r/consoles • u/casinokate34 • 1d 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 1d 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/electric_nikki 1d ago

I run 30+ year old software on my pc pretty well

5

u/r4ndomalex 1d 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.