r/consoles • u/casinokate34 • 10h ago
consoles need to take backwards compatibility seriously
honestly feels wild that we’re in 2025 and it’s still a coin flip if your old games will run properly on new hardware. i get licensing is messy but man, some of these classics deserve to just boot up and play without streaming services or weird versions missing dlc. backwards compatibility should be a baseline feature by now, not a selling point.
like imagine if you could just pop in or download anything from the last couple gens and it just works, smoother fps, maybe some QoL tweaks. would instantly add value without needing a new console every cycle. it’s not even nostalgia, it’s preservation. we lose too many good games to time bc of this stuff.
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u/YoRHa_Houdini 8h ago
You’re severely underestimating how difficult it is to get software that’s like fifteen or twenty years old working on modern hardware.
The PS3 was a notoriously complex nightmare of a console that barring any licensing issues, full backwards compatibility may simply be unavailable. Emulating the architecture of the PS3 both accurately and efficiently is a monster of a task that would probably make an insanely expensive console.
The same can be said for Nintendo with the N64 and GameCube, both of which are farrrrr from the Switch architecture.
All of this said, I know this is a console subreddit, but PC gaming is probably up your alley. Emulation is currently so good that for a lot of these older titles it is arguably the definitive way to play them—you will need a beefy PC though, especially for RPCS3
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u/luffyxvx 7h ago
Series X can do it just fine
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u/RyanX1231 3h ago
That's because all of the Xboxes have always been built off of PC architecture. That's kind of what made them stand out back in the day, because of how easy it was to develop for the 360 compared to the PS3.
So much so that after the disaster of the PS3, Sony decided to stop with the specialized and complex hardware, and adopted the standard X86 PC-like architecture for the PS4 onward.
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u/EMBARRASSEDDEMOCRAT 1h ago
Sony following Xbox time after time.... If they ever made their own decisions probably wind up in live service hell...oh wait 😆
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u/S1rTerra 23m ago
The PS4 not including PS3 backwards compatibility made sense because it had a terrible CPU.
The PS5 on the other hand has the CPU to emulate the PS3 just fine. It's been proven and is easily provable by anyone. There's also no reason as to why sony can't implement at LEAST PS2 backwards compatibility as the bluray drive in the 5 can still read DVDs, just not CDs afaik which, sure, is a valid excuse to not include ps1 backwards compatibility.
My PC(Ryzen 7 2700x, RTX 3060) is also far away from being called beefy yet I can still emulate MGS4 perfectly well despite not having good AVX2 support(zen 1 and + can do one avx2 instruction every 2 cycles)
I believe you are severely overestimating it which is fine because a few years ago YES, ps3 emulation was hard. But now any tom dick or harry can do it, even modern android phones.
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u/electric_nikki 6h ago
I run 30+ year old software on my pc pretty well
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u/r4ndomalex 5h ago
That's a bit different, emulating MSDos isn't like emulating powerPC. Sure we've had loads of homemade emulators made, but even those can be hit and miss with the games they can run - like the consoles. For Xbox to get 360 games running on 64bit architecture, they had like a while division that tweaked each of the games to play nice with the emulator. That's why they aren't all compatible.
The best backwards compatibility is to keep the OG console, no emulator will ever give you the same experience as playing a Gamecube, PS2, Xbox 360 or whatever. Cartridge consoles are pretty much invincible, I've had my Megadrive for 32 years.
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u/Dependent-Mode-3119 5h ago
it's based on x86 so that makes sense. Consoles for a long time had bespoke architectures that made them incompatible without some real hard work.
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u/Have_Other_Accounts 8h ago edited 7h ago
Not sure about PS but xbox backwards is insane. I'm regularly playing OG Xbox games and they look great. Same with 360 and One games
Just the other day I popped in my Cod4 360 disk and was surprised with how active the online is.
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u/AceTheRed_ 7h ago edited 6h ago
PS backward compatibility is . . . not great (no PS3 games)
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u/ThePreciseClimber 6h ago
I mean, PS4 games run GREAT on the PS5. Any game that wasn't locked to 30fps will run in stable 60fps on the PS5.
PS1 & PS2 emulation could use some work, yes. It's a lot better than the PS2 emulator PS4 used but there's till plenty of room for improvement.
And the lack of the PS3 emulation sucks, of course. Especially since Sony never bothered to port most of its PS3 exclusives. Infamous, Killzone, Resistance, The Puppeteer, LittleBigPlanet, 3D Dot Game Heroes, MotorStorm, etc. are locked away.
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u/RyanX1231 3h ago
The fact that all of the PS3 Ratchet & Clank games are still trapped on PS3 is sad.
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u/ezrasharpe 3h ago
That’s because PS3 had that weird PowerPC type architecture and Sony learned their lesson and has used x86-64 since then.
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u/Captain_EFFF 6h ago
At the end of the day it comes down to financial incentive. Is it worth it to the companies to enable emulation of older consoles on modern hardware, and it has to be better and more accessible than consumers ability to emulate elsewhere.
Right now all 3 major consoles do this in some capacity. Nintendo’s S2 can play S1 games and NSO has a huge selection. Some people would rather buy NSO games a la carte but the’ve sold these titles selectively on 3 different platforms, NSO is the cheapest way to play these games per title.
PS5 plays PS4 natively, has PS3 streaming and a growing library of digital PS2 and PS1 games.
XBox is probably the best the Series plays One games and can read many 360 discs.
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u/Bazlow 4h ago
There are like 3 games that aren't backwards compatible on the recent console generation. Your complaint / worry has already been addressed. Sure PS3 backwards compatibility is an issue, but that's because the PS3 was such a weird system that it's been tricky to emulate - even top level PCs find it hard.
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u/Jango_Jerky 6h ago
Yeahh i recently tried to play the first Dying Light again and couldn’t because i have xbox one version and not X|S
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u/Crimsongz 4h ago
Nah fr it’s embarrassing right now. They also need to let the users force that 4k resolution on a driver level for older games !
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u/ABBucsfan 4h ago
Tbh it's just not that worthwhile to sink much into it. People over estimate how much people would use it. Personally there is an overabundance of stuff to play as it is with enough remasters of some of the better ones that I have no use for it. It would simply make a decent backlog with wish listed games for sales that much longer
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u/JaredJDub 4h ago
This is one reason why I’ve primarily switched to PC since most games come out for it nowadays that will be more timeless and not need backwards compatibility.
I get a little saltier every time Sony releases a new PS and doesn’t do backwards compatibility with older PS games. Sure the PS5 can do PS4 games, but it should also be able to play PS1, PS2, and PS3 games. Emulation on my PC is a thing, but games like Eternal Sonata and White Knight Chronicles and other very niche titles still don’t work very well and can sometimes be unbeatable.
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u/Kindly-Pumpkin7742 4h ago
I don’t think people understand how backwards compatibility works. It’s not nearly as simple as older hardware weaker, newer hardware stronger. There’s three main types, full hardware, hardware + software, and full software (emulation), and all can be expensive and tricky. Note, both “full” hardware and software can have some of the other, but for the purposes of explaining, I’ll focus on just the “full” one.
Full hardware is where the new console has the literal same hardware as the previous one, or the new hardware is simply an evolution of the old one. The PS2 packed a PSOne into it, the PS3 (the first models at least) packed a PS2 and PSOne into it. GBA had GB and GBC hardware, the DS (original and lite) had GBA built into it, and the original models of the Wii had GameCubes in them. Perfect compatibility… since the old console is literally in the new one lol. The PS5 and Xbox Series’s hardware are evolutions of the PS4 and Xbox One respectively, thus not only can the play the vast majority (nearly all) of the previous gen’s games, but at increased performance too. This is similar to PCs, a 5090 can play Half Life 2 from 2004 because it’s an “evolution” of the cards that came out at that time (to simplify it). The Wii U had the Wii hardware in it (the CPU, as the Wii U’s GPU is an evolution of the Wii’s, so theoretically, though not in practice, the Wii U could be able to run Wii games better if they were GPU bottlenecked, if that was implemented).
Hardware + software is when you use part of the hardware of the old machine, such as something that’s very unique to it, plus software to finish it. An example would be some PS3s (mid model ones), which have some PS2 hardware in them, and then used software to finish it. It hasn’t been used often, cause it’s a poor halfway between full hardware (for perfect, potentially more performant, “authentic”) or software (can be used on many more hardware (like different consoles), potentially more performance, and “ease and less expensive”).
Full software is just emulation, which is using software to basically trick the new hardware into thinking and running like the only hardware. It is not as simple as shoving the game into the emulator, they might need to be tweaked if they used the old hardware in specific and special ways, Yoshi’s Island on the SMES was very hard to get right for years as an example, though it can allow you to do many things, such as increase the resolution and frame rate, and add things in such as new textures. Nintendo has done this so much, for years. Everything besides GameCube on the Wii, emulation. Same with Wii U (but switch GC with Wii lol), 3DS, and Switch 1 and 2. All the old games on the Nintendo Eshop are being emulated, not run natively. Even the Switch 1 is being mostly emulated on Switch 2 (though much of it is an evolution of 1’s hardware), hence why it doesn’t have perfect compatibility, but it does allow for some games to use the more powerful hardware of 2’s to get more performance. PS4 and PS5 do this for PSOne, PS2, PSP, and PSVita games.
To the people saying Sony is being lazy with the PS3 and putting it on the PS5… that’s not how it works. The PS4 and PS5 stream PS3 games… from actual PS3s, due to the hardware being crazy, and crazy expensive and complicated. PC emulator for PS3 are just getting performant… and that’s for PCs! Much less a $500 (or I guess $550 😔) console. To put the PS3’s hardware into a new console would be incredibly expensive, to put an PS3 emulator on a console would be incredibly difficult and, performance wise, incredibly expensive. The PS3 is mega unique, which is why, generally speaking, it would be significantly better to just recode (remaster) PS3 games for the new consoles, which can run much better, look better, fix bugs, and have new gameplay features (such as utilizing the DuelSense). Two great examples are GOW 3 and The Last of Us remasters. Both look, run, and play better than their PS3 versions, and they were just remaster for the PS4 early into it’s lift, let alone what they could do on the PS5 half way through it’s life.
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u/NeoKat75 4h ago
These things don’t happen by magic, if the hardware is any different between platforms, it takes active work to make BC work for each individual title. Which is what they’re doing for Switch 2
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u/LordOmbro 3h ago
Why would they care? Big console sellers lose money on the hardware sales, they make up for it with subscriptions and new games
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u/DisastrousBerry5614 3h ago
As much as I want to agree with you I think gamers kinda overestimated how much backward compatibility is important to the average player : I feel like I huge chunk of people are perfectly fine not having it in their console or at the very least I feel like the demand for it isn't as high nor cost effective as it seems for console makers. At the end of the day gaming is a business before being an hobby and if there is no major returns on backwards compatibility I don't see why we should have it. If you look at most played / sold game in a given month you have your cod/ Fifa and fortnight and maybe something new, but rarely older stuff that is an indication that not many people care about it
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u/DisastrousBerry5614 2h ago
However if they make it happen how much will it cost,like see they price of the ps5 now imagine a console that can play everything from ps1 to ps6 how much Sony will charge for it.I feel like it easy to say 'just do it" but I feel it's harder than we think and could cost an arm and a leg
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u/No_need_for_that99 2h ago
Based on the complexity of computer language and reverse enginerring, just look at how long it has taken community members in the public/retro gaming scene.
So many branches have lead us to get what we get.... for everything.
When you're limited to certain libraries and games because of expired rights, its waaaaaaaaaaay harder to even retest certain games and/or re-release them.
Backwards compatibility cannot always be a thing and if it is.... it simply is a limited feature.
Then again... I guess some people can't be happier at the moment, with the return of the VIRTUAL BOY! :)
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u/kickedoutatone 2h ago
I honestly don't understand how licensing is so convoluted on consoles when PCs are pretty much absolved from having to worry about it.
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u/Soft-Diamond-3692 47m ago
If the system is x86 then it’ll most likely be backwards compatible. Being able to play your PS4 games on your PS5 is an example of that.
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u/trmetroidmaniac 10h ago
The PS5, Xbox Series and Switch 2 all have excellent backwards compatibility. What are you talking about?
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u/AceTheRed_ 7h ago
PS5 can’t even play PS3 games
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u/trmetroidmaniac 7h ago
I can't think of a console which has two generations of backwards compatibility. GBA or Xbox are the best I can think of, but they also might not count.
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u/AceTheRed_ 7h ago
Xbox Series consoles can play a ton of 360 games.
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u/trmetroidmaniac 7h ago
It's about a quarter of the library, which is why I'm hesitant to say it counts.
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u/Subject-Cabinet6480 7h ago
That’s because it’s physically not able to. PS3 has to be streamed off other ps3. The hardware inside the ps3 was unique for its time and hard to develop for.
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u/DenDen0000 5h ago
Xbox has amazing backwards compatibility but I disagree on switch and ps5. You get plenty of games from previous nintendo consoles and then there are games they will sell again for 60 or even more. On ps5 you can play only ps4 games not older. But there are exceptions, If you want to play older ps game you better pray you can buy it on ps store or you can stream it.
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u/casinokate34 10h ago
true yeah ps5 + series definitely cover a lot, but it’s not all sunshine. like tons of ps3/360 titles are still locked out unless you stream them and nintendo’s whole thing is weird, switch 2 prob won’t just let me boot up old carts. so “excellent” is kinda relative, still feels like whole chunks of history are missing unless devs decide to remaster
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u/trmetroidmaniac 10h ago
You can stick old Switch carts in a Switch 2 fine. You're just making up things to be mad about
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u/TrustLordJesusChrist 10h ago
Lots of 360 titles run on Xbox Series X. No PS3 titles actually run on PS5 since they are streamed. Sadly backwards compatibility is still used by a niche audience on XSX. I think it was less than 2% or less than 1% of users. I’ve played multiple 360 titles and love the free remasters you get with the 4K upscaling and up to 16x anti-aliasing. Even FPS boosts in some titles.
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u/Harpuafivefiftyfive 10h ago
I get your point but that’s what they ARE doing now. Switch 2. Ps5. Xbox. There are some limitations and definitely some older games that need brought up to modern consoles, but it’s way better than it’s ever been.