Sony PS4 Backward Compatibility

[owsf2000]

People were excited for a while there that Sony was going to answer Microsoft's bid for favor by working on 360 BC on the Xbone. Apparently Sony had quietly enabled PS2 BC recently as well. Among the musings over what it meant, my prediction on forums ended up being correct. This isn't disc-based BC people were hoping it would be - where you'd be

Comments

[owsf2000]

I think there's about 10 games on the Wii U I wouldn't mind picking up to play at some point, although the one that would probably seal the deal would be the next Zelda game which was announced in 2014. And then absent from the last E3... Which means we might be looking at a 2017 release for it at this point, since Nintendo has said they generally only show off games they expect to ship within the next year. Still, Hyrule Warriors, Splatoon, and the various staples already on the system are interesting enough to want the system.

The real problem I have with Sony doing this highly limited repurchasing brand of emulation is the fact that we'll only ever get a tiny portion of the library made available. And most of the games I use to enjoy were niche titles that aren't likely to see a re-release in this fashion. Perhaps where the emulator will make it piss easy for them to release things compared to on the PS3 where some retinkering was needed for every game, (Actual work), there will be hope for more niche titles but at that point it'll probably fall on companies re-aquiring licenses for games they brought over from Japan and whether they'll consider it worthwhile doing so. That and I don't like them doing this at all if it's almost entirely a pure emulator solution this time around (although the emulator apparently adds in trophies by looking for specific conditions/checks/etc. yippie. 9_9)

[kane_magus]

And, of course, there's the usual "access to everything will be lost when they inevitably turn off Store support for the PS4 in a decade or so" issue as well. So if one did get a PS4 and did want older games from the Store on it, one had better buy them as soon as possible and then hope against hope that they don't additionally require some sort of online access just to be able to use (like most indie games on the 360 did, and likely still do, for all I know).

(EDIT) For the record, if I ever do get a PS4 someday, it will likely be near the end of its life cycle. As such, I very likely won't go too deeply at all into the Store aspect of it, just for that very reason. (/EDIT)