*spin-off* Importance of Backward Compatibility Discussion

[BRiT]

I think they would sell more with an optional $100 companion unit offering BC.

As it is, they explicitly called out and mentioned that you don't want to connect your existing console in to the XB1 HDMI in. I think the argument is as follows. Some people prefer simplicity and would only have 1 console connected to their system. In that case there's no incentive to stick with XB1 since they would be leaving behind their entire game library, so why not upgrade to a cheaper console?

 

[Npl]

For anyone advocating BC as standard, do you believe XB1 would sell more at $599 with BC than at $499 without?

Im not advocating it as standard, I was just playing on the assertion that the companies unconditionally sell whatever they can produce.

But Id rate it way higher as "standard" than a included HDD or a Kinect, both something you can easily shove in later. In terms of HDD I`d love to pick the one of my liking anyway, and the people that just look at a low entry price and not the complete value want to be fooled anyway.

 

[AlphaWolf]

If they do sell every unit regardless, why not add 80$ BC and sell it for 100$.. or just ramp up production. Long term you need market and mind-share, and those are closely related.

Because BC doesn't equate to profits from new software. The money made from bargain bins and used games is nothing.

 

[AzBat]

For anyone advocating BC as standard, do you believe XB1 would sell more at $599 with BC than at $499 without?

Yes.

I think they would sell more with an optional $100 companion unit offering BC.

As it is, they explicitly called out and mentioned that you don't want to connect your existing console in to the XB1 HDMI in. I think the argument is as follows. Some people prefer simplicity and would only have 1 console connected to their system. In that case there's no incentive to stick with XB1 since they would be leaving behind their entire game library, so why not upgrade to a cheaper console?

This has been my whole argument. With no BC they are encouraging their existing userbase to shop around. They can get the same multiplatform titles on the other cheaper & faster system.

Like BRiT & Npl, I think a BC add-on module would have been better(though it sucks that HDMI-In doesn't look like an option due to lag). Making it standard gets you into the same issue Bkilian mentions about the PS3. Make it for those who would spend for it like me.

Xbox 360 was the king of options. If you wanted BC you downloaded the update. If you wanted a system with or without a hard drive you had the option. If you wanted to add a larger drive later you could. If you rather use a USB flash drive/hard drive you could. If you wanted to use AA batteries or a rechargeable battery pack in your controller you could. If you didn't want Kinect you didn't have to buy it. Etc, etc. Now you have no choice of hard drive, no choice on Kinect & no choice on BC. It's their way or the highway & I can see why a large portion of folks are turned off because of it. No wonder you see people moving in droves to the other system: they have choices on hard drive, camera & soon BC. Microsoft give us choices!

Tommy McClain

 

[AlphaWolf]

All those choices but they still don't offer BC.

 

[AzBat]

What happened to Gaikai? I knew it wouldn't be there for launch but figured it would be there early next year. That's still more than XB1. MS hasn't even announced anything. Though they have supposedly shown Halo4 streaming to PC & Phone. Who knows if they plan to do that on XB1 or support other 360 titles. If they could I would sell my 360 & buy the XB1.

Tommy McClain

 

[patsu]

Sony said they are targeting 2014 for Gaikai in US, running PS3 games for Playstation client(s). May be PS4 or Vita first ?

Edit: Don't be too psyched about the service yet. Sony haven't announced a price.

 

[AlphaWolf]

What happened to Gaikai? I knew it wouldn't be there for launch but figured it would be there early next year. That's still more than XB1. MS hasn't even announced anything. Though they have supposedly shown Halo4 streaming to PC & Phone. Who knows if they plan to do that on XB1 or support other 360 titles. If they could I would sell my 360 & buy the XB1.

Tommy McClain

Do you believe Gaikai is a free service to offer you access to games you already own on a new platform?

 

[Npl]

Because BC doesn't equate to profits from new software. The money made from bargain bins and used games is nothing.

Owners of a nextgen-console atleast are able to buy those shiny next-gen games... and might just do that. But they have to get one of those consoles before, and if there aint a large software catalogue there arent compelling reasons to make this switch (instead of say investing in your existing hardware).

I certainly dont think about getting a console for a few new games.

 

[AlphaWolf]

And yet millions of people do buy that new hardware for a few new games. Unless you think that the PS4 and XB1 are going to languish on shelves.

 

[AzBat]

Do you believe Gaikai is a free service to offer you access to games you already own on a new platform?

No. You could require a subscription fee for the BC service in order to access content you've already paid for as well as the ability to purchase additional games. OnLive is offered a similar business plan even though they end up dropping the monthly fee. Microsoft could roll BC service into Gold by offering unlimited BC service or maybe you only get so many games or hours of BC service included with Gold. They might even create an additional Live tier(e.g. more expensive) that included it. Sony could provide the same with PSN Plus.

BC doesn't have to mean providing a product or service for free. Sounds like some of you have no imagination. LOL I'm not asking something for nothing. I just want to be able to take the games(mainly digital) I've already purchased forward with me onto the next platform from the same company. If I have to pay for that privledge then so be it. It's not a radical idea or even a complicated one. It just seems the powers that be are too scared & lazy to do it.

Tommy McClain

 

[AzBat]

Looks like BC via OnLive or Gaikai on Xbox might be a pipe dream. Polygon has an article with comment from Albert Penello about backwards compatibility.

"It could be more complicated things like rendering full games like a Gaikai and delivering it to the box," Penello told GameSpot, referring to Sony's still-unproven solution for prior-generation compatibility on PlayStation 4. "We just have to figure out how, over time, how much does that cost to deliver, how good is the experience."

...

"In the world of things I wish they had not shown at the Company Meeting because I knew I'd be asked about it later, put that at the top of my list," Penello told Polygon earlier this week at an Xbox One demo in New York. "That is a good example, in certain circumstances [the cloud streaming] worked really awesome."

...

"It's really cool and really problematic, all at the same time, insofar as it's really super cool if you happen to have the world's most awesome internet connection. It works way better than you'd expect it to," Penello said. "So managing quality of service, the tolerance people will have for it being crappy. Can you imagine, in this day and age, with the bad information around, and we can't control the quality of that experience and make sure it's good, or have to tell people they can't do it?"

...

"It was a grand experiment, I know we did a lot of work behind it, and we said this is one of the things where the network just has to get better before we can do it," he said. "When that happens, you're going to have a really interesting conversation around that, can I actually run Xbox One games that way as well."

As for Sony's plans to use its Gaikai service to stream older PlayStation titles to the PS4, Penello said, "I'll be really interested to see how our friends in the Bay Area [at PlayStation] deal with this problem. But I can tell you, it's totally possible. We like it, we're fans of the cloud. We're not shy about that."

http://www.polygon.com/2013/11/8/5079554/xbox-one-backwards-compatibility-problematic

Then XboxOneDev on Reddit posted this as a response...

This really is quite a difficult problem to solve. I can give a little insight of two ways I know of to implement backward compatibility for current gen and past gen gaming consoles (PS1, PS2, PS3, Xbox, Xbox 360).
The first method involves building server farms of gaming consoles. For Microsoft, this would mean linking up racks and racks of Xbox 360s. Whenever a user requests a game, content would be generated by a console, then streamed. The bulk of the cost of this approach would be the cost of obtaining and setting up these consoles. In addition, maintenance cost of infrastructure that streams content via the internet needs to be accounted for. The upside is we already have all the hardware we need, the PS3 and 360 are released products.
A second method would be emulation. The benefit of this is scalability. Several instances of a console could be emulated per server. This is possible and already achieved for older generation consoles such as PS1, PS2, and the original Xbox. A complete and working PS3 or Xbox360 emulator is more or less impossible given the current state of technology. The overall consensus on when we would have the processing power to emulate a Cell processor or the 360's PowerPC triple core processor is about ten years.
The second approach will most likely be used for older generation games and the first method as a viable solution for PS3 and Xbox 360 games. However, even if these methods are technologically feasible, there are still many issues to solve. An obvious one is latency. There exists several sources of latency, the speed at which content can be generated (quality of infrastructure), the speed at which content can be received (your internet speed), as well as lag due to controller inputs, TVs, etc.... Assume we are able to reduce latency to the point where games are playable and users can see no visible lag, how many clients can we serve concurrently? Assume again that for one user to stream a game, one console is required and is locked for the duration of gameplay. How many consoles would we need such that every user at any given time who requests a game session will have an available console. 10,000? 100,000? A million? Would users have to wait in line to play a game? I would think these are the harder questions to answer.
It really would be interesting to see Gaikai's solution to these issues. In my opinion, showing one or two instances of lag free remote streaming gameplay is great but not really worthy of mentioning.

http://www.reddit.com/r/xboxone/com..._deliver_xbox_360_backwards/cdboqiu?context=3

It doesn't look real promising put in that context. I suspect they're going to wait to see how well received the Gaikai's PS3 service works before committing to anything.

Tommy McClain

 

[Deleted member 11852]

Looks like BC via OnLive or Gaikai on Xbox might be a pipe dream. Polygon has an article with comment from Albert Penello about backwards compatibility.

Despite Penello's comments, and frankly what would you expect him to say about a competitor's service for which Microsoft have announced no counter-offering, Gaikai is not unproven.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-face-off-gaikai-vs-onlive

How it'll stack up once PS4 games begin to consistently hit 1080p is anybody's guess, but for delivering lower resolution PS3 games as a backward compatibility solution, it's probably more than good enough already, let alone as everybody's network infrastructure improves in the coming years.

 

[AzBat]

Despite Penello's comments, and frankly what would you expect him to say about a competitor's service for which Microsoft have announced no counter-offering, Gaikai is not unproven.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-face-off-gaikai-vs-onlive

How it'll stack up once PS4 games begin to consistently hit 1080p is anybody's guess, but for delivering lower resolution PS3 games as a backward compatibility solution, it's probably more than good enough already, let alone as everybody's network infrastructure improves in the coming years.

I think it's unproven in the terms about of scale. I don't think Gaikai or OnLive have had as big audience as PS3/360(160 million+). Just imagine the kind of grief GAF would give Microsoft if you had to wait in line to use the service or if your Internet connection sucked & the latency that created. MS would get crucified. I bet they don't envy Sony trying to solve that issue.

Tommy McClain

 

[AlphaWolf]

I'd say Gaikai is proven in that it can be done, but unproven in terms of the experience. It will be fine for certain games and suck for others.

 

[joker454]

It's interesting that several million XB1 owners bought their XB1 (and same for PS4 owners) without BC even though we know for a confirmed fact that No One Buys a Console Without BC.

There's a whole thread on BC and how it's valued but isn't the deciding factor to buy a next-gen console. Maybe you should read it to familiarise yourself with the actual, typical console gamers' POV?

They made a poll to ask console owners what they wanted, and bc is listed at #2. Doesn't that finally clue people in as to it's importance? Makes you wonder how many less people they would have lost to the competition had it been a day 1 feature.

 

[Rangers]

It's interesting that #2 is backward compatibility with the 360 even though we know for a confirmed fact that No One Wants That (tm). Very strange.

People want it because they're dumb (or at least, dont think about it on a sophisticated level) and think it's free and happens in a vacuum, basically. So yes, in that false context, of course you want it.

Ask them "do you want BC and your console to cost $100 more?" Or "do you want BC and your hardware power to be lowered accordingly to accommodate BC hardware expense and heat/power draw, such that all your next gen games are in 720P?" and see what happens.

Hell they'd probably still vote for it, but that console would sell like garbage.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

They made a poll to ask console owners what they wanted, and bc is listed at #2. Doesn't that finally clue people in as to it's importance?

Is it something console gamers want? Yes. I would like BC in my consoles. Out of that list of features I would probably vote for BC (although I wouldn't because I understand it can't realistically happen). Is it a good idea to hamper your console with BC hardware at added cost for a feature that decreases in relevance over its life? Will lack of BC hamper console sales? PS3 sold tens of millions of units in Europe without any BC. It sold faster in the US when BC was dropped. XB1 and PS4 are selling millions, PS4 being the fastest selling console ever at launch, without BC. Doesn't that finally clue you in to BC being a nice, wanted, but ultimately unessential feature that a console can live without, even if it's preferred to be included all other things being equal?

Makes you wonder how many less people they would have lost to the competition had it been a day 1 feature.

In a magical la-la-land where BC can be added without any cost, sure. XB1 as is with BC would have sold better. Although let's also check the stats on that. 4,479 votes went to wanting BC out of 45,805 votes in that top 20, making BC the most important feature to 10% of those polled. Ergo the logical observation is that MS would have lost 10% less to the competition had they included BC, in this la-la-land where it was added for free. Now let's consider this sensibly and objectively without blinkers on. What would it have cost to include BC? Should MS have run a software porting programme for XB360's entire library? What would that have cost and would it work out better economy to snag an extra 10% at launch? Or should they have included XB360 hardware in XB1 designs? How much would that cost? They'd have needed at a minimum by my reckoning to include ROPS on the ESRAM a la XB360 and replace the Jaguar cores with PPC. What would that cost, how would it affect game development for the rest of the platform's life, and would it be worth 10% more buyers at launch for the first 2 years until BC become nigh irrelevant?

It's like the last of 27 pages of talking advantages and disadvantages and seeing the issue from all sides never happened!

 

[Phil]

Strange, that must be why all these last generation re-ports and hi-def versions are selling like hot-cakes...

 

[Npl]

Is it too much to accept that atleast a portion of the market would gladly pay another 100€ for BC?
Just make 2 SKUs for gods sake, it works with two or three differnet HDD sizes (usually every one of them gimped so you throw them out anyway)

Would love to play a proper Burnout via HDMI.