*spin-off* Importance of Backward Compatibility Discussion

[Prophecy2k]

Again its a function of how many people are investing in your platform and the reasons consumers might choose to delay making a decision in their next platform of choice. Increasing the perceived value of XB1 in part due to price cuts and value added services helps those sitting out or considering alternatives to reengage.

Year 1, year 4 it doesn't matter as much as overall breakdown of sales and sidelined demand potential. .

What I'm arguing is that any percieved value BC adds to any console depreciates over time. So whilst the additional value as a software feature in year 1 is great, for reasons I've already explained, in year 2-5 that additional values drops away quite rapidly until it's essentially immaterial to consumer purchasing decisions; relative to the far more significant factors such as HW price and available game library for the new-gen console.

That said I do agree that historically this issue has been largely settled early in the generation however the PS3/360 race was very much a marathon with the PS3 finding its legs much later than it should have been able to.

Similarly while the PS4 appears to have this generation tied down at this point. My person view is that in the markets MS values they are doing quite a bit to remain competitive in spite of their initial challenges. NA and UK could very well ultimately end up favoring MS and that consumer may very well be worth several multiples of consumers in other markets which makes the calculus of winners and loser far more difficult to calculate and in part is a justification for the investment in services like BC which are hard to monetize and really only add to the cost and complexity of development.

To put it another way IMO if MS was doing better with consumers BC would not have happened in its current iteration.

As far as I'm concerned I'm not sure. I think it is still something that can add some value to a console, and moreso at the begining of a gen when a platform holder's first party publishing bandwidth is focused on new games. Being able to enable gamer access to last gen games is a nice boon. I think Sony would have pursued this also for the beginning of the gen had they had the resources, and their last-gen console wasn't the PS3. On the otherhand I'm surprised that MS didn't just follow Sony and go the remaster approach; this approach however will win them more gamer mindshare however, and I think that is their real play with this.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

None. As I had said many times in the past this is a software issue not a hardware issue. You don't do bc in hardware you do it in software so it should have no compromising effect on your new hardware. If your new hardware can't emulate your old hardware then your new hardware probably has other issues.

What are the issues of PS4's design that mean it's unsuitable to emulate a 7 core Cell-powered PS3? Or is PS3 emulation on PS4 plenty possible but Sony's engineers just can't/won't do it (after spending ages trying to emulate PS2 on PS3 in software and finding only moderate success, similar to MS's moderate success emulating XB on XB360 which only worked with some titles)?

 

[goonergaz]

What I'm arguing is that any percieved value BC adds to any console depreciates over time. So whilst the additional value as a software feature in year 1 is great, for reasons I've already explained, in year 2-5 that additional values drops away quite rapidly until it's essentially immaterial to consumer purchasing decisions; relative to the far more significant factors such as HW price and available game library for the new-gen console.



As far as I'm concerned I'm not sure. I think it is still something that can add some value to a console, and moreso at the begining of a gen when a platform holder's first party publishing bandwidth is focused on new games. Being able to enable gamer access to last gen games is a nice boon. I think Sony would have pursued this also for the beginning of the gen had they had the resources, and their last-gen console wasn't the PS3. On the otherhand I'm surprised that MS didn't just follow Sony and go the remaster approach; this approach however will win them more gamer mindshare however, and I think that is their real play with this.

Indeed, when a console launches there are several factors to consider;

1) cost
BC at launch helps because I can sell the old hardware at a reasonable amount to help towards the initial outlay
This is less of an issue today because MS dropped kinect and the price so it's substantially cheaper - also X360s are now (pretty) worthless

2) the library available
BC at launch helps because I won't be restricted to just a few games at high prices
This is less of an issue today because there's a big library and lots of games available cheaply

3) the games I'm still playing
BC at launch helps because I can continue to play those games as much as I like (also saving some money)
This is less of an issue today because it's likely those titles are no longer being played - or if newer titles they ran pretty poorly so I can get the next gen version

BC can help but certainly if there was an importance it's at launch/early days - there may be some people still on the fence and this may help, but it shouldn't be a big factor - in fact by adding BC MS just devalued anyone thinking of upgrading current console as the value will now drop quite substantially as the market becomes 'flooded' with X360s.

 

[goonergaz]

Thats because there were other things that were harming it even worse before the BC was dropped. Sony had to take measures to get rid of other things and dropping BC was one of the measures they had to take. BC was not removed with everything else remaining constant. Also I feel that this generation people have more desire to keep their last gen games than in the past and I think one of the reasons is the appearance of digital games.

But also adding BC to the X360 didn't help that keep the gap up on PS3.

 

[Jay]

But also adding BC to the X360 didn't help that keep the gap up on PS3.

not comparable.
360 10years of games
xbox classic was out a lot shorter amount of time, and a lot less entrenched people to get to upgrade.
there's a lot of 360 owners who have not upgraded to either ps4 or the x1, its about trying to give them reasons, as obviously just having a decent line up of games isn't enough.
so peoples views of it having more value at the start of the generation doesn't equate to those gamers

 

[Rikimaru]

What are the issues of PS4's design that mean it's unsuitable to emulate a 7 core Cell-powered PS3? Or is PS3 emulation on PS4 plenty possible but Sony's engineers just can't/won't do it (after spending ages trying to emulate PS2 on PS3 in software and finding only moderate success, similar to MS's moderate success emulating XB on XB360 which only worked with some titles)?

Cell in certain ways is faster than PS4 CPU.
Look at this Ubisoft slide. http://media.redgamingtech.com/rgt-website/2014/10/ubisoft-cloth-simulation-ps4-vs-ps3.jpg

Also I think 360 emulator on One is pretty miraculous. I think that was only possible because MS knew binaries patterns and compiler inside out.

 

[goonergaz]

not comparable.
360 10years of games
xbox classic was out a lot shorter amount of time, and a lot less entrenched people to get to upgrade.
there's a lot of 360 owners who have not upgraded to either ps4 or the x1, its about trying to give them reasons, as obviously just having a decent line up of games isn't enough.
so peoples views of it having more value at the start of the generation doesn't equate to those gamers

That's a good point - but I still don't see a great benefit 'today' - at launch you'd get a reasonable amount of cash back for you hardware, but 'today' not only would you get next to nothing would you really want to play your 360 version of games released in the last 18mths? There would be little point IMHO - why upgrade the hardware to play inferior versions of games - sure there will be games people don't want to 'lose' - but for those you may as well keep the old hardware as it has so little resale value.

 

[Jay]

people could give their old consoles to children, niece, nephews, put it in another room. I've also seen upgrade deals last week even.
but the point is still, there are a lot of 360 owners who are waiting to upgrade and just current gen games have not been enough to make them move to any platform.
bc, halo, etc, may be enough, as just prettier /better games alone has not up until now.
so 'today' that could be enough of an additional incentive to upgrade. Once they upgrade they may not even use it that much.doesn't stop it from being a highly requested feature though.

 

[London Geezer]

I'm not an Xbox owner and I'm not one to linger on old games on my PS3/4 - now older games hurt my eyes, with a very few exceptions - but I'm not sure what people here are complaining about. It's a FREE feature. That lets you play the games you already have FOR FREE. What the heck is there to complain about? If you don't want it, don't use it. Anyone else...it's FREE.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

They're not complaining. It's one of those dumb discussions where everyone's POV is correct but they keep repeating it for who knows what reason. It's a fact that people like the option of playing old games. It's also a fact that enabling that typically comes with a cost to the new system. The debate is how much it's worth to sacrifice/increase costs in order to enable this BC feature? It ends up being cyclic because when one person says the value of BC isn't enough to justify adding extra hardware, another shows that people still play old games, to which someone else replies that old games doesn't justify the cost of extra hardware. To which someone feels the need to point out that PC gamers play old games, again.

This latest bout is fuelled by Joker repeating the 'people like BC' position yet again, which was never in dispute, to which the same counter-arguments of 'BC is nice but at what cost?' are presented.

It's been four years and 800 posts and we're still getting the same arguments over and over. Mind boggling. Why the hell am I still involving myself in this?!

 

[goonergaz]

people could give their old consoles to children, niece, nephews, put it in another room. I've also seen upgrade deals last week even.
but the point is still, there are a lot of 360 owners who are waiting to upgrade and just current gen games have not been enough to make them move to any platform.
bc, halo, etc, may be enough, as just prettier /better games alone has not up until now.
so 'today' that could be enough of an additional incentive to upgrade. Once they upgrade they may not even use it that much.doesn't stop it from being a highly requested feature though.

I guess we'll know soon enough with sales figures but I'm willing to say it'll make little difference if any at all - sure there may be an initial bump (due to that feel-good factor) but that's all IMHO.

 

[London Geezer]

They're not complaining. It's one of those dumb discussions where everyone's POV is correct but they keep repeating it for who knows what reason. It's a fact that people like the option of playing old games. It's also a fact that enabling that typically comes with a cost to the new system. The debate is how much it's worth to sacrifice/increase costs in order to enable this BC feature? It ends up being cyclic because when one person says the value of BC isn't enough to justify adding extra hardware, another shows that people still play old games, to which someone else replies that old games doesn't justify the cost of extra hardware. To which someone feels the need to point out that PC gamers play old games, again.

This latest bout is fuelled by Joker repeating the 'people like BC' position yet again, which was never in dispute, to which the same counter-arguments of 'BC is nice but at what cost?' are presented.

It's been four years and 800 posts and we're still getting the same arguments over and over. Mind boggling. Why the hell am I still involving myself in this?!

I just can't think of anything that's completely free and unexpected, which would be worth arguing about or refusing to accept. Except STDs of course.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

What are the issues of PS4's design that mean it's unsuitable to emulate a 7 core Cell-powered PS3? Or is PS3 emulation on PS4 plenty possible but Sony's engineers just can't/won't do it (after spending ages trying to emulate PS2 on PS3 in software and finding only moderate success, similar to MS's moderate success emulating XB on XB360 which only worked with some titles)?

I think the seven 3.2ghz (or even limiting it to six for games) SPEs and EIB (ring) would be an absolute bastard to emulate in software. The approach at the farm for legacy platform and code support is to either a) emulate the original hardware and run the original code under emulation, or port the code to new hardware.

Generally the decision about which approach we'll take will depend simply on a combination of complexity and volume of code. If there is a lot of code for a given platform, emulation will be used as it's a faster (ergo, cheaper) approach but I can see a lot of code (much of it SPE specific) in the archive and nearly all of it was re-written for an earlier version of our current 80x86/DSP platform. There are tools that will emulation Cell processor architectures, but they're not fast and we have a lot of brute force to throw at problems like this.

I can't believe this was a decision taken by my predesessors lightly.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I think the seven 3.2ghz (or even limiting it to six for games) SPEs and EIB (ring) would be an absolute bastard to emulate in software.

Exactly. But Joker says if a new platform can't emulate an old platform, it's the fault of the new platform's design. So I'm asking him specifically what did Sony do wrong in building PS4 such that it's a poor design? It's ideal for a new console that's easy to develop for and has reasonable power for the price. Yet he asserts that it's still a poor design because it can't emulate PS3?!

It was PS3 that was the 'bad design' making it difficult to emulate. And you shouldn't be basing your engineering choices on sustaining a legacy just for the sake of it*. Otherwise you get Nintendo.

* Well, that's this thread in a nutshell. Those who think you shouldn't stick with legacy designs and those who think you should, and those who think hardware should be abstracted so the hardware doesn't need emulating which of course wasn't a sane option in previous generations.

 

[Rikimaru]

It would be interesting to see what Nintendo does with next handheld. It does not build emulator of previous platform for whatever reason and just adds new hardware on top. But with new 3DS 4 core CPU+DSi CPU (with GBA CPU it seems) it would be unreasonable.

 

[eastmen]

I don't understand , BC has only added value .

The xbox one is getting all multiplatform games , there is no big multi platform game that is now exclusive ... oh wait there is Tomb Raider and its exclusive on the xbox one... hmmm

Its also getting a slew of exclusive first party games. Aside from whats out already , its getting Gears 4 , Halo 5 , A new rare game and so on.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I don't understand , BC has only added value.

Has anyone said it hasn't?

 

[NRP]

Hey Shifty, this latest foray isn't about emulating CELL. This whole BC "discussion" was revived because MS actually delivered BC.

It has nothing to do with Sony, PS3, or PS4, other than it seems like it is mostly Sony fan boys who are doing the complaining, or at least marginalizing the accomplishment.

 

[NRP]

Has anyone said it hasn't?

Yes, I think that is what all the naysayers are purporting, at least one way or another - BC doesn't add value because it wasn't available at launch. No one will actually use it. No one wants to play old games, etc, etc. It's a waste of resources that could have been spent on more powerful hardware. Blah. Blah.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Hey Shifty, this latest foray isn't about emulating CELL. This whole BC "discussion" was revived because MS actually delivered BC.

It has nothing to do with Sony, PS3, or PS4, other than it seems like it is mostly Sony fan boys who are doing the complaining, or at least marginalizing the accomplishment.

The thread discussing MS's BC achievement is here. The value of BC to MS's current platform offering is mixed around the place. The specifics of this thread is whether it's worth adding cost of BC or not to a platform. The latest bout here starts with Joker's observation that BC in XB1 validates his position in this thread.

But given how XB1's bc has hit top story in so many places (even on non tech websites) and given how many threads it has spawned here, I hope people can finally accept how important bc really is.

Follow the discussion from that post and you'll see how it's led onto Cell. Joker has said BC should be a given and any platform that can't handle BC in software is defective somehow. If it's true that software BC is a given and easy enough to pull off, then yes, it should always be present. In truth, MS's emulator is something extraordinary, not ordinary, and it's unrealistic to think alien architectures should be emulated.

You'll probably find the people 'marginalising' the accomplishment were people already saying it's not that important to them. If you can find someone who posts in this thread that BC is important who now states it isn't in XB1, then you'll have a legitimate claim to fanboyism.