When I got the XSX recently, it was so I can play Starfield when it comes out. That was basically the only reason. I did not realize the extensive backwards compatibility that this thing has. But since getting it, I’ve been playing FF13 trilogy, Fable games, Dragon Age series, Lost Odyssey, etc. Basically all games of note going all the way back to the OG Xbox will play on the latest console. Either with the original disc, or you can even purchase them online.
The point of my post is I think it’s a real travesty that PlayStation doesn’t do this. I don’t understand it. First of all, you cannot buy most PS1-PS3 games on the digital store. You can’t use the discs. The main way to get access to these games is through the top tier of PS+. But the selection is quite limited, and PS3 games in particular are streaming only.
With the selection, I want to point out that you can’t even play most of the Killzone series on PS+. This is a first party title. There is absolutely no reason that Killzone shouldn’t be available. Killzone 1 isn’t even on there. A PS2 title that is not graphically demanding.
As for the streaming of PS3 games, maybe this was justifiable back on the PS4 because the PS3 has a unique architecture that can be difficult to emulate without performance drops. But with the capabilities of the PS5, it’s not credible to claim that it can’t emulate a PS3. It certainly could, if Sony wanted to assign resources to make an emulator.
I am not a fanboy of one or the other, and I probably still play more on the PS5 than my Xbox, but I think Microsoft should market their backwards compatibility superiority a lot more than they currently do.
Totally worth it, they spent unimaginable resources trying to make those architectures programmable, now that’s all almost free, they just compete for published titles and maybe some secondary features.
MSFT was in a better position because they didn’t need to spend those resources, and more importantly the devs didn’t either, they could write windows games then port them over easily. Now it’s just as easy to do that for ps4/5. All that matters is nailing exclusives and looking cool, plus some marketing which msft sucks at.
It’s too early to decide if it was. Yes it was the safest bet, Even though PS4 had a great deal of success you also need to keep in mind, a lot of it was because of politics. Nintendo and MS made huge mistakes at that time and Sony basically ate their lunch.
The older generations were always innovative and pushed the envelop as far as possible, but now PS just a gaming PC that is not upgradable like an actual PC. if you don’t recall, the most hyped thing about PS5 was the controller, which is not what you expect the main point of buying a new consol to be.
On the topic of exclusives, I personally hate them. I think it makes a false sense of value in modern consoles where in the past they were intentionally made to take advantage of the architecture to showcase the unique quirks (and ofc the power) of this machine in a tiny box. Now they are usually just political leverages even though the games can be ported to other platforms.
So to reiterate, I agree it definitely had positive net for Sony in the short run, we’ll have to wait and see if it will payout in the long run.
Exclusives are terrible for the customer, but they’re a way for corporate to control the market, which is a good for them.
We’ll see, but I was on the dev side of that nightmare, Sony would have gotten crushed the next gen, they barely made it out of ps3 with their extended developers in tact, nobody liked programming the cell, everybody loves the current system.
But it does reduce competitive surface area, so we’ll see. Nintendo is winning now because they didn’t follow the same path but they did innovate, more than almost anyone before.
My question is: What innovation do you see that could have been worth a unique architecture to Sony’s developers?
I agree with your sentiment, after all what is a game console without games.
What I want isn’t necessarily a unique architechture, rather I want a unique experience. I think looking at Smartphone landscape expresses my concerns much clearer. All phones today are basically just reskins of same phone in design, purpose and architechture. Sure there are some novelty phones with smaller audiences for the sake of novelty but what makes you choose a phone over the other is just marketing at this point. I’m afraid that’s where we’re headed with consoles. The difference is the home consoles are replaceable.
