Are you not putting a spin on the spin yourself? I have PS3 games I still own, they cost me nothing to play in my PS3. If I want to play these games on PSNow on my PS4 at a cost that is my decision (I don't by the way). If gamers are real gamers and love games of the past, then more than likely they will keep hardware of the past (as that is the true way to play those game). The truth is, people are not really bothered about BC, it's about not having what the others have.
Plus, why does everybody say free BC? It would be free for us who owned the games but I doubt it's free to implement for Sony, as with most business cases, if the sums don't add up then they will invest elsewhere.
Apparently MS fans had the foresight at the start of this gen to keep their 360 games but sell off the actual system to play them in.
It's weird, because in the past, a great number of people sold off their entire game library and system to finance the purchase of a new gen, while only a limited number kept their old games for playing them into the new gen.
To me, PS Now is about playing hundreds of games i've never played and being able to try them in an instant with virtually no download. That's the appeal when i've had PS Now. I was able to try dozens of games instantly without waiting for a lengthy download and i was able to experience numerous games that i missed last gen. Never once did i play a game that i already own. I still own a PS3 and 360 so BC means nothing to me. It's not like even half the 360 games are backwards compatibility anyway. Keeping my 360 makes ALL the games BC. HDMI 1 and HDMI 2..
They have as much right to charge for PS Now as MS is charging for Game Pass. MS are not gonna assume you own the games and give it for free, are they? They are both services.
Or are you gonna tell me if the PS4 is BC with itself since it has PS4 games now? PS Now has been a cloud service since the start for non PS device (even if now they stopped support for those. Dumb idea) . It was easily mistaken or believed to be a BC solution, but it never was. Sony never said it was BC.
PSNow was = BC for 3yrs. They are now going to add some PS4 games after Game Pass is a thing (convenient), but I have to wonder how those PS4 games will perform on a service that struggled with PS3 games?
@ bigpappy How can a non playstation device with PSNow be backwards compatible?? It's not. Because PSNow is not and never has been a BC solution and anyone who actually thinks it is or was is an idiot.
Their answer to b/c is no one really wants it, gamers just say the want it, but Sony knows better so they offer the same games no one wants in a streaming service. It's kind of like when your date says no over and over, but deep down in your heart you know she really means yes or when your mom wants to vote but your dad won't let her because he knows she'll screw it up. I might be confusing the second part up with EA Access which Sony won't allow since they know it's a scam and don't want their fanbase getting screwed by making the wrong choice. Neither has anything to do with the fact Sony wants to sell their services instead so they eliminate choice.
There's a report that asked gamers if they use BC an 1.5% of them said yes. So that's gamers saying BC is not a big deal. Especially at this point in the generation. The fact that it's still an arguing point for people just shows how little there is on xbox.
It's not free. System architecture on PS3 is incompatible with current generation. They can't brute force run a game "for free". Their streaming service runs the game on PS3 centric hardware. It's also available on more that just PS4 so it's more of an option for people that want to play older games on their pc for instance.
It might be free for the consumer but not for the publisher. Microsoft has said that giving BC took a lot of time and money to make the emulation work. This is time and money taken away from new studious or IP's.
Resources MS should spend on studios and games so 7 months don't go by with only Halo Wars and Voodoo Vince (remastered). It's all relative, but i'll take new games over accessing old games (that i already own) on a different device.
No, here's the deal, folks misunderstood the data or intentionally made it sound like a bad thing, I still see PS folks saying it was only 1.5% of Xbox owners who used BC, he'll even many Xbox owners did not correct them.
It's not 1.5% OF USERS, it's 1.5% OF 1.65 BILLION TOTAL MINUTES OF Xbox usage. Go read it again: https://arstechnica.com/gam...
-In fact it actually goes against the ps fanboy narrative that Xbox has no games so that's why Xbox fans support BC. In fact what the analysis highlights is that over a 5 month period EACH INDIVIDUAL XBOX GAMER AVERAGES ALMOST 25 MINUTES OF GAMEPLAY TIME WITH A LAST GEN GAME.=
That is great, because the same analysis shows Xbox gamers are spending the lions share of their time playing CURRENT GEN XBOX GAMES DAILY, then every once in a while they say cool I havent played Alan Wake in years, let me go rock that guitar scene again.....that makes perfect sense, that's what's expected on a next gen console.
Take this to the bank, BC cannot be spun into a bad thing, Xbox players are playing mostly current gen games alot AND they have the option to play BC games on their current gen hardware for FREE (if they owned it previously). The ONLY reason ps n4g folks say "'meh" is because Sony gave them no choice except ps now. Instead of requesting it more to perhaps make Sony change in this ONE instance in favor of the consumer they rather save face in online console war nonsense.
Sony is doing a great job, but there's always room for improvement.....not arrogance, but given how some of you act, I expect that Ryan exec to keep telling you, your most requested features are not what you really want, bu, but we have something else for ya, here's ps now.
Well, the one thing that remains true is that just like, oooh Idunno. Nintendo has never really had backwards compatibility except for very scarce and random moments - no one seems to care, they still sell their older games on a Virtual Store.
With Sony and Playstation consoles, you have to realize and understand the sophistication of Ken Kutaragi's designs, he deliberately made them complicated and to try to get PS2 and PS3 compatibility is one of the hardest things am sure a dev could do, let alone the work Naughty Dog had to do for instance to port The Last of Us amazingly for the PS4.
Xbox 360 and Xbox One, are basically just PC's in console form, Nintendo and Sony had different means of changing that up, with that being, Cartridge, and Sony? It was with things like the Emotion Engine in PS2 and the Cell Processor that you don't have in PC's, how it handles data completely differs from an average PC. Porting takes Time and Money. If it was just a simple flip of a switch like many (but not all) Emulation's and Roms? Then they could just do that, but since they can't do that with ALL games - it's tough luck, but really, Backwards compatibility was a thing Sony more or less invented originally in the Console Wars between PS1 and PS2 and PS3 - they then discarded it and everyone got butthurt even though the realism is there, it will get harder and harder down the line to offer it.
Not every fucking game I played from Windows 95 era will work on my Windows 10, this is just a simple fact, a programmer would need to ensure patches come out for those old games, if not Fan-patches that fix the complications, bugs, glitches, errors, complications, in order for it to work with the New tech hardware of CPU's, GPU's, or Dual-GPU's or even by a computer having too much RAM - could cause problems for an older game.
Wow. Ur one of those that thinks PS Now is only for backwards compatibility. Right, bc if i get PS Now i'm totally going to skip the HUNDREDS of games i haven't played yet and ONLY play the games that i already own/have played... <- Sarcasm
Why should those that don't care about BC, pay for those who do care about it to have it? That is what happened with the PS3, We had to foot the bill at launch for those gamers that wanted BC. However, now sony has made those who want BC pay for it. Which is better IMO, I don't need to pay for crap i'm not going to use. There's times when games have came out that I got PS Now for a month or rented the game for a month, so I could play it, like TWD so I can get some easy platinums LMAO, and that's how it should be done. This isn't a feature everyone uses, yes it would be good to have built in, for people like me that dabble, however, I do still have a PS3 OG and Slim, guess what I never plug those up.
At the end of the day BC is a dumb feature to charge a WHOLE userbase for when only 1% of the install base would use it, in 0 benefit to the other 99% and/or Sony as a company in terms of profit.
MS isn't trying to make playing old games the most used feature on X1. It's just for those of us who don't want two consoles hooked up to play both old and new games. It's for when you all of a sudden have the urge to play one of your old titles, it's there. A simple convenience.
Hey guys at this point I wouldn't try to educate them any more personally Im for ALL gamers getting more choice but clearly the ps fans on n4g would rather argue it's 'meh rather than keep asking Sony so they might move toward a similar BC strategy. The Ryan exec arrogance says it all basically ps fans want what they tell them to want. I mean he simply cant say what he said all while Sony promotes ps now, which is a direct investment to bring old games to ps4. They are even killing ps now support for everything but pc and ps4 which puts more focus on them wanting ps fans to buy/rent games on ps4.
NO, BC is not something I use often, No BC it's not a system seller but it is something thats really cool when you get the itch to play an old favorite. So YES we are gonna keep praising it but mostly just be glad our preferred console has the option.
That's the thing. It doesn't have to be a lot of people. It's just there when you need/want to indulge in an older game. Instead of hooking up you old console to do so, you can play it straight from you new console.
@lennoxb63 Sorry but Sony doesn't seem the benefit to invest on something that won't be use by the majority. If you want a product like that then you have an Xbox one for that.
Then why did they invest close to half a billion on Gaikai just to stream those very same games they claim no one wants to play? If it wasn't for those 380 million reasons I would get where they are coming from. Which are we to believe?
@death What you and a lot of people need to get through your head is the fact that ps now is NOT an alternative to backwards compatibility. Both are two different things. Ps now is a service that grants one the ability to play games with out the need of a console. Ps now is meant for a more mainstream market where as BC is the total opposite of that which only covers something niche. I don't understand how people are having a hard time wrapping their head around that.
Honestly, BC would be even less used on PS4. We are nearly 4 years into the generation and Sony has already released more exclusives this year than i can even keep up with. I don't even have time to play brand new exclusives that are so highly regarded they are likely goty contenders let alone a last gen games i already own and have already played. I still need to get Nier, Persona 5, and MLB The Show 17. Still need to platinum HZD and Farpoint. Still barely touched Prey and MEA. Wipeout Omega just released to rave reviews and it's native 4K 60fps with HDR on Pro. We just got KF2 and Life is Strange on PS+. AZ Sunshine and Crash release this month. I still want to play The Surge which offers 4K and 60fps on Pro.
We are in the thick of it right now, 3-4 years in and the games starting pouring out. We have options aplenty. Ppl need to understand the difference in the significance of backwards compatibility at the very beginning of a gen and 4 years into a gen. Backwards compatibility at the very beginning of a gen is a massive feature bc ppl generally still have huge last gen libraries, and very few new gen games to play. In the beginning of a new gen the previous gen is still very relevant, but after several years and after support has completely dried up this is no longer the case. Ppl just have overwhelming options for new, technically superior experiences and the significance of non remastered, old gen games is not nearly what it was circa 2013.
There's no excuse for why PS4 doesn't have basic PS1 backwards compatibility when every PlayStation hardware prior had the feature. It became a longtime tradition until 2013.
This is exactly why I spent $599 for my 60 gig. Arc the Lad and both Lunar Collections, FFVII and FFVIII, GT and GT2, RE1&2, Ridge Racer, Metal Gear, and Spider-Man are all part of my favorites for the PlayStation. Not to mention I don't have a working PS2 anymore. I put too many hours on a few of them and oddly misplaced my PS2 slim which I reboxed for safe keeping. If the Pro would have been b/c with all of these I would have bought it already.
Not all BR drives can read CD's. I had to do some research into this, because I thought that it seemed fishy, but BR lens does indeed need the appropriate laser diode to actually be able to read CD's or DVD's. While all players I know about do indeed support CD's, it's because they actually do have the diode to do so. Sony's PS4 does not have this diode. Same goes for DVD, but Sony did include the DVD diode. The laser itself between all the different formats uses a compeltely different wavelength, and while the laser frequency can be produced by a single lens, the diode required to do that isn't always included on the lens.
I don't know what you guys are all talking about I would love to be able to play my PS3 games on my PS4 so many games I own that I'm not playing right now because I can't you guys need to give your heads a shake if you don't want to be able to access your old games what are you idiots go ahead and give me dislikes your absolute fools for not wanting backwards compatibility
It was a poll not an actual study. Sony has a service which offers BC but they charge you for it as opposed to MS who offers it for free thru XB1 hardware emulation. PS4 has made a nice profit for Sony and gotten them back in the green BIG TIME so why would they want to cut into that profit margin by giving things away for free when they can just charge for it? Having more options wether you use them or not is ALWAYS better ask anyone in life.
PSNow is akin to just buying/renting old games to play them. It doesn't matter if you own them.
That's what PSNow is. It's not a BC solution.
Backwards compatibility allows you to play older software, assuming you have the proper media, but not everything that plays older software is backwards compatibility. There's a difference. Emulation on PC isn't BC for instance. Streaming old atari 2600 games is not BC. So on and so forth.
Jesus, is this all xbone fans have to defend the purchase of a one?? The fact it can play old games?? Yeah it's a cool feature but when you've got a backlog of awesome, new games! Then it's just pointless! Xbox really needs some games because it's a bit embarrassing now, halo wars so far this year?! That's just crazy if you ask me! I believe that quite a lot of xbone owners use BC because they literally have no games, it's a ghost town
Useless data, Sampling a few months which are microsofts main release window for exclusives, along with less than a million users over that time period, does not give a true reflection on the usage of backwards compatibility as a whole,
Its like data has been sampled to fit ones agenda.
Me personally play back compat games on a weekly basis when i am not playing xbox one games
The sad truth. X1 is very shallow on new games. They have been selling us the same series for over ten years. Notice on the PS4 side games just keep coming and thats why the fan base is not making a huge deal about B.C. feature on PS4.
When you have nothing to play of course B.C. is a much needed feature. Us over here on the PS4 side, if we wana play something thats on PS3, we do the inevitable......the impossible......the most daring act.......we put the disc in our PS3 and play it.
So if we follow the logic here. Sony and MS should remove the free game offering from Live and PS+ because of some similar number of usage vs new and current games.
and Funny tidbits Gta5 is the # 1 best sellings game on Ps4.
False news and inaccurate data. Articles that coincidentally came just after Sony said they don't think people care about anything but the newest games.
And coincidentally just before E3 and the announcement of the most powerful console launch ever.
This is just bullshit PR trickery from Sony and its army of fanboys.
1.5 percent of time Xbox One is used on backwards compatible games. That might sound low, but the raw numbers tell a different story.
Sony just announced PS4 users use Their console for 50,000 years per week. 24 hours times 365 days = 8760. 8760 hours times 50,000 = 438,000,000.
Surveys have shown that individual Xbox users, on average, use their console just as much, if not more than PS4 users. So we'll just call it equal. Xbox One has sold 29.6 million, PS4 has sold 58 million. 29.6M/58M = 0.51%. This roughly means Xbox One has 0.51% of total users that the PS4 has. 0.51% of PS4's use time = 223,380,000 hours. The Xbox One player base spends 1.5% of its time playing BC games. 0.015(1.5%) x 223,380,000 = 3,350,700 hours a week.
So 3.35 million hours a week are spent playing BC games. That sounds like plenty of use to me. People who only look at the percentage and think "No one uses it" fail to understand how much hours 1.5% actually means. This is over a 6 month period too... which dilutes how much people use it. People who use BC only play a select handful of BC games, and that'll last for maybe a few weeks overall. A 6 month sample stretches that out.
I've completed Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Mass Effect 1, Halo Reach, and played some Black Ops 2 multiplayer. That's over the past 1.5 years, so that will look like an insignificant percentage. But I've certainly got some good use out of it, I beat 3 whole BC games, I don't actually beat many games these days.
However... I would've also used YouTube more over that 1.5 year period, let alone proper Xbox One games. So even I would have a small percentage. So from Sony's business standpoint... those 3 games I completed would be considered too insignificant to care.
It's that sort of "business first" mentality that has put me off PlayStation over the last 6 years. Thinking that 1.5% of usage time on a console with nearly 30M sales is "too insignificant to care", the way they dropped the Vita like a sack of potatoes after the initial flop, and reducing number of allowed homes per account on PS3 from 5-2, meaning I couldn't properly play games like BF1943 or Call of Duty with friends at home anymore (I had 3 PS3s... yes screw you too Sony, I wouldn't have bought the third if I knew you'd do that.)
BC is too insignificant to care? Okay whatever Sony, but I'm gonna go with Xbox for doing something that actually benefits gamers, even if it doesn't benefit Microsoft much.
Sony for the gamers! - Hey we want EA access ... Sony's response is to tell you that you don't need another service like that because they feel it doesn't give you value. - Hey we want UHD Blu-ray... Sony's response is you don't want that you want to use all of the streaming services that are on our platform instead. - Hey we want backwards compatibility... Sonys response is no you don't want that because even though you asked for all the time and you play it a little bit we'll give you a service and or just remaster those games so you can pay us to play those games again.
Sony has never been for the gamers. The only thing that they did for the gamers was launch a console at $400 that was the most powerful console at the start of the generation. That had absolutely nothing to do with them trying to be for the gamer as it was a matter of Lucky circumstance and the absolute missteps of the competition. They then crafted a clever marketing slogan on the heels of those missteps and gamers bought into it like crack. Now the leading platform in console gaming is the most closed off, walled garden that offers little choice to gamers for options. But what they have in their back pocket is they still have a fantastic machine and they do invest in good first party games. So they will continue to garner good favor from gamers regardless of their bad policy.
Very few people actually wanted EA Access when it was annouced. If it wasn't a MS/PC exclusive, it would have been hated universally. but since it went exclusive, it gave a nice little shot for the console war.
Sony made a business decision with UHD, and given the current UHD adoption rate, I can't blame them. In some ways, it's more consumer friendly to the larger base of potential customers who don't care about it, particularly given current 4K adoption rates. By the time 4K display adoption rates get higher, the players will be cheap enough, and likely the console will include it. It's a different approach than Sony had in the past with new technologies, but it is what it is.
Sony didn't tell people they didn't want BC. They stated that it's a feature that wasn't used enough to offer up in some way. That's different than telling us what we want. The rest of that sentence is just cynical exagerration of what Sony said to try and appear intelligent, but for now, it's again a business decision, and there are very real factors which limit the way BC can be done on PS4.
Sony has created and release more new IP's than any other console maker in the past 20 years. They have actively tried to grow the gaming industry, even with the PS3 where they felt it would be a good way forward. Just because it backfired doesn't mean that they were wrong to try, or against the gamers. Sony offered up BC for 2 generations before they dropped it because they got kicked to the ground over their PS3 price, and now people are crying that theey didn't include BC? It's a double standard and people like yourself are placing them in a scenario where they just can't win.
Sony and Microsoft track these kind of data. They know if gamers are playing old games or new games. They of course gather all that data and make a decision to include BC or not. But BC is a selling point eventhough it is not widely used, it give gamers an option and that whats gamers are looking for.
Give it a rest . Bc is only a thing in the start of the gen after it doesnt . Is just a feature. Now less then 2% use it. Its not a selling point. Sony knows that with the ps3 and nintendo with the wiiu. Microsoft over hype something to hide the reality, but never never gives the numbers. Now everybody knows why. Keep counting shoots fired , laps done and so on
Why is having more options to play old gen games a bad thing? You guys are ridiculous for defending the a company holding back on more options when it comes to games
Even if it's 1% of 50 million that's still 500,000 that use it. I don't see why they can't offer it through an entire catalogue paid subscription. I'd take that if nothing else.
There are lies, damn lies and then there are statistics.
Sony have backwards compatibility already with PS Now, it's been on PS4 for ages, it's the reason they bought Gaikai in the first place, now they are making It available on Son TV's etc.
So both consoles have it but they go about it in very different ways.
So Sony is right in ignoring a free backward compatibility feature, but they are still right to charge for it?
Quick, someone spin this for me.
MS isn't trying to make playing old games the most used feature on X1. It's just for those of us who don't want two consoles hooked up to play both old and new games. It's for when you all of a sudden have the urge to play one of your old titles, it's there. A simple convenience.
There's no excuse for why PS4 doesn't have basic PS1 backwards compatibility when every PlayStation hardware prior had the feature. It became a longtime tradition until 2013.
I don't know what you guys are all talking about I would love to be able to play my PS3 games on my PS4 so many games I own that I'm not playing right now because I can't you guys need to give your heads a shake if you don't want to be able to access your old games what are you idiots go ahead and give me dislikes your absolute fools for not wanting backwards compatibility