same devs have now chimed in to say that they expect the PS5 and Xbox Next to have 8 - 12GB RAM, with 8GB of dedicated VRAM:

https://gamingbolt.com/ps5-and-next-xbox-will-likely-have-8-to-12gb-of-ram-says-hellpoint-dev

In effect, they're suggesting that Sony and MS will move away from the unified memory pool architecture and return to fixed amounts. Sony had this setup in PS1, PS2, and PS3, only breaking the mould with PS4. I believe MS had always used the unified pool idea (Xbox 1 had 64MB shared). I always thought the shared pool was a better idea, handing more control to the devs as to how they can allocate resources.

The total RAM 16 - 20GB sounds about right, however, so I wouldn't be surprised if we actually this amount with the same unified setup.

Having a single memory pool makes allocating memory easier although it was only with the current generation that more wasteful memory to memory transfers when you move dat from CPU memory space to GPU memory space. Now HSA / shared pointers between CPU and GPU save those copies.

On the other side, you lose bandwidth and if you need a loooooot more bandwidth and thus a more expensive memory subsystem to power it then it would be more efficient / cheaper to have two pools with different speeds than say a single 16 GB pool delivering close to 1 TB/s.

Whatever they choose I hope that CPU and GPU can freely read each other’s memory pools at decent speed (not like PS3 una balanced approach) and share the address space.

 

[Alx]

BC makes much more sense nowadays with services like PSN+/GwG/Gamepass. Sure at the time of PS2 or 360, it was just a way for users to keep playing their old games, which was a low priority when you had a new console. But with gaming services, it grants you access to a much larger library of games to offer or add to a subscription. The game pass would feel much more limited without all the 360 games.
In the end we're all going towards the "games are games" philosophy and care less about which platform they were designed for.

 

[Panajev2001a]

Yeah, it'll be interesting to see if Sony includes BC in the PS5. They make a huge amount of money by charging for streaming and remasters. Will they really include it for next gen and lose such a substantial cash flow to be equal with the competition and offer it for free??

That is indeed an interesting question. The answer is that they may have to do both: keep offering the PSNow solution for some gamers and the PS4 BC one for the others as we cannot delude ourselves of the importance of digital libraries for customers. XCloud and BC do not cannibalise each other... why should PSNow and BC?

I am quite positive PS5 will play PS4 discs and will enhance a good deal of them too (quite certainly the Pro patches ones).

 

[Freeman76]

Considering the success of BC on XB1 you would have to be pretty out of touch to think either console would not have it going forward.

 

[Chozofication_]

Sony had this setup in PS1, PS2, and PS3,

Ps2 is a unified setup. One pool of memory + eDRAM is still considered unified just like 360 and Wii U.

Also I highly doubt the next consoles won't have a unified setup and there goes all this guy's credibility for me.

Its possible however we could see for example 4gb of ddr4 exclusively for the OS, and then 16gb+ gddr6 for games. However that would still be considered unified as the pool for games code would be all in one place.

After all Sony has 1gb of ddr(3?) In ps4 pro for background tasks.

 

[Panajev2001a]

Ps2 is a unified setup. One pool of memory + eDRAM is still considered unified just like 360 and Wii U.

Also I highly doubt the next consoles won't have a unified setup and there goes all this guy's credibility for me.

Its possible however we could see for example 4gb of ddr4 exclusively for the OS, and then 16gb+ gddr6 for games. However that would still be considered unified as the pool for games code would be all in one place.

After all Sony has 1gb of ddr(3?) In ps4 pro for background tasks.

I would kind of disagree on the PS2 front (although, I do see your point vs Xbox 360, but eDRAM there was essentially only a backbuffer storage to take bandwidth away from the main shared memory pool) because of both video data and sound data were essentially limited by their dedicated memory pools (SPU2 the sound chip had its own RAM pool). GS could not directly read the main Direct RDRAM pool nor could the EE easily read the GS eDRAM (you could do it, it was just not very practical to invert the GIF
-to-GS bus and transfer data back to the EE).

The GS could only render to the eDRAM and could only texture from it thus forcing people to make memory allocation strategies from graphics vs general data in function of the size of those pools (albeit streaming data in and out of the eDRAM could get you pretty far). For many games the texturing budget per frame was limited by the size of the eDRAM and how fast you could stream data in and how much that could buy you extra.

 

[bhunachicken]

Ps2 is a unified setup. One pool of memory + eDRAM is still considered unified just like 360 and Wii U.

Ah, I never knew this. I always thought Sony went with a split in RAM vs VRAM. Well, since they appear to be playing odds and evens, maybe we WILL see a non-unified setup in the PS5

Its possible however we could see for example 4gb of ddr4 exclusively for the OS, and then 16gb+ gddr6 for games. However that would still be considered unified as the pool for games code would be all in one place.

4GB just for the OS and 16GB for everything else is what I'd like to see. The OS gobbles up so much RAM (especially in the early days) that giving it its own pool would be good.

 

[MayauMiao]

Good. Saves me the money from buying the PS4 Pro to keep my PS4 library alive.

 

[Torrent of Pork]

If Sony was truly stupid enough to not include full PS4 BC on day 1, assuming Microsoft launched first could you imagine the butthurt if MS launched a super-deep sale on the best games of the gen for OG, 360, and X1 on the PS5 launch day? Call it the "Welcome to the Family" sale.

 

[Chozofication_]

I would kind of disagree on the PS2 front (although, I do see your point vs Xbox 360, but eDRAM there was essentially only a backbuffer storage to take bandwidth away from the main shared memory pool) because of both video data and sound data were essentially limited by their dedicated memory pools (SPU2 the sound chip had its own RAM pool). GS could not directly read the main Direct RDRAM pool nor could the EE easily read the GS eDRAM (you could do it, it was just not very practical to invert the GIF
-to-GS bus and transfer data back to the EE).

The GS could only render to the eDRAM and could only texture from it thus forcing people to make memory allocation strategies from graphics vs general data in function of the size of those pools (albeit streaming data in and out of the eDRAM could get you pretty far). For many games the texturing budget per frame was limited by the size of the eDRAM and how fast you could stream data in and how much that could buy you extra.

True, but unlike ps3's split pool there were absolutely no bottlenecks with regards to fillrate and memory bandwidth.

I remember some games like sphinx on ps2 had higher res textures than the GameCube version, and I assumed that's because the textures were stored in ps2s main memory and since gc had less main 1tsram you had that gap in quality. Because if cubes edram was used you should never have worse textures than ps2.

Ps2 is weird man, the EE and GS are designed to feed each other and do tasks in bits and pieces. I guess you could call it split memory but not in the sense that a pc has vram and system ram or like ps3.

 

[Rayderism]

If Sony wants to monetize physical BC, they could sell the BC app to allow you to play your physical PS1/2 (and maybe even PS3) games. I could deal with that. I would really like to kick out the non-HDMI Playstations from under my TV in favor of one that would just play those games with native HDMI support.

If PS5 supported PS4 physical/digital games, that would be great, but if it also had full PS2 support (and that would mean PS1 also), I think that would help them dominate next gen. I could kick out the PS2 and PS4 and just have a PS3 and PS5 to serve me for all of my extensive library of physical Playstation games through the generations.

 

[mckmas8808]

Nothing from Sony leads me to believe they'd suddenly embrace backwards compatibility on their system. I expect to see Playstation Now more aggressively promoted(it'd make a hell of a PSN +incentive also).

Microsoft I expect there to be backwards compatibility out of the box day 1.

So the PS2 and the OG PS3 don't count?

 

[SonGoku]

Sounds like he knows literally nothing.

Sums up "hellpoint dev" to a T.
Notice how they don't even use the studio name, they are giving these shitty "its nothing" interviews in hopes to atract some attention to their game.

 

[IbizaPocholo]

PS5 and Xbox Scarlett Should Be Easier to Optimize for; Backward Compatibility Will Benefit Entire Industry – Exception Dev

gamingbolt.com

 

[TLZ]

Exception dev, the new Hellpoint dev?

 

[SonGoku]

Exception dev, the new Hellpoint dev?

Read my mind, gamingbolt are shameless

 

[Pantz]

I was hoping for a Hellpoint dev comeback

 

[IbizaPocholo]

Xbox Series X, PS5 Backwards Compatibility Means “More Work Supporting More Platforms” – Dev

gamingbolt.com

 

[darkinstinct]

Xbox Series X, PS5 Backwards Compatibility Means “More Work Supporting More Platforms” – Dev

gamingbolt.com

I fail to see why Backwards Compatibility means more support for more platforms. It's the other way around, you don't have to create a PS5 version, you can just support the PS4 version.