I hope this is satire.
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What options does Sony have for PS5 BC?
- Thread starter MRORANGE
- Start date
I hope this is satire.
Klart
Member
Speak for yourself man. I'm not playing Overwatch or Rocket League or PUBG at all. The main game I'm playing right now is actually San Andreas on my PS2. I've got Turok 2, Doom II, and Quake 1 installed on my PC right now and still regularly play them.
People read old books and watch old films all the time. There are even PC games around 20 years old that a lot of people still play regularly. Console users are the only people I see who seem eager to forget everything more than four years old.
Oh, and there will certainly be people who still want to play Overwatch, Rocket League, and PUBG well into the PS5's lifespan. Games-As-A-Service is causing games to stay in the spotlight and get support longer. Well, that's been happening on PC for a long time now but that way of doing things is finally making its way to consoles. There's going to be a way to play those games and more importantly pay for crap in those games on PS5, whether it's making PS5 owners buy new versions or through backwards compatibility.
Unless Sony decides to go back to more exotic hardware I fully expect the PS5 to have backwards compatibility with the PS4, there's currently no doubt in my mind on this.
As for anything further back, I expect it all to be replaced with PSNow. The Cell was a complicated bit of tech for its time, and the PS4 doesn't have the power to brute force emulating it. I don't think Sony are that interested in BC in that way these days. They expect it to go much like what has happened with movies and tv, and the rise of Netflix and such, they are preparing for gaming to eventually become a service you'll be able to play on numerous devices.
As for anything further back, I expect it all to be replaced with PSNow. The Cell was a complicated bit of tech for its time, and the PS4 doesn't have the power to brute force emulating it. I don't think Sony are that interested in BC in that way these days. They expect it to go much like what has happened with movies and tv, and the rise of Netflix and such, they are preparing for gaming to eventually become a service you'll be able to play on numerous devices.
makingmusic476
Member
I will be bitter as fuck if the ps5 doesn't have BC.
LordBaztion
Member
PS4 games are already part of PS now. That seems like the cheapest choice.
jonscrambler
Member
Sony won't let you have PS2 classics you bought on PS3 for free on PS4
free PS4 BC on PS5 is not happening folks
free PS4 BC on PS5 is not happening folks
Exactly this.
Yep, this is the safe bet.
Are they selling tons? Judging by trophy counts, none of the Sony published games are selling squat, with the possible exception of Ape Escape 2 and the Dark Clouds. The Rockstar games seem to be doing quite well, however.
I imagine this is why the release of PS2->PS4 games has slowed to a crawl.
Captain Tuttle
Member
I'm surprised at how many people don't think BC is going to happen.
I'm thinking option 6
I'm thinking option 6
Personally I'm hoping for Option 6 or 7. But I don't really need my discs to work, just let me play the games I already own via PSN for PS1, PS2, PSP, Vita, PS3 and now PS4 on PS5.
Seems like a crazy thing to ask, right? But somehow those PS1 and PSP games work on Vita, and PS1/PS2 games work on PS3 - so it seems like this should be possible already, let alone on PS5.
Seems like a crazy thing to ask, right? But somehow those PS1 and PSP games work on Vita, and PS1/PS2 games work on PS3 - so it seems like this should be possible already, let alone on PS5.
Chozo_Lord
Member
I think there will be full ps4 BC partly because of competition from Microsoft. There's no way Microsoft is not going to push full One and One X BC to try to out-compete Sony. Plus there is a hidden financial benefit Sony could get. A lot of people went to ps4 and put away or got rid of their ps3. The sale of ps3 games on psn probably dropped significantly. Imagine now ps5 owners being able to buy not only ps5 games but buy from the huge catalog of ps4 games as well. This will also help justify consumers having an early transition from ps4 to ps5, since even if the ps5 has a weak library in the beginning like most console launches, there is a plethora of ps4 games to play on their ps5. Just buy a ps5 on launch and still play TLOU part 2 right away, perhaps even "PS5 enhanced".
Actually on PS2 and PS3 games I guess I could imagine Sony doing an Xbox-like solution where it rolls out customized emulation on a per-game basis for digital games, and if you bought that game on PSN for the PS3, you can just download it on your PS5. No idea if Sony could do a system however where you insert a disc and it can tell what game to download from PSN. I could at the very least see Sony taking the HD PS2 games that are currently available on PS4 and making those available on PS5. Maybe PS2 emulation still isn't perfect enough to allow a plurality of PS2 discs to run on the current hardware.
That still leaves the baffling decision on PS1 games. Is it really that expensive for Sony to port its existing PS1 emulator to PS4? Or are the licensing agreements that fucked up that Sony can't bring the digital games to PS4?
It seems like Microsoft is able to do what it's doing because it had the whole system planned out much better from the beginning. There are games I own on PS3 that I'm actually thinking of re-buying on Xbox 360 because BC might let me play them on current and future hardware -- the 360-era classics I can't get on PC. If original Xbox BC pans out the same way I may find myself re-buying even more old school games on Xbox. Gen 6 consoles actually had a greater number of good games you can't get on PC right now. What if one day TimeSpliters and Ninja Gaiden Black show up on XBL?
That still leaves the baffling decision on PS1 games. Is it really that expensive for Sony to port its existing PS1 emulator to PS4? Or are the licensing agreements that fucked up that Sony can't bring the digital games to PS4?
It seems like Microsoft is able to do what it's doing because it had the whole system planned out much better from the beginning. There are games I own on PS3 that I'm actually thinking of re-buying on Xbox 360 because BC might let me play them on current and future hardware -- the 360-era classics I can't get on PC. If original Xbox BC pans out the same way I may find myself re-buying even more old school games on Xbox. Gen 6 consoles actually had a greater number of good games you can't get on PC right now. What if one day TimeSpliters and Ninja Gaiden Black show up on XBL?
Digital0Reality
Neo Member
Seems like Microsoft is forcing their hand. PS4 bc is all but required.
foolishoptimist
Member
How many people expect to transfer their old paper backs onto a kindle though?
Does anyone complain that their Blu-ray player doesn't play their old Vhs tapes?
Sony have been pretty good at supporting their legacy platforms, but PS3 emulation doesn't even run well on an i7. PS4 was never gonna have it, and it may not even be good enough on PS5.
Teletraan1
Banned
I would hope that by PS5 they can just brute force PS1/2/3 games. PS4 should be a similar architecture so hopefully it is easy to get working on PS5.
In literature and film BC isn't really a constant (well, Blu-Ray players and 4k Blu-Ray players are pretty much expected to be BC with DVDs), but to make up for that a plurality of the history of each medium is usually kept available on all the latest formats and distribution channels. You can look up a significant portion of songs and movies made in the last several decades on iTunes or a bunch of other digital services. PC game services have been rapidly making the history of PC gaming available for people to buy today.
It's only in console gaming where you don't see this collective effort to keep significant portions of back catalogs available. Most PS2 games still require you to go out and grab a PS2. That's like if most music made in the 80's and early 90's was still only available on cassette tape.
There also has to be something said about the rapidity with which console gaming does this. These kinds of "hard splits" have happened in PC gaming but much less often: pretty much just the transition from MS-DOS to Windows 9x. Maybe Windows 9x to Windows NT if you wanna get picky. Maybe you can also count old home computer games. Honestly, the "normal" system people are used to where console manufacturers designed completely new and exotic architectures every few years was kind of insane when you think about it. When the SNES first came out parents were pissed it wasn't BC with the NES. People still wonder why consoles weren't always just treated as iterations of an operating system or line of computers instead of extremely specialized toys. Sony and Microsoft finally got out of that system to make things easier on developers.
But that's beside the general point that games aren't completely abandoned once they become a few years old.
93xfan
Banned
Yep. I will never buy another multi platform game on a Sony machine if there is no PS4 BC.
sergiovassari
Member
Same here.
flatearthpandas
Member
Because no one in their right mind is going to buy PS2 classics mk2 when Sony has fucked everyone on the classics they bought on PS3/PSP/Vita.
If you sell me piss and call it lemonade, I'm not going to buy chocolate milk from you. The takeaway isn't that I don't like chocolate milk, it's that I don't fucking trust you because you're a dick.
I'm still holding out hope that they find some way to bring in PS3 BC, because along with PS2 and PS1 games there are just way too many titles I can't play on a modern platform without questionably legal emulation. That and I really don't like the idea of re-buying games I already own when the version that is available on PS4 is barely even an improvement in many cases.
As much as there is a weird appeal to the idea of having 3 or more consoles at the ready at the same time, it's just not practical.
And the people putting up PS Now as a replacement have got to be having a laugh. The model it distributes games with isn't how people want to deal with BC, and the quality of it depends greatly on your connection, your bandwidth, etc. Aside from the fact you can't play them offline you are renting the games. Who really wants to do that as a form of BC?
As much as there is a weird appeal to the idea of having 3 or more consoles at the ready at the same time, it's just not practical.
And the people putting up PS Now as a replacement have got to be having a laugh. The model it distributes games with isn't how people want to deal with BC, and the quality of it depends greatly on your connection, your bandwidth, etc. Aside from the fact you can't play them offline you are renting the games. Who really wants to do that as a form of BC?
Alexander DeLarge
Member
What has Sony done to earn my optimism on the subject? Plenty of first party games have locked frame rates and never received PS4 Pro compatibility patches.
foolishoptimist
Member
Wait. You have to re-buy books and movies you already own to read/play them on modern devices? What kind of crazy system is this?
Herp Derpington
Member
If 3rd parties can see the benefit of what MS is doing with increased sales of old games via the system store front (thus potentially limiting 3rd party resellers like GameStop) I wouldn't be surprised to see outside pressure pushing Sony to offer bc (at least digitally).
The point is that you CAN.
One of the most baffling things about PS4 right now is you can't buy PS1 games on it, even though you can buy hundreds of them on PS3, PSP, and Vita. With that, it was thought that Sony introduced essentially a new library of classics that would continue throughout its later hardware, similar to iTunes or iBooks. That hasn't carried over to PS4 however. Even worse is what's happened to PS2 games. Not only are the PS2 classics not on PS4, but the new ones in HD with trophies have to be re-purchased even if you bought the same game on PSN on PS3. Nintendo at least dropped the price of Wii U Virtual Console games you already bought on Wii VC. Compare this to digital PC storefronts that are trying to make as much as the history of Windows gaming as possible available, or even Microsoft's current policy with digital Xbox games, potentially going all the way back to the original Xbox.
What I'm saying is, with other media you see significant efforts to make legacy content available on current digital distribution channels to be maintained into the future. Sony is really dropping the ball on this right now, most of all by not including the digital library of PS1 and PS2 games it built up on PS3. Not having any PS4 BC at all on PS5 would be a huge disappointment given the nature of the technology right now and what just about everybody else is doing. The issues with the PS3 hardware are understandable, but it would be a big disappointment to see the entire PS4 digital storefront walled off once the PS5 lands. If that happens, then what were all those PS4 remasters for in the first place? Are they really going to remaster all those games AGAIN on PS5?
That's all aside from the issue of just how hard it seems to be to even convince publishers to make their legacy console games available digitally and keep them available on new hardware.
I'll be fine with this.
TGO
Hype Train conductor. Works harder than it steams.
No because they get Remastered and restoration or the DVD release is playable on their Blu-ray players
With games we rarely see the Remaster of a game older than a generation with no ability to play older releases
We ain't asking to be able to play pac man
We asking to be able to play on format that is still used, and can be still played
Agreed on all counts. Personally, I think the lack of consistent efforts being made to preserve older games is the worst aspect of the video game industry. Steam, other digital platforms like it, and PC in general are doing alright for the most part (although there are still plenty of older games not available digitally, or that can have issues running on modern hardware), so credit where it's due. Xbox is a bit more iffy, as it will take a while before we get anything near a full library of OG Xbox and 360 games on X1 and beyond, if we ever do, and there are issues with some games (par for the course when emulation is involved).
Sony and Nintendo, in the other hand? Both are terrible about this. If you're lucky, you eventually get the games you want emulated on your current system after both are done drip feeding you their legacy content over the 5 years or so that the generation lasts. After that? It's time to start the drip feed all over again, assuming either Sony or Nintendo even decide to make these games available again at all (no PS1 Classics on PS4, no VC on Switch). There's also remasters, and they're nice when they happen, but they're generally few and far between, and not always done well.
I mean, I just don't understand why it has to be so difficult to preserve this stuff. If I want to, say, watch Jurassic Park (a movie from 1993), there are so many ways to do that. If I want to, say, play MGS1 or maybe RE1-3 (no, complete remakes don't count, IMO), I have to buy/hook up some ancient hardware and play 'em at 240p on my huge HDTV, or attempt to figure out how to emulate them on PC, and hope there are no hick ups. It's terrible, and it frankly depresses me when I think about all the truly classic games that might be lost to time.
DeathbyCheerios
Member
foolishoptimist
Member
Or added Trophies?
For DVD to Blu-ray sure. Vhs/laserdisk to DVD didn't work that way though.
That's because the cost of supporting the old format was too expensive, requiring custom hardware in already expensive devices.
Go back in time and watch everyone hate on Sony for the $600 PS3 announcement, with freakin PS2 components grafted onto it, alongside the 360 praise with weak BC and weak solder but cheaper price.
Gamers back then were asking for cheaper hardware. But now they complain when the cheap CPU is too weak for PS3 emulation.
Also, when, besides Wii/gamecube has Nintendo offered decent BC without rebuying the exact same ISO?
It might've happened, but honestly not sure.
The issue with the PS3 is that it initially used hardware-based PS2 emulation -- it basically had a PS2 packed into it. I'm not even completely sure how much that added to the cost, but I used it a lot anyway. Theoretically that same technical hurdle wouldn't exist for trying to get PS4 games running on PS5. I'm not saying PS4 BC on PS5 is definite, I (and others) are just saying that due to pretty much certain architectural similarities it will be a lot less expensive than ensuring compatibility of PS3 games.
And as for the movie comparison, there's still a much more significant portion of movies that got remastered on DVD and eventually Blu-Ray. In the US at least, just about any notable movie you can think of got re-released on DVD, eventually Blu-Ray, and eventually digital services. The equivalent happening on PlayStation would be like if 80 or 90% of the PS1, PS2, and PS3 catalogs got remastered on PS4. What we're getting are just a handful of games. Microsoft has at least gotten a few hundred Xbox 360 games playable on Xbox One, and PC services have made probably thousands of legacy games playable on today's systems. If you compare services and platforms, you can clearly see Sony and Nintendo right now are leaving behind a lot more legacy content. We have yet to see how or if Nintendo is doing Virtual Console.
Taliban Stan
Member
The amount of money people spent this gen buying last gen games for current gen systems isn't something to ignore.
I thought the whole point of this gen's architecture was easy development and pc like software compatibility on the next generation?
I think they'll do something to make a "worse" form of bc that lets you play old games you already own but a "better" form will be you paying $30+ to buy the game again. It happened too much this gen for companies to put their hands back in their pockets.
I thought the whole point of this gen's architecture was easy development and pc like software compatibility on the next generation?
I think they'll do something to make a "worse" form of bc that lets you play old games you already own but a "better" form will be you paying $30+ to buy the game again. It happened too much this gen for companies to put their hands back in their pockets.
93xfan
Banned
BC shouldn't be a massive downgrade in latency and iq
PS4 spec is the new baseline going forward. I would assume every PS hardware for the foreseeable future will support PS4 games without exception. PS2 games will continue to be emulated or remastered for the PS4 spec, making them compatible going forward. PS3 may see limited BC in the future, but it will be on a per-game, "whitelisted" basis like 360 titles once hardware can brute force it. PS1 titles... well... I'm guessing those will have to be remade or ported, because I don't think Sony can or will bring the whole catalog to PS4. Plus most of them look terrible on a 65" 4K TV, and i don't really see Sony going down the handheld path anytime soon.
As for discs, yes on BC for any PS games on a Blu-Ray disc. Sony isn't dropping the disc drive anytime soon.
As for discs, yes on BC for any PS games on a Blu-Ray disc. Sony isn't dropping the disc drive anytime soon.
staticneuron
Member
That is totally disingenuous. The only reason it gets brought up for PS2 and PS3 titles were due to the unique hardware in play which either required immense power or actual hardware from previous consoles.
If the PS5 uses same or similar architecture to PS4 price concerns wouldn't be apart of the discussion. I don't see a reason why PS1 and PS2 BC wouldn't be apart of PS5 architecture unless they chose to skimp again on CPU power. Which is pointedly one of the main reasons the PS4 nor the PS4 pro can emulate PS3. They are not powerful enough.
I personally do not play retro games, and have backlogs of current games, but I have many friends who are nostalgic and would rather go back and relive a previous experience versus playing new ones. I understand even though I don't feel the same.
Why couldn't they? Also, why would look terrible if they were uprendered to HD like PS2 Classics? If Sony were to emulate PS1 games on PS4 (very easy to do on almost anything AFAIK), they would almost certainly give the same treatment as PS2 Classics (i.e. rendered in HD with trophy support).
Probably licensing is my guess. Their agreements might not have extended to future hardware, it's just a possibility that would explain it. They've made dumber decisions lol
Also, you can clean up any PS1 game and render it at 4K but the assets there aren't going to magically look good. PS2 is able to get away with it in some games, but PS1 assets are just too primitive. Textures that looked passable at, for instance, 320x240 aren't going to look good at 1080p, you would have black bars on even an Apple Watch
I agree that licensing issues could prevent from PS1 games from showing up on PS4. However, I disagree that all PS1 games look ugly at a higher resolution. It depends on the game, same as PS2, IMO. Check this out... https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=M2XSLR9AwIY
