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Full backwards compatibility may be a possibility on PS5 due to the filing of new Patents by Mark Cerny

SpokkX

Member
So you think that problem with Backwards compatibility is CPU/GPU clock. Alright™
Haha yes this guy on twitter seems to think BC is just about clockspeed

This has nothing to do with BC to older ps consoles. This is about bc with ps4, that uses the same archtecture for cpu/gpu as ps5

Older systems need to be emulated
 

TLZ

Banned
If they allow it, they will need to face the license issues. one of the reason, why MS stopped their BC program.

Its much better, they do it, through the psnow, with emulator, which can allow these games to be downloaded. Win win for everyone.
MS BC is different. They're all on the digital store and don't play from disc. They need licenses.

As for local BC from disc, that shouldn't need license per game, just how PS2 does PS1, and PS3 does PS2 and PS1 and so on.
 
you cant use the disc for ps4 or ps5. They cant read Cds.

Thought I read somewhere a few years back that hackers determined the PS4 DOES have the ability to read CD's (the necessary laser is there), it was just never enabled in firmware. Was that just BS?

This 2016/2017 pretty likely was refering to the PS4 BC available on PS5. Or maybe even the PSP emulator they did use for PSP remasters released on PS4.


In fact, some PS2 games did use CD instead of DVD. But yes, you're right.

I don't see how the hardware could stop it from reading CDs. Why would a smaller laser reader stop it from reading larger pits and lands? It's nonsense. If PS4 and PS5 can't read CDs, it's only because SONY doesn't want them to.
PS4 can physically read CDs, the function is just disabled by firmware


ZNefDqJ.png
 

yurinka

Member
PS4 can physically read CDs, the function is just disabled by firmware


ZNefDqJ.png
Nice, so they simply disabled it to avoid having to pay licenses. Which means that if some day they decide to add support of CD games they only would need a firmware update to allow to read them (plus obviously to pay the CD license, make the emulators, etc).
 

kingfey

Banned
Nice, so they simply disabled it to avoid having to pay licenses. Which means that if some day they decide to add support of CD games they only would need a firmware update to allow to read them (plus obviously to pay the CD license, make the emulators, etc).
That is how Xbox does it. Have emulator on their console, to read those discs. Dealing with license is big issues, since some studios dont exist at all.
 
Nice, so they simply disabled it to avoid having to pay licenses. Which means that if some day they decide to add support of CD games they only would need a firmware update to allow to read them (plus obviously to pay the CD license, make the emulators, etc).
Sony and Philips own the patents for CD technology. Sony doesn’t have to pay any fee to make a product with a cd player.
 

Trimesh

Banned
Nice, so they simply disabled it to avoid having to pay licenses. Which means that if some day they decide to add support of CD games they only would need a firmware update to allow to read them (plus obviously to pay the CD license, make the emulators, etc).

The ability to read CDs appears to be disabled in the low-level drive firmware, which is contained in a mask ROM in the drive controller chip. It's possible there is some back-door command you can send the drive to enable it, but both in the power-up condition and after the PS4 has initialized it the drive doesn't even attempt to look for CDs; it just checks using first the 405nm BR laser and then the 650nm DVD laser. The drive installed in the PS3 is also fitted with 3 different laser diodes, but it actually checks all 3 when you put a disc in.
 

yurinka

Member
That is how Xbox does it. Have emulator on their console, to read those discs. Dealing with license is big issues, since some studios dont exist at all.
Sony and Philips own the patents for CD technology. Sony doesn’t have to pay any fee to make a product with a cd player.
I think that if the consoles have the hardware to run CDs and don't play music CDs may have to do with them having to pay some license to someone.

For games it's a different story, because in addition to having to deal with the costs -and in the case of PS3, not being able to emulate many of its games at full speed with current hardware because it had some weird alien super powerful stuff- they would need to sign again the licensing with each IP owner of the game, which in many cases doesn't exist anymore and who knows who has the rights of these games. And even if available, maybe they had the rights split with some specific creator like musicians or so on, or had licenses of movies, cars, weapons or songs that expired and had to be negotiated and paid again. A lot of money and work needed that may not be worth because only a few people would be interested on it, as it has been the case with past BC cases when going beyond the previous gen of that console.
 

kingfey

Banned
I think that if the consoles have the hardware to run CDs and don't play music CDs may have to do with them having to pay some license to someone.

For games it's a different story, because in addition to having to deal with the costs -and in the case of PS3, not being able to emulate many of its games at full speed with current hardware because it had some weird alien super powerful stuff- they would need to sign again the licensing with each IP owner of the game, which in many cases doesn't exist anymore and who knows who has the rights of these games. And even if available, maybe they had the rights split with some specific creator like musicians or so on, or had licenses of movies, cars, weapons or songs that expired and had to be negotiated and paid again. A lot of money and work needed that may not be worth because only a few people would be interested on it, as it has been the case with past BC cases when going beyond the previous gen of that console.
Games have copyright protection. Playing on consoles, that arent designed for is illegal. Both companies have to have agreement with the owner of the code, and the game. Even if Sony or xbox have consoles, which can read these discs, they will get sued, if they can play those games.

Ps4/xbox one is different. Since they have the same source code with ps5/xseries. Ps1-ps3/xbox-x360 games on ps5/xseries is problem. The source code is wildly different. And that copyright law prevents them.
 
I think that if the consoles have the hardware to run CDs and don't play music CDs may have to do with them having to pay some license to someone.

For games it's a different story, because in addition to having to deal with the costs -and in the case of PS3, not being able to emulate many of its games at full speed with current hardware because it had some weird alien super powerful stuff- they would need to sign again the licensing with each IP owner of the game, which in many cases doesn't exist anymore and who knows who has the rights of these games. And even if available, maybe they had the rights split with some specific creator like musicians or so on, or had licenses of movies, cars, weapons or songs that expired and had to be negotiated and paid again. A lot of money and work needed that may not be worth because only a few people would be interested on it, as it has been the case with past BC cases when going beyond the previous gen of that console.
They own the technology to make the CD drive. Who would them be paying the license money to?

"For a pool member (or a third party cross‐ licensed to the pool member), the marginal cost per unit of using other pool members’ patents under the CD pool rules was zero, quite different from the steadily rising share of royalties in product cost that was faced by an outsider who did not belong to this club. A patent is in fact a legally granted right to exclude controlled by the patent holder, but the Justice letter to some extent buries this cold reality beneath noble rhetorical flourishes about non‐discriminatory licensing."

https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w18931/w18931.pdf
 
I think that if the consoles have the hardware to run CDs and don't play music CDs may have to do with them having to pay some license to someone.
In the case of the PS4 it apparently jad to do with the frequency range of the laser.
That is how Xbox does it. Have emulator on their console, to read those discs. Dealing with license is big issues, since some studios dont exist at all.
Xbox does not use emulation, they did like they did with the 360, the game runs a native binary (from the server) for the target platform... It only uses the assets from the original game.

This is probably why licensing is so complex, they basically do a port, even for those that still own original copies.

Now, if there was an actual emulation layer some games could be put in the store for purchase and download (like Sony already does for PS2), that would be entirely up to the publisher... And maybe, if the game runs natively from disc it could be just used, even if no official support for it exists.

I think that using existing media could work, third parties make old consoles that run NES/SNES even N64... No license.

D8zSFijU8AAVHcL.jpg


I think that the approach MS takes has serious benefits, but it also limits their reach.
 

kingfey

Banned
In the case of the PS4 it apparently jad to do with the frequency range of the laser.

Xbox does not use emulation, they did like they did with the 360, the game runs a native binary (from the server) for the target platform... It only uses the assets from the original game.

This is probably why licensing is so complex, they basically do a port, even for those that still own original copies.

Now, if there was an actual emulation layer some games could be put in the store for purchase and download (like Sony already does for PS2), that would be entirely up to the publisher... And maybe, if the game runs natively from disc it could be just used, even if no official support for it exists.

I think that using existing media could work, third parties make old consoles that run NES/SNES even N64... No license.

D8zSFijU8AAVHcL.jpg


I think that the approach MS takes has serious benefits, but it also limits their reach.
But fundamentally, Xbox 360 back-compat works on the principle of an emulation layer. There is some hardware assistance and - yes - some 'secret sauce' (Microsoft didn't want to be drawn on how the emulator supports Xbox 360's VMX128 vector units, for example), but the team is now at the point now where everything an Xbox 360 can do, its emulator can mirror in software. And that's impressive - by the end of the 360 era, developers had leeway to bypass the DirectX API and address the GPU more directly, potentially making transcompilation of code more challenging. Stillwell confirms that this isn't a problem for the emulation layer and in fact, the only thing that isn't supported is XNA.




Ops. You mentioned already my bad.
 
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Trimesh

Banned
In the case of the PS4 it apparently jad to do with the frequency range of the laser.

It's actually kind of strange - the drive certainly has the hardware to read CDs - but it never actually uses it. Here's an old post when I sacrificed a PS4 optical pickup to definitely answer what's in it:


But the firmware never actually turns it on - it checks for BR discs and DVDs and then stops. This is true even if you short out the SATA data lines to prevent the PS4 from configuring the drive.
 

Drew1440

Member
If they allow it, they will need to face the license issues. one of the reason, why MS stopped their BC program.

Its much better, they do it, through the psnow, with emulator, which can allow these games to be downloaded. Win win for everyone.
Liscensing would only be an issue if they were reselling the game via their store. This does not apply to playing games from a disc.
Thought I read somewhere a few years back that hackers determined the PS4 DOES have the ability to read CD's (the necessary laser is there), it was just never enabled in firmware. Was that just BS?
Pretty much all Blu-Ray drives have CD and DVD support, but its possible the CD laser isn't tested and might be defective in some PS4 units, just that its cheaper to use an existing design. Then there is the issue with the copy protection for the PlayStation and PS2, can these lasers read the 'wobble' area of the disc to authenticate the game?
 

kingfey

Banned
Liscensing would only be an issue if they were reselling the game via their store. This does not apply to playing games from a disc.
Would the owner of the game allows that? Because if I am the owner of the game, I would like money for my games to be played on that system.
 

sainraja

Member
The question is will they let it be native BC where digital and discs you already own work, or just an internal solution for sony, like they did with there PS2 emulator on PS4?
I doubt it will be where we can just put our discs in to start playing.
 
I had an awesome dream last night in which Playstation made a super cool 90's type commercial where they showed PS1 games like Tekken 2, Spyro, THPS2, MGS1 and Ridge Racer.

It ended with PLAYSTATION SPARTACUS OUT NOW!!

Like these:

 
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