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PlayStation Jim Ryan wants people to know he doesn’t hate old games

IbizaPocholo

NeoGAFs Kent Brockman

In an interview with Time, Ryan discussed seeing versions of Gran Turismo running side-by-side on PlayStation 4, PS3, PS2 and PSOne. “The PS1 and the PS2 games, they looked ancient, like why would anybody play this?” he said at the time.

Speaking to in the latest Axios Gaming newsletter, the PlayStation boss claimed that he had not made his point well, which was to emphasise how far the racing series had come since its early days.

“The point I was trying to make — obviously not very well — was just how great the PS4 version looked and how far the series had evolved. I certainly wasn’t trying to be disrespectful to our heritage,” he told journalist Stephen Totilo.

“I guess my big learning from all of this is that when Kazunori Yamauchi unveils the next ‘Gran Turismo’ side by side with its history, that I will keep my mouth shut.”

In the Axios interview, Jim Ryan reportedly pointed to PS5 launch game Astro’s Playroom, in which players collect classic PlayStation items, as proof it supports its past.

“What is important to recognize when considering this question about designing a new platform, is that time, engineering resource, and money are all finite, and that important trade-offs have to be made in terms of what’s included, and what’s not,” Ryan said.

Ryan is said to have added that PS5’s compatibility with PS4 games was due to fans’ “real desire” for that support, but had no comment on whether Sony planned to enable compatibility with PS1 games.
 

kretos

Banned
where is PS3 bc then

tenor.gif
 

01011001

Banned
PS1 compatibility would be SO FUCKING EASY to do... like SO EASY... ridiculously easy... a tiny super cheap throwaway chip can emulate PS1 at 4x resolution no problem (talking about Raspberry Pie 3 for example)
even PS2 compatibility should be no issue for at least the 700 games that already run pretty much perfectly on a modded PS4 using THEIR EXISTING IN-HOUSE EMULATOR
 
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Kokoloko85

Member
I dont care about PS3 compatibility, like cool u cant do it for lame excuses....

But Where are the PS1 and PS2 games that are on PSP, PS3 and PS Vita stores?

No excuse for those games not being on PS4/PS5 store?So much money to be made....
 
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StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
"I didn't mean to say that they look like shit and are unplayable, I only meant that compared to the PS4, they look like shit and are unplayable."
"By the way, it's also not coincidence that I am trying to backtrack what I said when there's hardly any PS5 only games. So yes, I think BC gaming is great now. Whether I re-backtrack or not 3 years from now when it's all PS5 only games, I'll get back to you on that in 2024"
 

01011001

Banned
I've let go of this due to cell architecture, but my question is:

Why are Resistance 1 and 2, and Killzone 2 and 3, stuck as disc-only games?

well you can play PS3 on a somewhat decent PC using a fan made emulator... Sony could easily emulate PS3 on the PS5 if they wanted to invest in it.

edit: here is MGS4 running on a low end PC at 30fps




edit 2: here is it running side by side with the PS3 version on a mid range PC that has a decent CPU


the PC runs the game at about 4x resolution (1440p) as well here on a mid range GPU (GTX1070). notice how it can reach more than 200% performance on PC compared to PS3 at 4x resolution on an emulator that a few people who aren't affiliated with Sony worked on
 
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mckmas8808

Banned
I dont care about PS3 compatibility, like cool u cant do it for lame excuses....

But Where are the PS1 and PS2 games that are on PSP, PS3 and PS Vita stores?

No excuse for those games not being on PS4/PS5 store?So much money to be made....

Clearly Sony doesn't like money as much as we thought.
 

Dr Bass

Member
Sure Jim.

If you don't hate them then why don't you do something about it?

Also:



Yes please.

Can't stand these slimy bullshit merchants that run these companies at the moment.
He answered that question by discussing finite engineering resources. As someone in software engineering, it's absolutely true. There is so, so much you can imagine doing, and you just have to say no to so many things you would LIKE to do because of those finite resources.

That explanation is just so simply true, it makes perfect sense to me. Nothing slimy about it.
 

CamHostage

Member
PS1 compatibility would be SO FUCKING EASY to do... like SO EASY... ridiculously easy... a tiny super cheap throwaway chip can emulate PS1 at 4x resolution no problem (talking about Raspberry Pie 3 for example)
even PS2 compatibility should be no issue for at least the 700 games that already run pretty much perfectly on a modded PS4 using THEIR EXISTING IN-HOUSE EMULATOR
PS1 compatibility (and some PS2 compatibility) might actually be impossible, for the disc games at least. PS5 (and PS4 before it) supposedly do not have CD laser support to read the discs.

PS Classics from PSN, though, sure. There's not a lot of those though (and since they all but dropped the PS3/PSP/PSV stores for those titles, the library is not growing,) and the PS Now crowd never took interest in Classics so there's no activity on that front either, so it'd be a bit of a project to get that market up and active again.

IMO, the way back would be to come out with a new PlayStation Classic hardware that was just a cheap way to play (and download) old games, later release a version of that emulator set on PS5 for a "Virtual PlayStation Classic". PS5 itself I don't think is enough to reinvigorate the classics market when they've already turned off the spigot.

He answered that question by discussing finite engineering resources. As someone in software engineering, it's absolutely true. There is so, so much you can imagine doing, and you just have to say no to so many things you would LIKE to do because of those finite resources.

Finite engineering resources at Sony, maybe (although there are a number of people who just finished building the OS and hardware last year and are looking for things to do besides stability patches...) Hiring out to have an external studio like M2 or Digital Eclipse build the emulators, however, wouldn't tax their engineering resources; it'd tax their financial resources (a little bit,) but they have the opportunity to make up for that in software sales.

Heck, in a crazy world, they could have allowed the homebrew teams out there to port DuckStation or RetroArch or whatever to PlayStation 5 and somehow you could play purchased games with it. These emulators are easily gettable on Google Play and Steam, they used to be on iTunes and Windows Store... Xbox Series X/S has all these emulators if you hack it, and so Xbox plays way more PlayStation games than PlayStation does...
 
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JSoup

Banned
If it's true, stop fucking around with the the website and feature removals. Make the damn PSN universal to the system ecosystem and/or PS3 BC. Things people have been asking for.
 

GHG

Gold Member
He answered that question by discussing finite engineering resources. As someone in software engineering, it's absolutely true. There is so, so much you can imagine doing, and you just have to say no to so many things you would LIKE to do because of those finite resources.

That explanation is just so simply true, it makes perfect sense to me. Nothing slimy about it.

He's constantly contradicting himself, that's slimy enough for me.

If he cares about old games and the legacy of the platform then he should show us that by putting a team on getting at the very least ps1 and ps2 BC working. Those two platforms can be emulated on potatoes these days, the PS5 hardware is more than capable.

If it comes to it they can reach out to the emulation teams on PC to help them. No excuses.
 

01011001

Banned
He answered that question by discussing finite engineering resources. As someone in software engineering, it's absolutely true. There is so, so much you can imagine doing, and you just have to say no to so many things you would LIKE to do because of those finite resources.

That explanation is just so simply true, it makes perfect sense to me. Nothing slimy about it.

the thing is... THEY HAVE A WORKING PS1 AND PS2 EMULATOR... said PS2 emulator can run more than 700 PS2 games basically perfectly if you mod your PS4... this is not altered in any way. 700 PS2 games is way more than the 600 compatible 360 games the Xbox One has...

tell my why the PS4 and therefore also the PS5 (as the officially released emulated games run perfectly fine on both) are not back compat to at least those 700 games? they already have a working emulator, all they would need to do is make a curated list of games that work with it or improve the emulator... this emulator is after all only made for the 2 dozen games or so they released on PSN, and even still it perfectly runs about 700 games.

and PS1? come on... my fucking right testicle can emulate PS1 at this point


the only platform that would need serious work is the PS3, but that can be done too... but here I would agree that it would be very resource intensive for them.
 
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01011001

Banned
PS1 compatibility (and some PS2 compatibility) might actually be impossible, for the disc games at least. PS5 (and PS4 before it) supposedly do not have CD laser support to read the discs.

every Bluray laser is physically able to read CDs (I am not aware of a single BD drive that can't read CDs)... this is not about the hardware, they would need to license the format tho. the Series X has a modern BD drive and that too can read CDs no problem. I am pretty sure Sony don't somehow have that one drive that somehow can't read CDs
 
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Agent X

Member
I dont care about PS3 compatibility, like cool u cant do it for lame excuses....

But Where are the PS1 and PS2 games that are on PSP, PS3 and PS Vita stores?

No excuse for those games not being on PS4/PS5 store?So much money to be made....

I wish that a journalist would put that question to him straight up. I'd love to hear an explanation for why they aren't doing this, aside from the handful of PS2 games that they released on PS4 a few years ago.

Gamers have been begging for these games practically since the day the PS4 was released. I believe that the developers and publishers of those games want to keep selling and profiting from those games, too.
 

Dr Bass

Member
the thing is... THEY HAVE A WORKING PS1 AND PS2 EMULATOR... said PS2 emulator can run more than 700 PS2 games basically perfectly if you mod your PS4... this is not altered in any way. 700 PS2 games is way more than the 600 compatible 360 games the Xbox One has...

tell my why the PS4 and therefore also the PS5 (as the officially released emulated games run perfectly fine on both) are not back compat to at least those 700 games? they already have a working emulator, all they would need to do is make a curated list of games that work with it or improve the emulator... this emulator is after all only made for the 2 dozen games or so they released on PSN, and even still it perfectly runs about 700 games.

and PS1? come on... my fucking right testicle can emulate PS1 at this point
I agree with you on all of this.

There could also be licensing issues if they want to offer games digitally, and of course then if you are using the emulator there will almost surely be bugs etc. That stuff costs time and money to support.

And as stated many times before, this kind of BC is one of the most highly requested features, but also the least used when it's existed. Sorta like a kid asking for a toy and then when they get it, it just sits there.

Now I PERSONALLY believe Sony SHOULD support BC. There are too many classic games that simply get lost to time because of how these consoles work and that is a crime against the hobby IMO. But when they talk about business reasons precluding it from being a priority right now that also makes total sense to me.

I am not defending their choices, again, I just think they do make sense. And like I also mentioned, at the same I think they should support BC for every PS model. They should do it for the love of the medium and for not losing gaming history.
 
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DenchDeckard

Moderated wildly
Astrobot is such a gem, and feels like real great Japanese devs nailing the love letter to playstations history…maybe Jim signed it off but he doesn’t come across as a guy who has a clue about any of that. He’s just too busy shutting down all the classic Sony Japanese devs.
 

KAL2006

Banned
Sony has working PS1, PS2 and PSP emulators but refuse to put thoss on PS5. To me it seems like they don't give a fuck about legacy.
 

IntentionalPun

Ask me about my wife's perfect butthole
the thing is... THEY HAVE A WORKING PS1 AND PS2 EMULATOR... said PS2 emulator can run more than 700 PS2 games basically perfectly if you mod your PS4... this is not altered in any way. 700 PS2 games is way more than the 600 compatible 360 games the Xbox One has..

They want to sell you remakes/remasters.. it's actually in the same interview this article is based on.
 

01011001

Banned
I agree with you on all of this.

There could also be licensing issues if they want to offer games digitally, and of course then if you are using the emulator there will almost surely be bugs etc. That stuff costs time and money to support.

And as stated many times before, this kind of BC is one of the most highly requested features, but also the least used when it's existed. Sorta like a kid asking for a toy and then when they get it, it just sits there.

Now I PERSONALLY believe Sony SHOULD support BC. There are too many classic games that simply get lost to time because of how these consoles work and that is a crime against the hobby IMO. But when they talk about business reasons precluding it from being a priority right now that also makes total sense to me.

I am not defending their choices, again, I just think they do make sense. And like I also mentioned, at the same I think they should support BC for every PS model. They should do it for the love of the medium and for not losing gaming history.

they don't have to sell the games digitally... why would that be a criteria. all they would need to do (literally) is enable the already existing PS2 emulator to read PS2 discs you insert to your PS4/5
and bugs? some PS1 games had bugs when played on PS2... some PS2 games had bugs when played on PS3, same with PS1 on PS3 (and even their dedicated PS1 Mini had issues in some of the included games). I'm not even gonna talk about the host of issues Xbox games had on 360 back compat.

so that doesn't really matter either.

there is no real reason as to why the PS4 is not compatible with PS2 and PS1 games. it's just some weird decision they made, maybe because they planned on selling PS2 games from the start and didn't want used Ebay copies to compete with them... and maybe they wanted to do that with PS1 as well?
I can't think of another reason... maybe they didn't want to license the use of the CD format?
 

IntentionalPun

Ask me about my wife's perfect butthole
From same interview, for those who think this means PS1/2 support is coming:

Axios Interview said:
He said the PS5's compatibility with PS4 games was due to fans' "real desire" for that support. But he had no comment on whether Sony had plans to officially enable compatibility with PS1 games in any way.
What's next: Ryan pointed to the PS4 remake of a classic PS2 "Ratchet & Clank" game, plus an original sequel on PS5, as a model Sony likes.

"We believe this approach keeps our IP fresh and contemporary," he said.

They don't have an interview transcript.. but the way they worded it sounded like they asked, he didn't comment on PS1/2 BC, and instead focused on saying people wanted PS4 BC, but for older games they will do remakes.
 

KAL2006

Banned
I agree with you on all of this.

There could also be licensing issues if they want to offer games digitally, and of course then if you are using the emulator there will almost surely be bugs etc. That stuff costs time and money to support.

And as stated many times before, this kind of BC is one of the most highly requested features, but also the least used when it's existed. Sorta like a kid asking for a toy and then when they get it, it just sits there.

Now I PERSONALLY believe Sony SHOULD support BC. There are too many classic games that simply get lost to time because of how these consoles work and that is a crime against the hobby IMO. But when they talk about business reasons precluding it from being a priority right now that also makes total sense to me.

I am not defending their choices, again, I just think they do make sense. And like I also mentioned, at the same I think they should support BC for every PS model. They should do it for the love of the medium and for not losing gaming history.

No one is saying to release 700 games in one go. They can re-release games as they get licenses. And they can forget about trophies that cause more limitations to re-release games. Not every single game needs to be released no one cares about random shovelware game that isnt out. But Sony have a library of classics they are abandoning. They can even add a Classic game to their PSN Plus monthly games release. Something like Suikoden, Metal Gear Solid 1, Onimusha 3, Burnout 3, Dragon Quest 8, Alundra etc would sell a decent amount to make a profit of all the bug testing. People say QA and bug testing is expensive but I see hobbyist do it in the emulation scene without no issues. It's crazy Sony has God of War which is a massive seller on PS4 with Ragnarok coming out and you can't even play the original PS2 game where the franchise started
 

Agent X

Member
They want to sell you remakes/remasters.. it's actually in the same interview this article is based on.

Well, they aren't even doing that.

On top of that, many developers and publishers don't want to remake or remaster their old games. Doing so would require investments of time and money. They would be perfectly happy to simply give their nod of approval to have the old original version posted up for sale on the PlayStation Store for PS4/PS5.

No waiting, and no need to pay programmers. Fans can start buying and playing the games right away.

If they enable the original games to be sold, then that doesn't exclude the possibility of a remaster or a remake being produced at a later time There are some cherished games that I'm sure some developers would love to spruce up to modern standards. Having both options on the table would be the best outcome.
 

IntentionalPun

Ask me about my wife's perfect butthole
Well, they aren't even doing that.

On top of that, many developers and publishers don't want to remake or remaster their old games. Doing so would require investments of time and money. They would be perfectly happy to simply give their nod of approval to have the old original version posted up for sale on the PlayStation Store for PS4/PS5.

No waiting, and no need to pay programmers. Fans can start buying and playing the games right away.

If they enable the original games to be sold, then that doesn't exclude the possibility of a remaster or a remake being produced at a later time There are some cherished games that I'm sure some developers would love to spruce up to modern standards. Having both options on the table would be the best outcome.
Selling games for pennies on the dollar that have no DLC/MTX that takes people's time away from more expensive modern games is just not their business.

Read between the lines.
 

CamHostage

Member
every Bluray laser is physically able to read CDs (I am not aware of a single BD drive that can't read CDs)... this is not about the hardware, they would need to license the format tho. the Series X has a modern BD drive and that too can read CDs no problem. I am pretty sure Sony don't somehow have that one drive that somehow can't read CDs
I've always questioned that too, but that's the story I keep hearing. Licensing neglect makes more sense than that they got a blue laser that can't go down the spectrum.
 

Dr Bass

Member
No one is saying to release 700 games in one go. They can re-release games as they get licenses. And they can forget about trophies that cause more limitations to re-release games. Not every single game needs to be released no one cares about random shovelware game that isnt out. But Sony have a library of classics they are abandoning. They can even add a Classic game to their PSN Plus monthly games release. Something like Suikoden, Metal Gear Solid 1, Onimusha 3, Burnout 3, Dragon Quest 8, Alundra etc would sell a decent amount to make a profit of all the bug testing. People say QA and bug testing is expensive but I see hobbyist do it in the emulation scene without no issues. It's crazy Sony has God of War which is a massive seller on PS4 with Ragnarok coming out and you can't even play the original PS2 game where the franchise started
None of us here have all the insight as to why it's not being done. I wish it were, but it's not, and again ... the business reasons he stated make complete sense to me as a guy who has been in the software world for a decent amount of time and leads a software engineering team.

So all I am trying to say is, there are probably (unfortunately) good reasons this is just not a priority aside from "slime." Acting like we have ALL the answers as to how something should be when we are on the outside looking in is just a little silly is all.
 
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