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Sony Patents possible PS5 Backward Compatibility method invented by Mark Cerny

Calibos

Member
MS introduces BC for Xbox
SonyGaf: No one cares about that....It's emulation....it sucks....MS is anti-consumer...720p....bad framerates...no one plays old games....PS4 is a beast....

Cerny Patents???? BC

SonyGaf: Sony is the best...Cerny is a fucking genius....Cerny and Sony rule...BC is an amazing idea!!!!!

giphy.gif
 

DeepEnigma

Gold Member
CD's are not an officially supported disc format (Audio CD, Data CD, Picture CD, Video CD) on the PS4.

If you put in an original PS1 CD, an ABBA Greatest Hits CD, Sandra Bullock in The Net on VCD you get the exact same result... nothing.

Sony doesn't have the codecs in the firmware. The laser and drive are cable of reading CDs if they installed the proper/licensed codec software. It's not a hardware issue.
 
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Sony doesn't have the codecs in the firmware. The laser and drive are cable of reading CDs if they installed the proper/licensed codec software. It's not a hardware issue.
Pretty sure a hacked console with CFW could be made to play back audio CDs...

Remember Wii and DVD Video movies? It was the same situation.
 

dispensergoinup

Gold Member
Would be convenient but not necessary for me, as I usually keep my old consoles if I ever feel like playing the previous gen games.
 

theHFIC

Member
Sony doesn't have the codecs in the firmware. The laser and drive are cable of reading CDs if they installed the proper/licensed codec software. It's not a hardware issue.
I love a good deep dive into semantics as much as the next GAFer, but I still don't understand what my original statement has to do with if it is a hardware or software restriction.

I can't see Sony releasing a next gen system that still reads CDROMs. PS4 didn't do it and they didn't even include a 4k UHD BluRay drive on the Pro. This looks like a patent for the sake of patenting something.

PS4 doesn't read CDROM's. It doesn't support them. The laser may be there, who cares? The system can't read CD's. Sony isn't going to wake up someday and enable it suddenly on a 6 year old console. Why would they re-enable it in future systems if the only interest stemming from it comes from a couple online forums?
 
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RedVIper

Banned
I dont see how an x86 APU can magically emulate four completely different architectures (PSX MIPS, PS2 EE, PS3 CELL and PS4 JAGUAR) but ok. This CPU ID thing doesnt explain a shit. World doesnt work like that..

MS recompile the XBOX 360 executables in x86 native code in order to run games in a weak XBOX One, while they patch some calls around in HLE.

Uh, I can play ps1, ps2 and ps3 games on my computer right now, why would ps5 not be able to emulate them aswell?
 

stranno

Member
Uh, I can play ps1, ps2 and ps3 games on my computer right now, why would ps5 not be able to emulate them aswell?
This article is talking about "CPU spoofing" magic ... thing. Not classic HLE/LLE emulation (like those emulators in your PC).

Its probably talking about the XBOX 360 to XBOX One per-game conversion, but it is explained as shit.
 
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DeepEnigma

Gold Member
Yeah. Software emulation. Take that PC gamers. /s
And lets ignore all those Mark Cerny work on PS4. Who is Mark Cerny? /s

Also this patent is over 3 years old and was done just before the PS4Pro was introduced. Hence it was utilized for that.

Now it has been updated, and signs point with a more cleaner language for the PS5 which will probably launch next year, around the same time the previous patent was filed before the Pro launch.
 

RedVIper

Banned
This article is talking about "CPU spoofing" magic ... thing. Not classic HLE/LLE emulation (like those emulators in your PC).

Its probably talking about the XBOX 360 to XBOX One per-game conversion, but it is explained as shit.

Oh sure, that isn't going to work for ps3 lol. But it might if the BC is just for ps4.
 

Punished Miku

Gold Member
Yeah. Software emulation. Take that PC gamers. /s
And lets ignore all those Mark Cerny work on PS4. Who is Mark Cerny? /s
Don't get me wrong, I think it's been proven that Mark Cerny is actually literally a genius if you follow his bio. But I just wasn't super impressed with them securing BC a generation after XBox.
 

Panajev2001a

GAF's Pleasant Genius
Most people do not, but some do. This in the general sense of things... pre App Store, pre digital libraries )people buy digitally more and more) supposed to follow you around. This is a game changer for the industry.

PS1 and PS2 BC (alongside other pro consumer features such as excellent Blu-Ray and SACD playback, Ethernet and WiFi without buying peripherals, tons of memory card formats supported, HDMI out of the box, optical audio output, user swappable HDD without requiring a custom one, etc...) did not help launch PS3 that much and the platform kept selling and selling once they course corrected even though they dropped more and more of the BC support.
 

Panajev2001a

GAF's Pleasant Genius
Don't get me wrong, I think it's been proven that Mark Cerny is actually literally a genius if you follow his bio. But I just wasn't super impressed with them securing BC a generation after XBox.

PS2, PSP, launch PS3, PS Vita... Xbox did not invent BC either ;).
 

stranno

Member
Am I wrong but is this patent actually pretending that sony invented emulation?
As far as i know Playstation software emulator in Playstation 2 Slim was the first official emulator ever to run in a console -at least for backwards compatibility-. Maybe all those compilations from late-90s for PS/SAT use some kind of emulation (i'm not sure).

All previous legacy support was just embedded hardware, like Master System in Genesis, or direct/legacy hardware, like Game Boy in Game Boy Color.

Not the first unofficial emulator, of course, Bleemcast was already there and, IIRC, there was even a NES or GB emulator for Wonderswan SDK.
 
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Cerny is such a great architect, I believe in him.....He was so instrumental in designing the PS4 which was the most powerful in 2013 and which has dominated since then, absolutely no issues with the hardware, lots of neat features; like the share button, essentially a great controller, the audio jack and touchpad, the media chip and of course 8Gb of GDDR5.......Media streaming on a console and the share button for pics and vids were such powerful features on day 1.......Playstation Live was lit and saw so much activity which boosted PS4 sales and attracted many persons to the eco-system...

Looking at the great work he did with the PRO, with it's custom design, Vega features, 64 rops in 2016, I know we are in for something really special with PS5, all the chips are aligning for a powerful SOC in late 2020, with some neat custom features which I can't wait to know about.....Yet, I'm doubly interested in some of the OS features, just like they brought media streaming to consoles; shareplay, remoteplay....I want to see what new revolutionary feature they adopt or present to us in 2020........Some of their patents for texture replacement in old games is looking very promising, so their BC approach should be very ambitious by the looks of it...

This. So much this.
HWaQd6Z.png
 

Fake

Member
Also this patent is over 3 years old and was done just before the PS4Pro was introduced. Hence it was utilized for that.

Now it has been updated, and signs point with a more cleaner language for the PS5 which will probably launch next year, around the same time the previous patent was filed before the Pro launch.
Indeed. I dunno if he gonna do the same with ps5 like that ps4 intro years ago explaining parts of the hardware. This guy have being busy.
 

LordOfChaos

Member
BC seems like a shoe in, and hell will be raised if it wasn't.

However I wonder if Sony will allow further patches on existing games, since it would be so largely compatible, like a Pro-er Pro.
 

Sophist

Member
Just read the patent, nothing interesting here. It does describe a mechanism for CPU id spoofing and for adjusting the speed of the CPU bus to the targeted platform.

As far as i know Playstation software emulator in Playstation 2 Slim was the first official emulator ever to run in a console -at least for backwards compatibility-. Maybe all those compilations from late-90s for PS/SAT use some kind of emulation (i'm not sure).

All previous legacy support was just embedded hardware, like Master System in Genesis, or direct/legacy hardware, like Game Boy in Game Boy Color.

Not the first unofficial emulator, of course, Bleemcast was already there and, IIRC, there was even a NES or GB emulator for Wonderswan SDK.

Animal crossing (2001, game cube) had a NES emulator embedded (https://jamchamb.github.io/2018/07/11/animal-crossing-nes-emulator-hacks.html)
Zelda collection (2003, game cube) also relied on emulation.
Capcom generation on psone may relied on emulation but probably not.
 

93xfan

Banned
I thought this was given from the get go. Even the POSSIBILITY of PS5 not being backwards compatible is outrageous. When PS3 and 4 have a different architecture then I can somewhat excuse them but not anymore when PS4 is almost a normal PC.

I agree. I hope we get improvements in games that are BC as well.

Also, PS1 had better be there. There efforts were garbage this gen
 

sublimit

Banned
MS introduces BC for Xbox
SonyGaf: No one cares about that....It's emulation....it sucks....MS is anti-consumer...720p....bad framerates...no one plays old games....PS4 is a beast....

Cerny Patents???? BC

SonyGaf: Sony is the best...Cerny is a fucking genius....Cerny and Sony rule...BC is an amazing idea!!!!!

giphy.gif
Wow i didn't knew that MS was the first who invented BC!! Those fools at Sony all they can do is copy MS!! How dare they!!!
 

Fake

Member
MS introduces BC for Xbox
SonyGaf: No one cares about that....It's emulation....it sucks....MS is anti-consumer...720p....bad framerates...no one plays old games....PS4 is a beast....

Cerny Patents???? BC

SonyGaf: Sony is the best...Cerny is a fucking genius....Cerny and Sony rule...BC is an amazing idea!!!!!

giphy.gif
Is BC something new on console space? You speak as Microsoft invented software emulation.
 

thelastword

Banned
Sony does full BC for PS1 on PS2? Oh come onnnnnnnn, too many Jrpg's and Japanese games, where are the dudebro, mountian dewin' games Sony?

Sony does full BC for PS1 and PS2 on PS3? My goodness Sony, the price is too much, I have to work two jobs for this George Foreman Grill contraption, nuh uh!.........it aint happening.......Still........"Would'nt it be wonderful if there was a console that played all my old console disc games, bummer,one can only dream!!!!....... Ummmmmm......I love BC, I love BC, (shouting) on forums everywhere".......

MS gives us partial BC drip feed style after two years into this generation, beginning November 12th 2015, mainly because it's exclusives were hohum and they knew they had nothing coming, Crackdown was delayed yet again that year.....Games see a rez boost, but framerate on the games are still ho hum, lots of stuttering exists and a report shows that nobody uses the feature on Vanilla XBONE......? Oh man, what a revelation, BC is the best thing to happen this generation, Sony dun goofed. surely this is a gamechanger (a world premiere, an XBOX exclusive if you will).......I mean hold on, hold on, let's be honest here, does Sony even know what it's like to offer this sweet nectar that is BC? They have no clue do they? That anti-consumer lot then, denying folk "play" of their old disc games.....Heh! I'll tell you this......I'd play Oblivion (sub 30fps in 2018) and Fallout Vegas.....over any of that cinematic bullshit that Sony offers........I can tell you that much......
 

DForce

NaughtyDog Defense Force
MS introduces BC for Xbox
SonyGaf: No one cares about that....It's emulation....it sucks....MS is anti-consumer...720p....bad framerates...no one plays old games....PS4 is a beast....

Cerny Patents???? BC

SonyGaf: Sony is the best...Cerny is a fucking genius....Cerny and Sony rule...BC is an amazing idea!!!!!

giphy.gif

Not true.

Xbox fans believed BC was a major selling point when it was not. When Microsoft won 4 straight NPDs in a row, Xbox fans were talking about how the PS4 Slim not having BC and 4K BluRay player was a huge mistake, but we all know how that turned out.

People enjoy playing older games, but people often look forward to playing newer games rather than old ones.
 

AgentP

Thinks mods influence posters politics. Promoted to QAnon Editor.
BC during a generational transition is really nice and a selling point. Adding it piecemeal years after the gen starts is not a big selling point. Sony and MS will use BC to move people to their new systems and likely sweeten the pot by adding more pixels and a better frame rate. The idea is to keep them in the ecosystem and spending money.
 

wipeout364

Member
What makes Cerny such a great architect, isn’t PS4 mostly off the shelf components? The guy that designed the PS2 and PS3 maybe could be claimed to be a great architect as I think a lot of that stuff was proprietary.
Cerny seems like a nice guy but not seeing what gives him the greatness label that some people are saying in this thread. I think he is a great asset for Sony as he actually seems to give a shit what developers want.
 

Shin

Banned
What makes Cerny such a great architect, isn’t PS4 mostly off the shelf components? The guy that designed the PS2 and PS3 maybe could be claimed to be a great architect as I think a lot of that stuff was proprietary.
Cerny seems like a nice guy but not seeing what gives him the greatness label that some people are saying in this thread. I think he is a great asset for Sony as he actually seems to give a shit what developers want.
I think most won't be able to answer that but will still try and tell you he's a genius or make whatever he did who sound like the best thing ever.
As far as I'm concerned he pitched the idea to use X86, the rest is most likely team effort as a system isn't put together by a single person.
Some of it can probably traced back to Japan as a whole and not being able to keep up with certain other countries or they would have thought of it long ago.
 

stranno

Member
Capcom generation on psone may relied on emulation but probably not.
I was talking about backwards compatibility, not compilations. Of course it is much easier to develop an HLE emulator for a bunch of games (like the N64 VC one) than an all-around HLE emulator for thousands of games. PS software emulator in Playstation 2 Slim has like 90-95% of compatibility, and we are talking about ~3000 unique games.
 

The Alien

Banned
I didnt think the question was around capability. I though it was more of a financial question.

Will it be free backwards compatibility?
 

Inviusx

Member
If I can take any playstation game ever made and put the disc into a PS5 and play it, then I will get excited for backwards compatibility.

Anything else, who cares.
 

DeepEnigma

Gold Member
I didnt think the question was around capability. I though it was more of a financial question.

Will it be free backwards compatibility?

For all your current PS4 content, physical/digital, I feel it will be just like buying a Pro after starting off on the base model.
 
Sony does full BC for PS1 on PS2? Oh come onnnnnnnn, too many Jrpg's and Japanese games, where are the dudebro, mountian dewin' games Sony?

Sony does full BC for PS1 and PS2 on PS3? My goodness Sony, the price is too much, I have to work two jobs for this George Foreman Grill contraption, nuh uh!.........it aint happening.......Still........"Would'nt it be wonderful if there was a console that played all my old console disc games, bummer,one can only dream!!!!....... Ummmmmm......I love BC, I love BC, (shouting) on forums everywhere".......

MS gives us partial BC drip feed style after two years into this generation, beginning November 12th 2015, mainly because it's exclusives were hohum and they knew they had nothing coming, Crackdown was delayed yet again that year.....Games see a rez boost, but framerate on the games are still ho hum, lots of stuttering exists and a report shows that nobody uses the feature on Vanilla XBONE......? Oh man, what a revelation, BC is the best thing to happen this generation, Sony dun goofed. surely this is a gamechanger (a world premiere, an XBOX exclusive if you will).......I mean hold on, hold on, let's be honest here, does Sony even know what it's like to offer this sweet nectar that is BC? They have no clue do they? That anti-consumer lot then, denying folk "play" of their old disc games.....Heh! I'll tell you this......I'd play Oblivion (sub 30fps in 2018) and Fallout Vegas.....over any of that cinematic bullshit that Sony offers........I can tell you that much......

You seem legitimately ticked off at something in this one... everything ok?
 

DeepEnigma

Gold Member
Is it the same

Is it the same technique?

Not really, what the Xbox is doing from what I understand, is it's seeing the Power PC code and recompiling it in an x86 instruction wrapper.

What this is doing, and if it has anything to do with the PS5, it's going to see the Jaguar instruction on x86 and if the PS5 is running a 3.2Ghz Zen2, it will probably tell the CPU to clock down to the 1.6Ghz profile and run the code (or boosted Pro one).

I could be wrong.
 

TLZ

Banned
Not really, what the Xbox is doing from what I understand, is it's seeing the Power PC code and recompiling it in an x86 instruction wrapper.

What this is doing, and if it has anything to do with the PS5, it's going to see the Jaguar instruction on x86 and if the PS5 is running a 3.2Ghz Zen2, it will probably tell the CPU to clock down to the 1.6Ghz profile and run the code (or boosted Pro one).

I could be wrong.
So that means the ps5 basically would run and perform as a PS4, which means games that perform poorly on the PS4 wouldn't take advantage of the PS5's extra power and perform better, right? Unless devs release patches to try take advantage of that better CPU I guess.
 

DeepEnigma

Gold Member
So that means the ps5 basically would run and perform as a PS4, which means games that perform poorly on the PS4 wouldn't take advantage of the PS5's extra power and perform better, right? Unless devs release patches to try take advantage of that better CPU I guess.

I may not be accurate with my understanding, and I'm using rumors of the next consoles combined with this patent so I may be way off base...

But if there are any performance boost, I would imagine it's includes it in the SDK for the backwards compatibility. Either devs can provide patches with better graphical effects, textures, higher resolution, performance, or the PS5 may also have its own boosted mode similar to the Pro for non patched PS4 games, in past Sony consoles that had slight visual (filtering) or load time boosts.

The extent of what Sony would do in the BC firmware to boost PS4 games is still up in the air.
 

Fox Mulder

Member
MS introduces BC for Xbox
SonyGaf: No one cares about that....It's emulation....it sucks....MS is anti-consumer...720p....bad framerates...no one plays old games....PS4 is a beast....

Cerny Patents???? BC

SonyGaf: Sony is the best...Cerny is a fucking genius....Cerny and Sony rule...BC is an amazing idea!!!!!

giphy.gif

And MS fanboys dismissed BC when the PS3 launched with it. Console wars are dumb.
 

yurinka

Member
KNACKWARDS COMPATIBLE
HZf3Y41.png


Old games don't make money, they'll probably do the minimum and people will accept it.
But the life of a PlayStation console is longer when the one released after it is BC. So seeing how successful PS4 they may want to make PS5 BC to continue milking PS4 success, and to give an additional extra selling point to PS5 for those who have a PS4 and don't want to have 2 PS consoles next to the TV.

In addition to this they also patented emulation that allows PS4Pro-like enhacement patches. So they can sell these patches for even PS1 or PS2 games, or if not they can use this emulation / BC only for remakes and remasters that are sold separatedly and are profitable for them.

Am I wrong but is this patent actually pretending that sony invented emulation?
You are wrong. This is more a way of detecting if a game is from a certain console or another, in order to make the CPU mimic the CPUs of that consoles.

Emulation is outside this detection, and what it does is to translate the orders that the games sent to the old CPU in a way that the modern CPU understand in order to provide the same or similar results.
 
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ZywyPL

Banned
You're obviously trolling, but I'll bite anyway.

Honestly I'm not. And no, consoles are not specialized machines anymore, they are just a basic PC with fixed specs, that's all. There is of course some sort of customization added to the chips, but they are almost meaningless, as all the 3rd party games clearly show.

Besides, PC aside, take PS4 vs Pro as an example, which are basically the same machine in terms of architecture, one is just more powerful than the other. Because you can look at it as some sort of BC right? A newer, more powerful console, that runs the games from the previous one. And with Pro Sony already showed they have completely no clue what the're doing - they downclock the CPU, and use only half of the GPU whenever playing base PS4 games. WHY??

Cerny himself said in an interview "so the games can run perfectly fine", which I find as total BS, since dropping frames, and even resolutions during this gen, is the quite opposite of what I call "perfectly fine". Just allow the games to use full power, is it really that much to ask for? MS on the other hand did its homework when releasing the X1X, and thanks to them Sony introduced Boost Mode in PS4 PRo, and surprise surprise! It works. Just like that. And it's just some minor clock boost, if they allowed the older, unpatched games to use the other half of the GPU I'm more than certain there wouldn't be any issues as well.

And now what we are looking at, is that Sony still didn't figured out how to effectively use the x86 architecture, which they were bragging about so much on the revealing PSX event. Any BC is still better than nothing, of course, but like I said, they are complicating something that's basically granted.
 
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