I do not think that was ever the issue, but the cost of doing it and then supporting it vs what the company earns from it, short and long term, tangible and intangible ones.
*spin-off* Importance of Backward Compatibility Discussion
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I do not think that was ever the issue, but the cost of doing it and then supporting it vs what the company earns from it, short and long term, tangible and intangible ones.
Whilst cost was a factor I honestly believe that BC sounds like a great feature that is rarely used. I would have used it at launch because I'd still have games I loved on my old console and didn't have many games on the new one - I could also sell the old console at a reasonable price to help fund the new console. This gen I just kept my old PS3 when the PS4 came out, I've (honestly) never gamed on it since PS4 came out so I doubt I would have used BC other than to test the feature...I think going back to 720p @ sub 30fps would be too jarring for me.
There's a link to that feature claim in this thread, and it was actually a fairly small number of votes form the total who expressed an opinion. As JPT says, and this whole is about, the question isn't whether gamers want it but at what cost the console company should go to to implement BC. As given different degrees of old game support, it's apparent that different levels can be provided at different costs. The emulator route is significantly lower cost than eating added hardware costs, but at a lesser degree of old game support, such that this solution perhaps doesn't deserve to be called 'Backwards compatibility'. That's a semantic argument on terminology, of course.
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You make it sound like Sony arbitrarily removed features without purpose. That would be foolish and I don't believe this was the case; an easy win would have been offering a Blu-ray free model for digital only purchasers not interested in HD movies because blue LED lasers cost an arm and a leg. Similarly they could have dropped the ridiculous case and gone with cheaper plastic like the latter models.
They didn't, they removed things of questionable value and use and I fully believe that had enough usage data from day 1 purchasers about the usage patterns of the card slots and backwards compatibility.
Yes but they don't have backwards compatibility any more than Sony did. What they have engineered is (it appears on the surface) a low resource porting system for 360 games which is reliant on Microsoft and the games publisher to actively support/consent.
This is how it was for me on PS3. I thought it was so important but in truth if I played PS2 games more than half a dozen times I would be surprised. I remember playing GTA Vice City a few times and that's it. I think for some (perhaps many) is that backwards compatibility is a bit like a comfort blanket.
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@DSoup - the problem was Sony want to win the BR vs HDDVD war so dropping BR was not an option. I agree tho, I think the cost of BC was fairly minimal (I think I read $20?) for a solution that not only worked with 99% of games but also improved some of them. The other thing to consider is that dropping BC means (likely) the ability re-charge for those PS2 classics digitally so not only saving money but bringing money in - and at the time Sony was losing massive amounts.
I suppose I'm saying nothing is cut and dried, but I strongly believe that people think they need BC more than they actually do.
I suppose I'm saying nothing is cut and dried, but I strongly believe that people think they need BC more than they actually do.
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Come on, you surely don't really believe that? Sony were one of about two dozen companies who backed Blu-ray over a small number who backed HD-DVD but if you really believe Sony were going to die in a ditch to help a format they didn't own to benefit companies they were primarily in direct competition with in many industries, then you've lost it. This is fanboy nonsense.
I said offer an Blu-ray free option (not remove Blu-ray from all models, which they couldn't do). Sony could also have provided cheaper wired controllers instead of wireless, make Wifi a paid for adapted (like the 360), remove the user upgradable HDD caddy or remove the HDD-free and offer an equivalent of the Core 360 - there are lots of things that Sony could have done to save costs and lower the barrier to entry but they chose very specific to remove things.
This is old well-trodden ground.
FarticusMaximus
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No, I pointed out it was removed as a vital cost-cutting measure.
That was never going to happen. Sony desperately needed the Blu-ray drive up front and centre in PS3 as it was in effect the Trojan horse for the new optical format.
Also, the public (and PSN) were not ready for a DD-only home console.
Not sure what that means or why any comparison to Sony is relevant. Are you referring to Sony's full hardware BC, it's less-supported half-software solution, or it's completely removed functionality?
The two systems are nothing alike. Sony had a recurring (hardware) cost for emulation in a limited number of PS3 consoles which inevitable had to be phased out, whereas MS have developed a software platform to allow BC for the future on all Xbox One consoles, and potentially all subsequent MS consoles and even PC's.
It's not porting, it's emulation. No change needs to be made whatsoever to the game itself. It requires a lightweight wrapper that simply lets the Xbox One know to launch the emulator. The only publisher support required is a good ol' thumbs up.
Well removing BR even as an option would have hurt the goal to make BR the 'next gen' format. I had no idea Sony didn't want BR to win the 'war' - I thought this was part of the reaosn for BR, why not just launch with a much cheaper DVD that wasn't in short supply?
Sorry if this has been gone over before.
Sorry if this has been gone over before.
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And as I pointed out, there were many options for removing costs that Sony chose to ignore. So their decisions were either foolish, random, provident or purposeful. I believe it was the latter.
Good grief, this again.
Blu-ray is not a Sony format like MiniDisc, ATRAC or UMD. Blu-ray is a format that Sony backed over HD-DVD and they had a vested interest in it - as did a consortium of hardware manufacturers and patent holders including Dolby Laboratories, DTS Inc, Hitachi, Ltd, Intel Corporation, LG Electronics, Mitsubishi, Panasonic, Pioneer, Philips, Samsung, Sharp, TDK Corporation plus a bunch of studios. At the time, Sony were the most visible supporter of Blu-ray because of PS3.My original comment was that Microsoft's current solution was similar to Sony's - in regard of the limitations. This is the comment you responded too, ergo relevance. Quod erat demonstrandum
I never said this, I said the Microsoft solution was as limited as Sony's first revision PS3 solution in that you can't just pop in a previous game gen disc and have it work; there needs to be effort on the part of the platform holder and, for Microsoft's solution at least, implicit consent from the publisher.
I am not convinced this is pure emulation in the traditional machine emulator sense, i.e the emulated environment allows you to run original code. The fact that you can't just pop-in a 360 disc and have the emulator play a game you bought but instead have to download an entire new package leads me to believe they is more to Microsoft's process than merely re-packaging the original game in an Xbox One friendly file container. I can't think of a single emulator that works like this.
Microsoft aren't amateurs in the fields of emulation and virtualisation - if they could have designed an emulator that ran as either an app or in the game OS environment that let you tun 360 discs they would have done that because that doesn't require special 360 game packages, doesn't require the user download their game again and doesn't require publisher sign off.
And that is the value of it.
It doesn't have to be used a lot to hold value. The fact that people find perceived value in it, is good enough.
If it helps makes the XO more attractive especially to current x360 owners, then that is the value for MS.
I think people equate usage to value, like its a one to one proposition, when in this case it is not.
Some things have value because it's used a lot, others have value by the mere fact that it's there, just in case/I may use it/I'll use it a lot(and don't end up doing so).
I don't want to nit-pick, but AFAIK, the PS3 B/C solution wherein the European devices stripped and replaced some actual legacy hardware away with an emulator, was as good as one can expect a B/C feature to run. It also did not require patches by developers for most games. The only games that did not work on this B/C solution were games that used the EE/GS combo in unique ways - essentially coding to the metal that exploited certain performance gains. The games that in the end didn't work AFAIR were some Japanese and an even more limited amount of western games.
I don't see a correlation between why Sony stripped B/C and them having good usage statistic to see how many actually used this feature. They brought the backwards-compatibility nightmare on to themselves when they went from one exotic architecture to the next. Huge bandwidth, lots of basic computing elements... it was always going to create headaches over a possible emulator when they went to a more traditional CPU/GPU setup in PS4. How would they go about emulating CELL that is as raw as one can get with CPU/GPU parts with lots of dedicated logic? This is all very much besides the point though; If I was Sony, I'd be doing some careful planning and considerations for the future in regards to the hardware architecture I'd choose for my consoles, because sooner than later, B/C will gain importance as digital distribution and purchases increase and diminishing returns are slowly reached in regards to the technological progress in games. If they won't, some competitor will - and will continue to increase their marketshare as people looking to upgrade will be conscious about building on their digital library of games, rather than starting fresh with every hardware iteration.
Even if they could just allow you to put the disk in and play (software emulation), I'm unsure if they would've let you do it, without it being on a white list of some sorts. Software emulation is a pretty grey area, what would stop MS running the emu on windows, even if publishers didn't want them to?
Maybe if it was done as part of the XO at the start, then they wouldn't have felt that they would cause friction with publishers.
I'm sure there's many reasons cant run it like a standard emulator, security being one.
We only have what they told us to go on, and so far it sounds like it's repackaging etc.
May not be the most efficient way to do it from a pure user perspective, but probably is for MS.
Maybe once it comes out of preview, DF will get them to do an interview on it, as I'm sure that there's lots of interest just how their doing it.
Good grief, this again.
BluRay started off as a collaboration between Sony and Phillip off of the research work of Shuji Nakamura. The first prototypes were shown off by Sony 2 years before Blu-Ray Founders group was formed in 2002. And the first consumer product, the Sony BDZ-S77 showed up in 2003.
Yeah you need heavy backing to get a format to become the defacto standard. But Sony didn't hop aboard the bluray train as it was moving along picking up backers. Sony was there from relatively the beginning and was one of the biggest pusher of the format as a standard. And the reason Bluray isn't a Sony format like MiniDisc, ATRAC or UMD is probably because Sony's long history of producing formats that lost out to competing formats produced by consortiums like BDA.
Sony was the face of BluRay well before the PS3 showed up.
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DuckThor Evil
Legend
Good grief, this again.
I feel like you are grossly downplaying Sony's part and Blu-rays importance to them. I've never heard anyone else downplaying it as much as you do and I think even here it was generally accepted that Blu-ray had very big importance for Sony.
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I guess that depends on a person's expectations. The initial list of games that worked properly was short, it included GTA Vice City but not San Andrea although that was added in time along with many of PS2's signature games like Ico, Jak & Daxter, Ratchet & Clank, Sly Cooper etc.
This is, to my mind, a better way. Sony added what I can only assume were bespoke emulation profiles for certain games in a few firmware updates but not having to download a new version of the game would be preferable to me.
There is no correlation. What I was trying to say, perhaps not clearly, is that I think Sony scaled back b/c efforts pretty quickly and I think that's likely because Sony had hard data showing that few people (at least those who connected to PSN on a regular basis) were using the b/c functionality.
The PS2 was fully compatible with PSone but how heavily PS2 owners played PSone games couldn't be known by Sony when developing the PS3. I think Sony went into PS3 development believing backwards compatibility was important to gamers and PS3 was always intended to be backwards compatible with PS2 and PSone by way of software emulation for the EE but this wasn't ready for the Japanese and US launches so they bolstered these systems with full PS2 custom hardware and had the EE software emulation "good enough" for the European launch.
The European launch was four months later by which time I believe Sony were already committed to a revised PS3 build with just a GS chip but my theory is Sony quickly gathered usage data to show that early adopters were not playing PS2 and PSone games and that backwards compatibility, while seemingly desirable and coveted by gamers, is actually rarely used. So they prepared the next (third) revision to remove all backwards compatibility but kept rolling out a few firmware updates with improved firmware for European launch owners like myself.
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Ironically I think everybody else just got so wrapped up in the vitriol surrounding PS3's launch that they believed what they read when it was repeated enough even though the realist is very different and easy enough to ascertain.
Let's go back to the beginning; Sony have made a modest income from royalties from successful optical disc technology since their partnership with Philips that culminated in the Compact Disc (CD). DVD was less profitable and Blu-ray less profitable still but it's one of those steady sources of revenue that companies like. Nobody mention MiniDisc or Universal Media Disc (UMD)
Once Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic had the DVD standard in the can, Sony and Philips began to research Ultra Density Optical (UDO) disc technology which branched in several directions, one of which is Blu-ray. However the key difference between implementing and commercialising Blu-ray and CD (two companies collaborating) and DVD (four companies collaborating) is Blu-ray was sufficiently complicated at inception to require a lot more industry support (and patent cross-licensing) to gain traction so a large number of companies contributed patents to Blu-ray with a standard RAND licensing arrangement that is now largely administered by One-Blue LLC, who act on behalf of the patent pool.
Sony went from one of the two companies who did much of the ground work (at considerable expense, I know what blue-violet lasers cost back in 1999 and how fragile they were - they probably ate $10-20m a year in lasers alone during early R&D) to pushing for a huge patent pool that included most of the other big hardware manufacturers (and disc manufacturers and movie studios) who otherwise would have been eager Blu-ray licensees paying Sony only now those royalties are largely negated in cross-licensing agreements established by the patent pool.
The other fallacy is that Sony contributed the most to the Blu-ray standard. While it's true to say there were in their from the start I believe the biggest patent contributors were Pioneer, Philips and Sony in that order. And under SEP patent pooling practice, equitable shares of profits from licensing are based on both the number of tier of essentialness of a patent to the standard, so Sony generally take less royalties than some other Blu-ray patent holders, although obviously more than some others.
I think the reason Sony are so affiliated with Blu-ray is that it was Sony that announced the first Blu-ray prototypes in 2000 (yes, the same year that the PS2 launched) with the first actual player going on sale in Japan in 2003 and the first player on sale worldwide in 2006. Sony have be vocal because of their multiple interests in Blu-ray as a patent holder (but with a much narrower share per disc than CD or DVD), as a disc producer (although Pioneer and TDK really own that market) and as a movie studio wanting to protect their content - well, it was a nice dream.
Of course, they talked about Blu-ray a lot from different angles.However having multiple interests does not equate to Blu-ray being a profit centre for Sony. Just look at their finances going back 20+ years across the various optical disc technologies and you won't see significant revenue from these royalties relative to the rest of the business. I believe that before the CD patent expired Sony made $0.12 per disc and Philips made $0.18 per disc but DVD and Blu-ray were never as profitable because although royalty per disc was higher, volumes were much lower. Nor was Blu-ray strategically important from a patent perspective because so many would-be customers were part of the technology's patent pool.
So when people say Sony had a vested interest in Blu-ray, I say sure they did, naturally. Sony were heavy vested in Blu-ray but not invested in financial terms because there was never the expectation Blu-ray would be more popular than DVD, their hope it would be as popular as DVD and even that fell far short because we live in a world where Netflix quality is good enough for most.
Bloody Philistines!
As far as I remember, Sony were positioned to be one of two (?) blue diode suppliers and one of very few BRD manufacturers. They stood to do very well from the format, and the inclusion in PS3 was possibly the key to securing some /a lot of the content providers. This going by the format war and watching which way the likes of WB were going to swing. We all know plenty of folk bought PS3 for its BluRay potential, to the point some even argue that's the only reason a lot of the early machines were bought.Good grief, this again.
Why? MS have described it as just a repackaging. The emulator runs on top of the XB1 system, and needs to integrate with the system for things like game capture and services. Hence it makes sense to structure the 360 game as an XB1 app. This also plays out in why two-disc titles aren't supported yet, because the disc image file only supports a single disc and they haven't emulated dual discs in the package.
They probably could have created an emulator that boots in 360 mode, but that'd lack convenient usability. And given emulation likely isn't 100%, QA is still going to be needed to limit list of available titles to those that work. So having a system where a game has to be repackaged in an XB1 format and is tested in the process makes sense. I see little reason to think MS are lying about this and they are having to actively tweak every title to run.
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