But no small part of that additional complexity is brought on by the console makers who have obstinately refused to standardize on just about everything even in some basic ways. They've managed to somehow sell it to customers as a good thing because it's "competition" but not all competition is healthy. This is wartime offensive escalation that take us further and further away from the core value proposition of a console with each generation and renders valuable features like BC as collateral damage.
For 15 years, the fact that I could buy a next gen Playstation that was compatible at launch with the software of its predecessor was a triumph of the platform. It greatly smoothed the hardware transition from one gen to the next and positioned the platform as credibly the most serious about the value of their ENTIRE software catalog. It was a model for some of those simpler forms of media before they got their act together on their own compatibility. Now it's just...gone. You can't seriously be surprised that it would create a void some of us would struggle to deal with.
Software is very hard to just move from one platform to another in one easy fix. That's why games don't magically appear on both platforms. The thing is, when the PS2 came out, it had the PS chip inside the system. When the PS3 came out, it had the PS2 chip inside the system and had software emulation of the PS1.
So what it comes down to is two solutions:
1) Include the previous hardware in the new system
2) Emulation
Let's take the first one, to include the PS3 chip inside the PS4, it would drive costs up significantly. This is a huge cost for what will in the end be a feature used by a minority of the user base. The number of people in that minority of the userbase who would actually skip the PS4 because of a lack of BC is even much smaller. So given that the price killed the PS3 in the beginning, and the number of people that gets discouraged by this, it's simply not a feasible thing to do to add the hardware at the expense of driving up the cost of the system which in turn puts thew whole platform and future in jeopardy. It's just not reasonable to do this.
Now let's look at emulation. Haven't you noticed that the speed at which an emulator pops up on a PC for a lot of systems is slowing down? At the rate that the complexity of these systems are changing, it becomes a lot more difficult to emulate them that will run at full speed. Heck there are still some systems we don't have reasonable emulation at all. This problem is going to get worse as time goes on. Eventually they will be emulated, but it's not always reasonable to expect that emulation is viable by the time the next platform launches.
Sony bet on the Cell chip and lost. Had it been a success, you could bet future systems would have used it. Microsoft and Sony both are seeing a trend and that's why both companies have switched their hardware design to what it is turning out to be. While I would love BC, I'm also realistic about the bigger picture and understand why we aren't going to get it now. Assuming that consoles don't end with this generation, this hiccup, puts both Sony and Microsoft in a better position moving forward to provide BC. Better to take the hit now in the early days than down the line.
What people want is unrealistic and they need to understand that. It's not like Sony or Microsoft is doing it to spite the gamer or to push sales of the new platform software. There are serious financial and technical reasons why this isn't happening and there isn't a magic fix for it.
