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Why do Sony struggle with backwards compatibility?

You want to compare BC performance of MS and Sony?
How about enhancements such as resolution? How about adding HDR to old games that didn't have it?
Its a none contest. And if you read my post, you would have seen where I also brought up how the changes to the design of the XOX including RAM didnt matter.

And for all that lovely BC that ms spends its money on all this gen 110million ps4's have been sold by the competition ... Shows how important BC really is to the regular gamer it's a nice add on and thats it to me imho.
 

Boss Mog

Member
RDR2 blows any PS game out the window, yet plays on every single set up.

Hard to take anything you say seriously after that. Sure it's probably the best looking 3rd party game I'll give you that, but keep in mind that they had the time and budget to really optimize the game for each platform, more so than most third party games.
 

geordiemp

Member
How sure are we there will be a PS5 version?

You dont think Sony first party games will run enhanced on ps5 ? I do.

I can imagine in some upcoming shows sony is going to show ps5 enhanced versions of TLOU2, Ghosts of Tosh at the very least, but likely days gone, HZD, Spiderman has already been mentioned to be getting the treatment....

We dont know the level of customisation, but I bet we get nice 4k60.
 
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T-Cake

Member
You dont think Sony first party games will run enhanced on ps5 ? I do.

I can imagine in some upcoming shows sony is going to show ps5 enhanced versions of TLOU2, Ghosts of Tosh at the very least, but likely days gone, HZD, Spiderman has already been mentioned to be getting the treatment....

I think some will get automatic benefits. For example, Infamous Second Son uses an unlocked frame rate so I'd expect that to hit 60fps. But others like HZD will need developer patches.

The latest games like Ghost of Tsushima and Death Stranding I expect patches for.
 

geordiemp

Member
I think some will get automatic benefits. For example, Infamous Second Son uses an unlocked frame rate so I'd expect that to hit 60fps. But others like HZD will need developer patches.

The latest games like Ghost of Tsushima and Death Stranding I expect patches for.

I bet all sony first party will support the transition from ps4 to ps5, it is in Sony interest to get everyone moving over.

I have not played TLOU2 or ghosts, saving them for ps5.

My Ps4 pro ran all sony games better I recall, and ps5 is much more important.
 
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PresetError

Neophyte
IMO there's a list of reasons:

1) The PS3 architecture was a mistake and broke the continuity of Playstation legacy. PS3 games are a nightmare to emulate with the current architecture of Playstation consoles.

2) Full backwards compatibility would require a great effort and investment while catering to a small percentage of players. It's a cool feature but not a system seller for the vast majority of users. Just look at Xbox One numbers. BC hasn't helped them at all to sell hardware.

3) Full BC is hard to monetize. Remastering and remaking selected old games is more profitable.

4) The Playstation games catalogue is HUGE. People don't realize this but Xbox has a way smaller catalogue.

5) Unfortunately, gaming industry is going digital at Mach 3 speed. The whole point of full BC is being able to insert your old disc in the new console. Digital BC means renewing all kinds of copyrighted licenses and legal maze solving.
 
Maybe they have new games to offer, maybe they do not force you into the old ones because of lack of games.
 
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lpking2005

Neo Member
BC is just a feature and not a primary one at that.
It's good for a bit of nostalgic fun but nothing else in my opinion.

When a new console is released, I want them to focus on giving me new experiences to play and not to live in the past.

But let it be known, if Sony does somehow figure it out for all previous generations on the PS5, it will be massive!
 

T-Cake

Member
I flippin' hope that Resistance, Killzone and Infamous trilogies aren't left to die on PS3. 😢 Playing them on PS Now just isn't the same after being used to 4K for a number of years. 720p streams look ghastly.
 
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JonnyMP3

Member
Not sure how over 4000 PS4 games expected to be Backwards Compatible with the PS5, struggling?
PS4 games already come ready to be played on PS5 right out of the gate because of the architecture similarity. They're testing the top 100 most played games to make sure the newer hardware doesn't have weird affects with the older code. Not that they only have 100 games ready.

The only BC problem that we know, as everyone and their next door neighbour have discussed to death, is the PS3 because of its rapidly different architecture.
 

Birdo

Banned
Complacency, I guess.

Their consoles are selling well. Their games are selling well. Why go to the trouble of adding an extra feature when most of the userbase are happy?

It sucks for me, because I love BC. But average joe just doesn't care.
 

FunkMiller

Member


Mystic explains it all better than any of us.

Just go watch this OP, and anyone else wondering why Sony ain’t bothering.
 

quickwhips

Member
Going to do some generalizing here but hear me out. Sony fans keep multiple consoles and leave them at their parents house hoping their nephews won’t find them and play them as their wifes won’t let them have them at their new places.

xbox fans fuck prom queens and don’t keep old hardware when a gen ends.
 

DunDunDunpachi

Patient MembeR
Sony is a hardware company. With the PS2 and launch-model PS3s, Sony was confident their hardware prowess would be able to handle b.c. They were wrong and are slowly catching up to Microsoft as a result. They're trying to kinda-sorta support old systems via PS Now and certain PSN releases, but that isn't even close to full b.c.
 

Hostile_18

Banned
I love backwards compatibility, theres so many licenced games were never going to see with no disc based option.

However I'm very grateful all the remastered classics we've had this gen.

Just give me Silent Hill and Soul Reaver trilogy and I'll be happy. It's good to know this isn't an issue we will have to worry about anymore since the launch of the PS4.
 

ManaByte

Member

Andodalf

Banned
PS3 was exotic and hard to emulate, PS2 is old enough that it’s hard to get listeners to re sell many of those games so BC isn’t as worth it for the platform holders, Xbox doesn’t have many OG games BC.


PS seems to be more interested in hardware BC, in the Pro and now ps5. It seems they aren’t as confident in running in a virtualized environment like Xbox does.
 

thelastword

Banned
Sony had one console that did not have BC because of complicated and exotic architecture not being compatible with a weak X86 Jaguar CPU and they are struggling with BC........

XBONE is the first MS console to deliver not even 100% BC at launch like Sony's PS2 and PS3, but instead a drip down style " I will decide what title I should make BC for you" and suddenly they are the best BC enthusiasts in the world, a subject Sony knows nothing about and has never made any foray into.......That desperation for a win, in anything is screeching......Totally oblivious to the facts and history...
 
Is this just Sony not caring about BC? Or do they not have the technical ability like MS to do it?

XSX is 100% BC with Xbox One, 25% compatible with Xbox 360, and about 5% compatible with original Xbox. That's ... not really something to crow about.

I mean, basically every PC game made is back compat. A new GPU comes out, the game plays on it. A new CPU comes out, it plays on it. Different card manufacturers, with different CU numbers and different clock speeds? Not a problem. Three different Pcs with different amount and types of RAM?
Not a problem. Game runs.

Sorry, but given how many crashes, graphical glitches, etc. that PC gamers have to put up with even with games at launch (see RDR2, for example), this statement is all sorts of wrong.

So what the fuck is going on GAF?

BC is hard. Really, really hard. The only way to get 100% BC is to use the original hardware. Or accurately emulate said original hardware in software, something the MAME project attempts.
 

Humdinger

Member
It's because of the cell architecture of the PS3.

It isn't complicated. The specialized cell processor was very weird. It makes BC much more challenging than porting 360 titles. The 360 had a very PC-like architecture. The PS3 had a weird, alien architecture -- which in retrospect was a mistake. One of the downsides is that it makes BC much more difficult.
 
Backwards compat is hard with anything older than ps4 because, before then, each machine (PS1, PS2, PS3) was very different architecturally. PS2 handled it with PS1 by having an actual PS1 chip in there (which devs could use for their PS2 games). Devs would then structure their games' architecture based on this hardware. Getting the most of Ps2 and Ps3 meant going pretty close to the metal and structuring your engine around it. You'd not just be using an "off the self" OpenGL, thats for sure. However, from PS4 onwards (e.g. PS4 and 5) the architure is relatively similar (CPU and GFX). Whilst I don't know how close to the metal devs are allow to go, I envisage PS4->PS5 compat to be pretty seamless.

MS on the other hand has used similar HW for a while and it's always had some form of Windows and DX sitting on top of it (that's what MS do, after all).
 

Gorki247

Member
But let it be known, if Sony does somehow figure it out for all previous generations on the PS5, it will be massive!
Sounds about right. No one cares about BC, but if Sony figures it out it will be massive.
because "Sony believes in generations"
Except previous generations :messenger_winking:

On a separate note. I don't really care if people think BC is a waste or time, but for me personally it sure is good to see all those games I paid for previously, still available to play. I only have space available for two consoles (*) under my TV. Depending on how much of my current PS4 library will play on PS5 will determine how fast I upgrade.

(*) and a Switch. Not saying the switch isn't a console, but it's not one that causes me space concerns.
 
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ManaByte

Member
It's because of the cell architecture of the PS3.

It isn't complicated. The specialized cell processor was very weird. It makes BC much more challenging than porting 360 titles. The 360 had a very PC-like architecture. The PS3 had a weird, alien architecture -- which in retrospect was a mistake. One of the downsides is that it makes BC much more difficult.

360 still had a different architecture than the Xbox One or Xbox. But MS still got the emulation working and even is able to enhance 360 games so they run better.
 

Humdinger

Member
360 still had a different architecture than the Xbox One or Xbox. But MS still got the emulation working and even is able to enhance 360 games so they run better.

Yeah, but MS's Xbox structure, gen to gen, was always very close to a PC. Sony took a very large detour from that, with the PS3 and all its weirdness. Then they returned to standard PC type architecture with PS4. So the differences between PS4 and PS3 are dramatically different than those between X1 and 360.

It's sort of like, the challenge of BC with Xbox is getting two people communicating who are of different generations and have different dialects but live in the same country and speak the same language. Whereas Sony's challenge is to get two people communicating who live in different countries and speak different languages.

I think it's an apples and oranges comparison. Sony had a much more challenging task than MS.
 

Flintty

Member
Great what's that prove ?
That doesn't prove its important to the majority of gamers the majority of console gamers are not on Xbox in the first place .

I think, like a lot of things in tech, it’s not important to people until they already have it. It’s these companies jobs to add value to the customer, whether they’re asking for it or not.
 

Vawn

Banned
How many "Why does PS5 suck?" threads do you think you can make before losing thread creation privileges.
 

meech

Member
Are they really struggleling or simply dont wont to offer it to earn additonal money through remakes and Psn Now? Regarding that some "amateurs" even managed to implement multiplayer in their Demon Souls emulator, i guess its rather the latter.
 

Silentbomber

Neo Member
They have ps1 and ps2 software emulation down, and they have ps4 hardware emulation with ps5. So the only question is ps3. There is no reason except money that they dont enable disc based emualtion for ps1 & ps2. I understand that ps3 is difficult, but it's 15 year old tech at this point - and they designed it. No excuses really.
 

Closer

Member
Humans have symmetrical mirrored hands, not one with thumb on different distance to palm.

sYmEtRiC

800px_COLOURBOX2080644.jpg
 
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Deleted member 775630

Unconfirmed Member
Nope, its the direct vs abstract apis and sony first party doing more stuff direct for better performance but its harder to transfer to different hardware.

Example - ps4pro Horozon zero dawn, procedural GPGPU generation of foilage and detail - best version by far but its complex.

Port it to a 2080ti and it runs like shit, yes it was a bad port, but the apis say hello.

So what do players want, more performance on dedicated consoles or better back compatibility, its no free lunch.

If you watch cernys road to ps5, on new geometry engine new procedural generation is mentioned. Sonys stuff will get even more dedicated, and you know it will perform like crazy.
That's just one example of a specific first party games. What about all 3rd party games that are available on xbox and pc?
 

JonnyMP3

Member
Sony's hardware is magic and comes from a different universe than all other computer hardware.
Well... It comes from a completely different engineering design universe.
Normal design is, create powerful CPU and design everything else around it to try and leverage the processing power because we could only really use 100MB/s, because of HDDs.

PS5's design logic was, create stupidly and ridiculously fast SSD, design everything else to try and maximise the speed and be able to use 5.5GB/s of RAW data.
 

01011001

Banned
Microsoft is in the Backwards Compatibility game since 1998... or even before that actually.

they make an operating system with Windows 10 that can still to this day run a lot of code written for a Windows 95.
they basically HAVE TO BE good at backwards compatibility.

Xbox also uses Direct X and Windows based OS on their consoles, which helps a lot with making stuff compatible.

Sony on the other hand has to do a lot of hardware based compatibility tests and optimisation in order to make sure their games run on new hardware.
they have their own APIs which are not really made for multi system compatibility and their own operating systems based on Linux which are also not really designed with compatibility in mind.

so for Microsoft the fact that their main product for 30 years has been an ever evolving operating system that HAS TO BE backwards compatible, and the fact that they also have their own API that is also designed to be cross compatible and compatible with as many hardware configurations as possible, helps with a a lot of the heavy lifting.
 
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RCU005

Member
Because it cost money, and that money Sony decides to use it elsewhere (probably their first party games).

IMO, Microsoft should focus more on spending that money on first party games, too.
 
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