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.
Lots of weird incorrect answers in the comments. MS 100% has changed CPU architectures and needs to emulate old games. The 360 was basically a PowerMac.
My guess - the Xbox One’s launch catalog was trash, and MS doubled down on emulation to build it out. Then they never stopped. They kept plugging away at it, and now they have a giant asset for GamePass.
MS got a head start because they were desperate for good games in the early days on the One.f
This is the answer.
If Sony was losing the console wars, they’d be doing BC, and not MS.
The hardware architecture on the PS2 and PS3 was so radically different, it effectively makes emulation impossible.
The change made in the PS4 and PS5 makes the transfer of those games relatively trivial, but attempting the replicate the now abandoned Core processor of the PS3 is the hold up there, as is the PS2 Emotion Engine.
The reason the PS3 was so expensive was including PS2 hardware to handle the backwards compatibility. They weren’t going to repeat that mistake with the 4 and 5.
Meanwhile, on the Xbox side, Microsoft never had that problem.
Software emulation is very much possible. There is software for x86 and even ARM processors that emulate PS1, PS2(doesn’t work great on ARM I many cases) and PS3 (x86 only currently)which work well enough. If Sony cared to they could develop their own software emulation layer to run on PS5 to run just about everything from the previous generation.
Also Microsoft had similar issues in hardware emulation because, while the original Xbox and the Xbox one were on x86, the 360 was a Power PC architecture similar in some ways to the PS3 which ran Power PC with other proprietary coprocessors. They had to develop a Power PC emulator in software to run 360 games on the Xbox one.
A first party solution can’t work “well enough”, it just has to work.
PS1 emulation at this point should be trivial, 2 and 3 is not. The first time someone puts a disc in and it doesn’t work would be worse for them than not having it at all.
I think the thing holding back PS1 emulation is that once they open that door, everyone will go “What about 2 and 3?”
PS1 emulation is a breeze, but with current hardware in the PS5, I think a PS2 emulator on the platform wouldn’t be too insane. But yeah, PS3 emulation? Not happening.
I think you’re wrong on the disc not working thing though. The original Xbox was only half supported for a long time.
I think the problem with emulating a PS1 is “don’t meet (play) your heroes”.
Most of us played PS1 on dinky little CRT screens before we got used to the graphical fidelity we have these days.
Playing PS1 games on your 65" OLED will probably hurt your eyes.
It’s one of those things that you want to do because of nostalgia, but isn’t really great when it comes to it.
Besides, at the end of the day Sony is selling every PS5 they make, just like they did with the PS4 and PS3.
Adding backwards compatibility doesn’t make any financial sense as long as it’s not a killer feature that shifts sales towards Microsoft then Sony has little insensitive to do it.
They much prefer you buy those new AAA titles or subscribe to PS+.
Playing PS1 games on your 65" OLED will probably hurt your eyes. It’s one of those things that you want to do because of nostalgia, but isn’t really great when it comes to it.
That really depends on the game and upscaling methods used. Duckstation for instance does a pretty amazing job of making most of those old games look good. Check out this video of Crash Bandicoot running at 4K for instance.
I actually go the opposite direction and add CRT/scanline filters, especially since a lot of sprite work back in the day was built to be viewed that way. Those games look much better on CRTs with scanlines than they do in crystal clear integer upscaling.
That, or a *decent* upscaling algorithm such as xBRZ. Old upscalers like Super 2x SAI made pixel art look like a cheap watercolor, and made later upscalers get a bad fame. Nowadays a good upscaler basically turns the game screen into a vectorized set of lines, and it looks much better, closer to what the pixel artists intended the end result to look like on a big screen.
I meant without upscaling.
Upscaling works well on some titles, others less.
Sony, obviously, wouldn’t want old titles competing with new titles, so can’t make them too shiny.
Didn’t stop them putting out a HDMI Mini PSX. You get around that by cleaver pixel replication and filtering upressing, etc. The PS3 PS1 emulator actually had options for this.
Honestly, I remember playing full 3D titles on friends’ PS1s back in the day and thinking they’d given me eye cancer, even with the fuzz of an old CRT TV working in their favor. I don’t think I would want to play them now without a boatload of emulator graphic enhancements to deal with all the wonky 3D projection and unfiltered low-res texture mess of OG PlayStation games.
I’m 22. I grew up playing my PS1 on with an upscaler on the 55 inch Vizio in the front room. I like the PS1 art style quite a bit and think that a good upscale and maybe a filter is all you need to make things look how I want.
Idk, I think it would make a difference in the Microsoft v Sony sales. Nintendo doing the N64 and NES eShop have been massively successful. Xbox doesn’t really have any killer apps, they’ve really just had Sony beaten on software features the past two generations. Sony implementing the software features that Nintendo and Microsoft offer would make a decent difference.
Plus, imagine how well a “play your childhood discs on your xplaytendo switchtion” would work in an ad campaign. Getting people to pull out their childhood game collection would make for a great viral campaign for gamers as well.
Idk, the thing about the internet that I don’t think older people have realized is that it creates an even larger freeze in culture than ever before. If you started gaming in the 90s, you likely heard about older games via word of mouth and got your games at a physical store. There were no minor celebrities that would turn a cult classic into an actual classic. Nowadays? Old media is fully capable of wiping out new media in the right circumstances. Songs like “Dreams” by Fleetwood Mac and some Pink Floyd (if I remember correctly) have taken #1 Billboard spots in the past 2-3 years. LSD Dream Emulator went from a game nobody played to a PlayStation classic because of some YouTube videos. We’re in an age where there is an extremely high demand for old media and no way to access most of it without piracy. There is a TON of money to be made by charging money for emulation and moving things to new consoles.
Mark my words, Skyrim will come out on the next generation Xbox, because Bethesda understands that accessibility is good enough to charge for.
I’m 36, not feeling the nostalgia, but then again I was always a PC gamer and never really had to struggle with the lack of support for old games.
I’ve played old games on newer hardware all the time over the years.
The most common realization is that the games were simpler and looked worse than you remembered.
Games also hold up better on PC, PS1 graphics was severely limited, and PS2 was a bit better, sure, but PC graphics were ahead of consoles.
PS3 and Xbox360 finally got to a level where the PC vs. console graphics playing-field seemed more even, and since then console graphics have been properly good in terms of value for money.
I paid more for my 3070Ti than my Series X, but I can’t really tell the difference without spending a lot of time optimizing the settings (or maybe I just need to break out other titles?).
The huge difference is that I can play any of the games I’ve bought over the years, plus most of the ones I acquired in my teenage years - if I wanted to.
Yet - what do I play? Surprise surprise - it’s not the games of yesteryear.
Obviously I’m just one data point, but considering how many gamers I surround myself with and I can’t recall when any of them wanted to play games from the 90’s that weren’t readily available console classics from Nintendo or Sega I’m not convinced it would make a huge difference if the classic games were available.
Maybe they’d sell more consoles, but people just don’t want to pay AAA money for 25-30 year old games. And it’s the games that make them money, not the consoles.
Skyrim is a game that probably deserves to be mentioned along Pink Floyd and Fleetwood Mac.
But in general comparing games and music is not that simple. Music production and recording has had high fidelity for ages. But pick up a worn cassette and put in an old tape deck and you might feel a bit what playing those old games feel like.
Only if you dramatically lower your standards for what backwards compatibility means. PS3 emulators might be progressing, but they’re far from the native hardware in actual functionality, especially with games that actually used the features of the hardware that made the PS3 a powerhouse.
Emulators can wave that away as “it is what it is”. Sony advertising backwards compatibility couldn’t.
We’re almost at that point. PS3 emulation on the Steam Deck is ALMOST there. Another generation of hardware improvements should push us over the edge. Then it would be up to Sony to decide “hey, we want to make money on the titles we can license and put back in an online store…”
PS2 games work almost flawlessly on my steam deck under emulation and the PS5 is more powerful than that, and Sony have access to the OG system engineers, software and hardware to work from, note they already had PS2 games working on the PS4. The PS3 is the tricky but people do have it working on PC so no reason Sony couldn’t. There’s no excuse not to have PS1, PSP or PSVita emulation games as they’re all easy
Xbox’s Backwards Compatibility is definitely a big deal; but as someone who loves old games as a concept and has never thrown out a console, it’s not as big a selling point as you would think/ hope.
I personally wanted to try some of the PS2/PS3 only games and didn’t have a PS3, so I bought one used a while back. I probably only logged maybe 10 hours in it before getting completely side tracked by my backlog of modern games. And while I know that’s anecdotal evidence, it really seems like the allure of classic games might not be enough of a selling point.
This is something I think Xbox had the right idea about. While BC is very useful in concept, there aren’t so many classic games that would draw people away from modern games; so you only have to support those few games.
With that in mind, I think Sony could offer BC for their relevant PS2/ PS3 exclusives since they would only need to guarantee emulator performance for a much smaller number of games. I don’t think it’s likely for Sony to do this until they are no longer the dominant console, though, as they can make more money selling their PS3 subscription service.
From a game presentation standpoint, BC is a huge issue and I would personally love to see it happen for the PS5 (and I’d like to see it expanded to all games for the Xbox as well); but I doubt there would be much return on investment for developing the BC features, and that’s the only motivation for corporations.
You’re absolutely right. However I will add to your initial point. If I could have paid an extra $100 - $150 (for the hardware) in order to have PS1-PS3 games play on my PS5, I would have just so I could have it as an option. Bonus points if the entire PS3 digital library (especially the PS1 classics) were still available.
Not the original commenter, but I did pay the extra $100-150 for the PS3 for backwards compatibility. In retrospect, I shouldn’t have. I played maybe like 3 PS2 games on it. I was far more interested in then current-gen games. I sorta got swept up in the hype of BC back in the day, especially when Sony stopped production of BC PS3s. I literally ran out and got one before they all disappeared; I still have it.
Looking back, the option wasn’t worth it. But we’re different people, different consumers. Our needs and wants differ.
It’s because backward compatibility would cannibalize the sales on new games. Same reason Nintendo limits releases of old games. If you have an extensive back catalog of games, then new games are less appealing.
Or you do what MS does. Put the old games in your subscription service. Make money with monthly fees from people who don’t have the disks or don’t have an optical drive.
Part of the issue with buying an x-box is that there’s a limited catalog of games and very few exclusives. MS has to offer something more than just new games. PlayStation is the dominant gaming platform globally and has been for a long time. They want people buying new games at $70/ea. They don’t have to incentivise people to come to their platform as much.
The simplest and most likely reason is just because they don’t have to. Playstation is leading Xbox by a lot this generation (so far, things can change) and PlayStation just has no incentive to add value to something they’re already selling record numbers of. Xbox is trying to attract customers, customer playstation has left on the cutting room floor, and backwards compatibility is a way to do that.
Not to mention the closer you get to modern day, the more games rely on company servers to remain running. Long gone are the days of simple platformers like Super Mario Bros. Many games made in the last 15 years are multi-player games with a basic ass single player added on for ‘compliance’ reasons. It’d still be great for those that want it, but I don’t feel like I’m missing out on much that I can’t replicate myself with ROMs and emulators should the need arise.
Money
This is part of the reason why I haven’t thought of buying a console since the PS3. There are a lot of games that were made for the ps2/1 that I really loved and I can probably never play them again because PlayStations lack that feature. They have effectively been erased, which is really sad.
I sold my PS3 a long time ago, and I’ve been using Steam on my PC since then. Now I won’t have to worry about losing access to titles I bought just because they’re locked to certain hardware that will eventually not be made any more.
What I’ve liked best is that the settings menus makes it so that the game can scale with your hardware. So if you have the capable hardware you aren’t left waiting a decade for a remaster release and nextgen console release to play with some settings turned up.
lol, I’d rather have the first party modern bangers Sony’s pumping out then…checks notes…literally no good first party games on my xsx since I bought it. Backwards compatibility is great, but I don’t spend $600+ on a console to play old games. I can keep my old consoles around for that or emulate.
Depends on your tastes doesn’t it. I’ll take a hundred smaller projects like Pentiment, Hi-Fi Rush or Psychonauts over another generic open world adventure or sad dad simulator.
I have all there of those on my PC/Steam Deck. They’re not really XBox exclusives.
They’re Xbox console exclusives, don’t be disengenuious.
I wasn’t being disingenuous… I can and have played all of those games and I have never owned an XBox in my life. That’s not exclusive.
Yeah. I also have a Steam Deck, if I want to play an old PS1 or PS2 game and it isn’t on PS+ then I’ll just emulate it.
I will say though, there are a few PS3 games that have yet to be remastered that are kind of a blind spot, but that list is getting shorter.
Pretty sure the PS5 drive can’t actually read CDs, so that’s the PS1 library and most early PS2 games gone right way, even though they can be emulated pretty easily. The PS3 should be possible, but they haven’t bothered when you can play it streaming.
I guess the awkward truth here is that there’s no real business need to have it. Most of us into retro games will have a way to play them already, either via PC emulation or old consoles. And if you show a Gen Z kid some of the horrors we used to enjoy on PS1 (although I maintain Sheep, Dog ‘n’ Wolf is an underrated classic), they’d run screaming back to Fortnite and CoD.
It would be nice to have it, but nobody is not buying a PS5 because they can’t run Terracon. They’re still selling them as fast as they can make them, even with the economy in shambles.
I remember when Sony announced they were stopping production on backward compatible PS3s. I ran out and got one, because I still had PS2 games I wanted to finish. The BC PS3s were more expensive than their non-BC counterparts. And the PS3 was already an expensive machine.
I think I played 2 or 3 PS2 games on it. And never with consistency. Plus, these older games looked terrible on modern HD screens. And frankly, I was more interested in playing current gen titles. For example, I got a PS5 so I could play FF16. Not so I could keep playing FF15 or FF13. It really ended up being a real waste of money to buy that more expensive PS3.
And many of the games eventually re-released on other platforms: PSP/Vita, Steam, Switch, later-gen consoles, etc. I play a lot of JRPGs, so that helps.
Backwards compatibility is something I really don’t care about. It’d be nice, I guess. But I still have my PS3 and PS4. If there’s something I really want to play, I can boot those up. Or just see if the game is available on Steam.
A while back I bought Metal Slug 3 on the ps4 for super cheap on sale. It was just the ps2 version emulated. So Sony has a PS2 emulator
They’re perfectly capable of running old games, they proved it times and times again. They just don’t want them to be backwards compatible so you have to buy them again.
I wish Jet Set Radio Future was able to work on the new Xbox.
Many suspect this one has been trapped in licensing hell.
There are rumors of the Switch getting a successor next year. My biggest wish is for it to be compatible with the current games, included digital purchases. Honestly, if I can import my digital library and saves I’m already sold on a switch successor
Xbox has always doing the x86 architecture(Edit: as corrected by following comment, 360 was not.) so it’s much easier to do BC. For Sony or Nintendo it’s just not worth the effort until the emu is mature that they can just reap the benefit. PS5 can already play almost entire PS4 library, Anything PS2 or before can be emu pretty consistently if you are trying to get it done, then it only left PS3 in a weird place. For PS3, many good games already have a PS4/PS5 remaster games, for non-best sellers you can probably get a cheap ps3 slim with enough storage to play those left out games.(ie, PSN only Puppeteer), OR stream them like you mentioned.
Xbox has always doing the x86 architecture so it’s much easier to do BC
No it hasn’t - the 360 was PowerPC based just like Wii, WiiU and a lot of the PS3.
MS just had a lot of PC experience and games to fall back on.
Whoops, should have look it up I guess. Sorry for my old and fading memory and thanks for correction.
I wish that was true, there are so many games I would go back and play again. PS3 was a technical marvel for it’s time, however using it was so complicated that we only got to see it’s true potential by the end of it’s lifecycle with games like TLOU. So just speaking of raw power, PS5 could %100 not emulate PS3 games flawlessly as we barely have PS3 emulation on PCs. Technical part aside, it just doesn’t make business sense for Sony to invest in it. You also have to keep in mind if Sony offers PS3 emulation, it can’t stutter or crash on some games. it needs to be a commercial grade product which is not even guaranteed with PS2 or NES emulation on PC
I’ve played lot of games on the PC without issue like lollipop chainsaw, asura’s wrath, drakengard 3, and shadows of the damned without issue at 4k/60. Was really surprising to me, but rpcs3 has made great strides and if a game has been marked playable it’s been a fantastic experience. And that’s with someone unaffiliated with Sony making it possible. Seeing what Xbox accomplished with Xbox One when it came to 360 compatability it wouldn’t surprise me if Sony did better than what RPCS3 did.
There’s some notable attention given the games that don’t emulate well like MGS4 and red dead with it coming across as buggy, but lot of other titles do run really well as if they were official remastered ports.
This is what I am saying. They don’t have to offer the whole back catalog. But they can at least try and offer what is currently working in emulation.
This interview has some details about how it was done on Xbox: https://hanselminutes.com/632/eric-heutchy-on-backward-compatibility-xbox-one-x-enhanced-games-and-the-heutchy-method