*spin-off* Importance of Backward Compatibility Discussion

[Nesh]

Who buys first gen consoles?

Hardcore gamers. Why do they buy it? To play new, awesome games...

Why do other gamers wait? Cost, or because there isn't enough awesome games out there for you to buy. Come launch day for ps4 and xb3 will I buy it? I doubt it, unless there is some killer app that strikes me as a must have, or if they are ridiculously cheap. Otherwise I'm happy playing on my ps3 until the games I like come out...

I seriously doubt anyone buys a new console in order to play OLD games as a primary function. Particularly at launch! So if we can all agree on that point, my next point is that if the hardcore gamers will buy these consoles anyway, then at the point where others starts buying, there are plenty of games out. Further, u will have had a decade to play the **** out of ur old games! 99,9% will be ready to move on to amazing graphics and whatever.

There is no doubt that BC costs something. Who here would trade say, better performance for the chance to play old games? Personally, at the end of the day, when I buy my new Console, I'm buying it to have a new experience. I could care less about coop with friends, nothing beats getting together in the living room anyway

What we tend to ignore here is the importance of DD content and the online store ecosystem.

We value new content and great performance, but lets not ignore how significant the online stores have become and how companies compete in content availability.

Many of the DD games arent the type of games that get "old" in time. Take Limbo, Blood Rayne or Braid for example.,
By today's standards they are technically outdated in many ways and in most cases. But people want them and they are made to last. We want those to be carried over. Someone WILL want to play these games during the next generation, especially in the middle of the console's lifecycle and onwards.

Also why isolate to the initial adopters and hardcore gamers only? The console will last for years and have all kinds of owners. Many current gen games do not matter for the next generation now. But some key titles will matter later. At some point in time some people will want to play some big classics in addition to the new, for the same reason why we still buy digitally cheaper old games from our console online stores. Older games become valuable DD content and revenue generators later.

Developers know this. Thats why they remaster classic hits to HD. Thats why we see PSP, PS1 and PS2 games in PSN. Thats why we buy 8bit, 16bit, 32bit, 64bit and 128bit games digitally from PSN, XBOX Live and Wii VC store. And thats why some PS3 and 360 super hits will be demanded and perceived as value content in the next Playstation and XBOX marketplace

Thats when BC becomes important

 

[AlphaWolf]

Selling a remastered title makes you more money, letting people play an old game on a new box does very little for a developers bottom line unless they specifically monetize that process.

 

[Npl]

Not really. Every company has limited resources. If you decide to port, you can't work on something else (as in: people who are occupied with something anyway have to be devoted to this project). It's probably not worth it for both platform holder as well as developer.

The current PS2-PS3 ports already show that its no problem to have a 3rd party working on the conversion. "Bluepoint Games" did quite a few of them, while not being related to the original devs.
Also there is alot more concern about crossplattform development, so for many games you already have a fairly portable base, or they are exlusives in which case you (Sony/MS) atleast have access to the sources... and ideally already have company policies to make ports for Vita/PS4 easy.
(Vita could make this a very standard procedure for Sony, if games can run on PS3 and Vita then getting to run on PS4 should be a breeze).

But speakin for the current situation, I would love to have the option for a BC PS3, failing that a PSTwo revision with HDMI out would be passable. If it comes at a increased price then you could gauge the interest and worth of BC rather easily.

Having patches for games to run natively and better than on the previous generation would be the optimal solution, whether or not the machine will be BC in a way.

 

[rekator]

Who buys first gen consoles?

Hardcore gamers. Why do they buy it? To play new, awesome games...

You are right and false… Look at past, the first year of 360 the more played game on Xboxlive is? HALO 2! Until Gear of War and Halo 3 arrived.
BC is not a "option", it's a Need function if you want your new Box have a good start. Like already said you don't need a 100% BC.
So I'm betting that the more play game on Next Box the fist year is probably a 360 game, same for PS4, more precis a COD game, and the second will be also a COD game.

It is not hardcore gamer who buy the New Kid, it's early adopter, quite different.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

You are right and false… Look at past, the first year of 360 the more played game on Xboxlive is? HALO 2! Until Gear of War and Halo 3 arrived.
BC is not a "option", it's a Need function if you want your new Box have a good start.

It's not 'need'. Anyone who wanted to play Halo 2 and Gears could have played Halo 2 on their XB and Gears on their 360. Yes, it's not as convenient as playing them all on the one console, but it's an option that necessitates a need for BC on a next-gen console. One can point to PS3 and the lack of BC in Europe as proof that BC isn't needed. If it was, no-one would have bought PS3 in the EU.

BC is not worth zero. It's not an absolute necessity. It's an option with a different value to different people, but importantly a general value that I reckon places it fairly low given the amount of use it gets over a platform's life. There's a theoretical argument that online and DD substantially increase the importance of BC, but no-one's presented sufficient reasoning to convince me that it's vital to a platform's success.

 

[function]

It's not 'need'. Anyone who wanted to play Halo 2 and Gears could have played Halo 2 on their XB and Gears on their 360.

Unfortunately not! Once you switched your Live account you could never again use it on your original eggbox. Moving to the 360 meant you could never again play Rallisport Challenge 2 online, ever again! Unless you wanted to pay for two separate Live accounts with no common friends list, I guess ...

Yes, it's not as convenient as playing them all on the one console, but it's an option that necessitates a need for BC on a next-gen console. One can point to PS3 and the lack of BC in Europe as proof that BC isn't needed. If it was, no-one would have bought PS3 in the EU.

Well, games consoles aren't "needed" at all, I suppose. It's all about convenience and practicality. I can't actually fit my original Xbox under the main tv without either having it permanently on the floor or removing something else. There are degree of importance, for both customers and hardware vendors.

I'm somewhere inbetween "not needed" and "essential", and not close to either end.

BC is not worth zero. It's not an absolute necessity. It's an option with a different value to different people, but importantly a general value that I reckon places it fairly low given the amount of use it gets over a platform's life. There's a theoretical argument that online and DD substantially increase the importance of BC, but no-one's presented sufficient reasoning to convince me that it's vital to a platform's success.

It may not be vital even now, but at the very least it should bring more value to the platform for both customers and publishers than it has done before.

I'd like to know how many copies of Halo 1 and 2 and Fable, combined, were sold over Live to 360 owners. A few hundred thousand? A million? And I'd also like to know how many Gold accounts had Halo 2 as the most played online game over a given subscription period. It could be that Xbox 360 BC paid for itself in clearly definable terms, while it doesn't look like PS3 BC did.

 

[Arwin]

Function is right. As soon as you upgraded your account, you could basically throw away your original Xbox as far as online was concerned. It's partly why Microsoft's effort to make Halo 2 available as a 360 version was important, and that game iirc was topping the most played online game on 360 I think until at some point Call of Duty took over? And it stayed up there right until the first real 360 version of Halo was released.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Unfortunately not! Once you switched your Live account you could never again use it on your original eggbox. Moving to the 360 meant you could never again play Rallisport Challenge 2 online, ever again! Unless you wanted to pay for two separate Live accounts with no common friends list, I guess ...

Didn't know that. Very sucky! That's a fault in the system though, and not a limitation of BC implementations in general.

I'd like to know how many copies of Halo 1 and 2 and Fable, combined, were sold over Live to 360 owners. A few hundred thousand? A million? And I'd also like to know how many Gold accounts had Halo 2 as the most played online game over a given subscription period. It could be that Xbox 360 BC paid for itself in clearly definable terms, while it doesn't look like PS3 BC did.

Yes, because XB360 could implement a degree of BC in software, which I've said is a fair option and reasonable economy. Squilliam also pointed to just emulating/porting key titles. MS didn't sink $millions into hardware choices and so they could recover their costs. PS3's BC needed expensive hardware and it lost Sony a lot of money. Would PS3 have not sold at all if it didn't launch with PS2 BC in the States? I find that hard to believe. Every PS3 owner bought PS3 for its new experiences (well, maybe some got it for BRD playback and PS2 games. Perhaps Sony should have released a BluRay PS2?!).

 

[function]

Wouldn't it be simpler if they just paid developers of the top 20-100 played Xbox 360/PS3 games a fair quantity of cash to port their titles and offer a patch?

If you're going to spend great amounts of money on BC to support a few essential titles, doesn't it make more sense to fund ports than actually go whole-hog on hardware BC? It'll be much cheaper in the long run.

There have been rumours of early Xbox 3 dev kits being in publishers back rooms for a few months. Perhaps they're working toward this? Or maybe MS know the kind of BC they're going to be able to offer, and are starting to guide developers towards being able to work well with this?

If you could get all your big games from 2011 onwards working well with your limited BC solution that could offer a sizeable buffer for the next generation, especially for all the most played games on Live.

Why not add some content and/or an upgraded texture pack to cover some of the costs through DLC. So you get the game on the new box, but they add some additional goodies (new platform only) to help monetize the transition. Then you might even get someone like me interested in the BC.

Simply continuing to offer the game via DD can allow it to continue to be "monetised" also. Steam shows just how well this can work.

If publishers were allowed to be more creative with their offerings you could have some great uses of older titles beyond straight forward individual sales. E.g. buy the new game and get a code for the prequel, or pre-order the sequel and get the last-gen prequel instantly, or special bundles where you get all three in the series for a special price.

If you price them right and promote them old games can sell really well and offer a fat dump of cash for the publisher in exchange for practically nothing. If there's one thing better than selling an old game with a "HD" upgrade, it's got to be selling an old game without even needing one.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Simply continuing to offer the game via DD can allow it to continue to be "monetised" also. Steam shows just how well this can work...

I think that idea is the biggest incentive for BC. Nintendo seem to do a roaring trade in reselling their old titles thanks to emulation. Some people on the PSN blog store update comments request PS1 titles to be released. I don't think the revenue is there to support anything more than software emulation though.

 

[Prophecy2k]

Selling a remastered title makes you more money, letting people play an old game on a new box does very little for a developers bottom line unless they specifically monetize that process.

I disagree in part... There's a very clear benefit of having next-gen boxes BC with current gen software, both DD and retail. The way i see it, Sony and MS can position their online platforms such that when the next-gen boxes are released, all of the previous gens software can be made available online through PSN and XBLAGOD.

This benefits devs and publishers because whilst they are getting to grips with the new HW and developing their new codebases and production pipelines they can continue gaining revenue from their existing games through the online stores.

Many people will sell an old console to have enough money to be able to afford the new one. Having a new box that is BC means that such people can continue to buy current-gen software that is newly released (the big end of gen games like GOW2 was) whilst there is the normal lull in game releases at the beginning of the most recent HW gen. Pubs and devs can stay afloat whilst they make their new games, and gamers can be kept happy with a massive library of games that they can buy and play before all the newer gen blockbusters are released.

This was kind of my experience at the begining of this gen because i bought a PS3, and for a good 1-2 years there's wasn't much being released on it aside from the first party games, many of which at the beginning of the gen were not too hot. Had i not bought an EU BC 60GB console and been able to pick up the old gen favs like Odin Sphere and GOW2 that i missed, i may very well have sold my PS3 to buy a 360 at the time which was getting all the massive games like Bioshock, Lost Plant, Dead Rising and mass Effect exclusively.

BC may not be the be all and end all, but i think it will only help to persuade more customers to upgrade early rather than waiting later for pricedrops and what not.

 

[function]

Function is right. As soon as you upgraded your account, you could basically throw away your original Xbox as far as online was concerned. It's partly why Microsoft's effort to make Halo 2 available as a 360 version was important, and that game iirc was topping the most played online game on 360 I think until at some point Call of Duty took over? And it stayed up there right until the first real 360 version of Halo was released.

Yeah, the continued success of Halo 2 was quite something. You had these super hardcore early adopters playing a last gen game - and paying to do so - on their new super console. Whilst also buying lots of next gen software, quite importantly. It's a pity Sony didn't have something with similar cross-generation appeal.

I think that idea is the biggest incentive for BC. Nintendo seem to do a roaring trade in reselling their old titles thanks to emulation. Some people on the PSN blog store update comments request PS1 titles to be released. I don't think the revenue is there to support anything more than software emulation though.

Good on Nintendo! The idea of reselling seems to have staying power across the entire span of the generation, unlike cross generation online gaming. And the cool thing about an emulator would be that you could port it to multiple devices. Maybe we'll see 360 "Games on Demand" for PC Live some day, or an OnLive style cloud based emulator for Gold members (for none DD content all your system does is verify the disk).

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I disagree in part... There's a very clear benefit of having next-gen boxes BC with current gen software, both DD and retail. The way i see it, Sony and MS can position their online platforms such that when the next-gen boxes are released, all of the previous gens software can be made available online through PSN and XBLAGOD.

That's a very valid idea, except that it costs such a lot for BC. Going forwards with DD content on software platforms, that'll be the future. I'd say it's too late to want that this gen though. That sort of thinking has to be decided on up front. I wonder if titles like Gears on UE3 will be very portable on the next-gen UE engine? That could be enough to carry over some content and flesh out the transition period. But if your lack of interest in PS3 was due to lack of content, doesn't it make more sense to spend less money on creating new content rather than spending more money on BC for old content?

 

[Nesh]

Selling a remastered title makes you more money, letting people play an old game on a new box does very little for a developers bottom line unless they specifically monetize that process.

Have you read my post? They monetize when you buy DD games, and thats why we see older generation games in the online marketplaces.

 

[Prophecy2k]

That's a very valid idea, except that it costs such a lot for BC. Going forwards with DD content on software platforms, that'll be the future. I'd say it's too late to want that this gen though. That sort of thinking has to be decided on up front. I wonder if titles like Gears on UE3 will be very portable on the next-gen UE engine? That could be enough to carry over some content and flesh out the transition period. But if your lack of interest in PS3 was due to lack of content, doesn't it make more sense to spend less money on creating new content rather than spending more money on BC for old content?

I guess i'm not really in the know when it comes to the cost of adding BC to the next-generation console. I'm sure MS & Sony do and so they will ostensibly make a decision on their future HW weighing both the cost implications against the benefits of being able to offer future consumers of their new boxes that "seamless upgrade path".

I'm not sure how portable UE3 istelf would be tbh Shifty. I'm quite sure that Epic will rewrite vast amounts of their codebase for UE4 when the next-gen boxes release, so i doubt games like gears would be abstracted away from the HW enough to be able to be trivially run in emulation on a new and possibly very different architecture.

Also, i didn't really have a lack of interest in my PS3 at the time as i knew good games were coming, rather i was frustrated that i only had mostly shovelware in terms of PS3 content to play whilst my bro was playing "next-gen" games on his new 360. Like I mentioned, had i not had existing software to keep me busy whilst i waited for the good games, i may have jumped ship altogether to MS' console. My point there was more that Sony and MS (as well as pubs, devs and gamers) will most definitely see the benefit of a next-gen box being able to afford its owners the ability to play previous gens games. But of course the cost issue is an unavoidable consideration.

I wonder if it's possible to design a console with an "add-on" slot for BC purposes so that those wanting BC could simply buy the "add-on" component. The "add-on" board could effectively be a cell/RSX or 360 APU and associated RAM. Not sure how feasible something like that would be. If they could put something like that out at a low enough price (again this being the real clincher) then it would afford a good solution for the BC problem.

 

[Dominik D]

The current PS2-PS3 ports already show that its no problem to have a 3rd party working on the conversion. "Bluepoint Games" did quite a few of them, while not being related to the original devs.

Sure, if you can hire outsiders, then why not. That's the story of Banjo and PD ports on 360.

 

[AlphaWolf]

Have you read my post? They monetize when you buy DD games, and thats why we see older generation games in the online marketplaces.

Yes they make money when you buy DD games, they will make very little from a simple porting them to the new platform. The titles will look dated to new content and many people who wanted them already played them on a previous console. Certainly there's nothing in it for developers giving an upgrade to the people who bought it on the previous box, they'll want to sell you an upgraded version.

 

[rekator]

It's not 'need'. Anyone who wanted to play Halo 2 and Gears could have played Halo 2 on their XB and Gears on their 360. Yes, it's not as convenient as playing them all on the one console, but it's an option that necessitates a need for BC on a next-gen console. One can point to PS3 and the lack of BC in Europe as proof that BC isn't needed. If it was, no-one would have bought PS3 in the EU.

BC is not worth zero. It's not an absolute necessity. It's an option with a different value to different people, but importantly a general value that I reckon places it fairly low given the amount of use it gets over a platform's life. There's a theoretical argument that online and DD substantially increase the importance of BC, but no-one's presented sufficient reasoning to convince me that it's vital to a platform's success.

Sorry you're wrong EU PS3 launch units have partial BC… you don't remember?
Like I'm already said BC or partial BC is a Need function for the first two Years of the life of the new console… After you can drop it.
It's a need to eliminated a "No buy interrogation". People are more inclined to jump in new gen if they can play the games they're like on it. And you can always play with/against your friends who don't jump on the New thing to have, social gaming is very important.
Also first year of a new system is weak in games.
And for the "you can always play with you're ancient box…", sorry but not many people let the old kid in their gaming set-up…

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Sorry you're wrong EU PS3 launch units have partial BC… you don't remember?

Some PS3's had BC. Many were sold without - many buyers didn't care to not be able to play their old games. I didn't need BC to convince me to get a PS3, and neither did my friends. The added cost of BC was a deterrent. If the only PS3's had BC and they all cost more because of it, initial sales would have been much lower than they were. The BC SKU was dropped after one year.

Like I'm already said BC or partial BC is a Need function for the first two Years of the life of the new console… After you can drop it.

Excepting all the other consoles that have launched over the years without BC, yes you're right. But as I said earlier, the smartest route would then be to provide it as an optional extra, rather than design your system around it and be stuck with a legacy that's uselss for the majority of the platform's life.

And for the "you can always play with you're ancient box…", sorry but not many people let the old kid in their gaming set-up…

So when NES owner's bought a SNES, and gave the NES to their kids, they were never again going to play their NES games? If a game on XB is that important to you, you either wait until buy the new console later, or you won't pass on the console until later when you've finished with the games you want to play on it, or you borrow the console back when you want to play games on it, or you move on and don't sweat it.

We're just going around in circles now though, so I'll agree to disagree.

 

[Prophecy2k]

The EU launch PS3 had FULL BC, not partial. It emulated the EE chip and had a GS on-board. Mine is a 60GB EU and i bought it when i did because if i'd waited any longer i would have gotten one of the none BC EU units that were only available after they decided to drop BC altogether.

My 60GB EU launch unit plays any PAL PS2 disk i put in it. So it's full BC not partial.