Microsoft Exec: "If You're Backwards Compatible, You're Really Backwards"

[Zykon TheLich_v1legacy]

Yeah because every 360 on earth is totally gonna last 10 or more years right? Tell me how backwards I am when I'm out $2000+ worth of games and see how far you can run after I've entered blood-rage.

While it's not a perfect solution by any means, in 10 years you're probably going to be able to emulate them on whatever passes for a PC. My PSX died, I can still play the games, same with my SNES, & my Amiga, and if my PS2 had died and my ageing PC was up to it (which it isn't) I could play my PS2 games as well. We can't guarantee someone will come up with a decent 360 emulator but hopefully there will be options that don't involve buying the last working 360 off ebay for $1M. Though it would be fun to watch you eating this guy's liver in a berserk fury.

 

[Revolutionary]

Hurr people don't play backwards compatible. Based on what? How could you possibly collect that data?
I smell BS. Especially seeing as the ps3 wasn't backwards compatible and the xbox 360 was only partially backwards compatible.

 

[TheComfyChair]

This is why emulators on PC are important for preserving gaming history, because the console manufacturers themselves wont do it.

Don't worry, there'll be 360 and PS3 emulators on PC soon enough. They'll probably use decent-ish 6 CPU cores to run well, not because it needs the performance - a dual core PC from 2007 handily beats either console's CPU - but because emulating is much easier if you can tell a core to emulate a thread, and you'll need overhead related to emulation. The xbone and ps4 can't emulate because, well, their CPUs are pretty weak in the grand scheme of things, they are only expanded netbook parts.

 

[Longstreet]

This could get interesting, didn't the previous Microsoft penguin get sacked over a dumbass comment?

Anway, from a price / product / promotion point of view they are right. They have all the power to do with their product as they see fit. If they believe it will drive the price too high to be able to be a good selling product and not include backwards compatibility that's fine.

There are a few problems though.
- Don't call the playerbase idiots. He basically does that but uses the word backwards.
- Don't bullshit a number everyone knows is false (i'm looking at you 5%)

And don't overlook the fact that people WANT backwards compatibility because it is about 99.99% sure in a few years time the support for some if not all games will be dropped on the older consoles. (cue in another argument for why always online is bullshit)

Hell, backwardscompatibility might even justify they price raise they are talking about, if they handle it right

 

[ellers07]

Maybe it's not a make or break feature, but backwards compatibility is a good safety net. Most of the new features they've unveiled I really don't care about. They're cool in their own way I suppose. Voice activated commands would give me that rush of feeling like Picard, though I'm not sure that would last when I asked for Earl Grey and thoroughly confused the thing.

The point is, I'd be willing to risk some money on a new, fancy console if I knew I had my library of games to play on it. I know my 360 won't last forever, and it would be nice to still be able to play those games down the road. I never purchased a game and thought of it as disposable. Is that the new reality?

Sony made the same error of course. I recently borrowed my brother's PS3 and very quickly fell in love with it. I thought about buying my own, but I figured I'd wait for the new console. Why buy a PS3 they'll be phasing out when I could just buy the newest console? I'd catch up on all the PS3 games I'd missed while picking up new PS4 games that looked good as they came out... It was such a nice dream.

I guess it was silly to expect a Playstation to play Playstation games, or an Xbox to play Xbox games. I said this a while ago in another thread, but wouldn't it make more sense to just call these machines something different? That would get rid of a lot of the expectations. Instead of Xbox One, just call it One. Then we would know it wasn't built to play Xbox games, it was built to be a home entertainment system. I don't know what you'd call the Playstation, but something to indicate it's not a Playstation anymore.

Needless to say, this issue combined with many of the others means I won't be buying any new consoles in the near future. My hobby let me down. That kind of bums me out.

 

[Morsomk_v1legacy]

"If you're backwards compatible, you're really backwards," he told the Wall Street Journal.

HAAAH!!! I see what he did there, he made a joke with the wor.....hang on a tick, DID HE JUST CALL ME AN IDIOT?!

Yup, just another day where a guy in a high position says something stupid and bad about something they dont like. Honestly, this has been happening for a while now. Is there like a competition or something going on right now?

 

[Lightknight]

So, not only are they not catering the to 5%'s needs, which is their call, but they are also now insulting them? Wow. I'd ask what happened to their PR/Marketing department but that line he spewed out was clearing the work of a PR brainstorming session that came to "If you're backwards compatible, you're really backwards," at 3 a.m. in the morning.

If it's only 5%, then why do both the 360 and PS3 have a robust classics game section in their stores? They seem to be selling quite well too. It's where I bought digital copies of games like FFVII and FFVIII and Front Mission 3 to play on my psp to occupy my business-travel time.

That being said, I've already stated that I wouldn't likely take advantage of the backwards compatibility even if it existed. Most of the older games I play now are more than one generation old and that was never on the table. But I'm speaking up against them now that they've decided to turn it into an insult.

"If you like x, then you're just dumb and your opinion doesn't matter". That's how I hear it.

 

[Orekoya]

It is a silly move for the consumer. It's also a vital move to the company.

Well, are you a consumer or a company? If you're a consumer, an advice for you - care about consumer stuff and not the company stuff.

You realize we're talking about why this is a bad idea for a company to not include backwards compatibility, right? Because I can't help but feel that right there is the base of our talking past one another.

And yet despite "vastly different hardware architecture" I can still use dosbox to play games from the eighties. It's not a very good excuse.

*facepalm*
Do you know the most important requirement for emulation?
It's processing power.
Emulating PS2 games doesn't work flawlessly yet and brings even the strongest gaming PCs down to their knees. How on earth are they supposed to emulate the 360 on a console that has even less power?

First of all, I brought that up because he keeps talking about various pc games, secondly I'm aware of how emulations, thirdly even the strongest gaming pcs are still pcs: IE, they're still doing everything in the background. A console is a specialized pc that doesn't have to run other processes in the background lending all of its processing power to the task it's doing. Granted though with all the crappy bells and whistles they're including this generation that may no longer be true.

 

[Altorin]

God damn it, "Xbone", really? Not only is that phonetically a disasterpiece, it's just nasty to say and really just makes me uncomfortable, no matter how appropriately brosome it is.

I'm sticking to "X1", sounds a lot more classy, which - sure, it's quite possibly the least classy console ever made, at least since the Milton-Bradley Vectrex, but even the most cripple-minded deserve respect enough to not be nicknamed the fucking Xbone.

that's the point. It's supposed to sound stupid.

 

[loa]

I suppose not having a large game library at launch is not backwards then.
Are they trying to out-stupid sony or something? Microsoft is flipping their shit recently.

 

[viking97]

For fucks sake, microsoft is just fucking joking at this point.

You just wait, at a press conference or something we'll all get a big jk and they'll announce the xbox 720 and it will not be always online, be backwards compatable, and not have stupid tv things we don't need.

There's no way a project with this much money poured into it could be this retarded.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

Keep digging Microsoft, keep digging. That hole must be getting pretty deep by now.

Even though Sony is doing the same with the PS4 they can still look good if they just don't act like dicks to the consumer, have a good game start, and not having the dumb restrictions Xbone is going to have. Still sucks that there is not even a option to add backwards compatability for it could increase revenue if sold seperate, but then they would have to moddable which both companies seem completely against in any form.

Yes, it's bad enough when your product is a piece of shit that's designed for securing profits first and costumer satisfaction second, but when you go and make dickhead statements like that it only makes the situation worse.

 

[Mr.Squishy]

Are Microsoft TRYING to be the next EA?! Gah! I'd go more in-depth, but the mods frown on excessive language.

 

[ZeroMachine]

Ok, people, let's do some math.

How many consoles have allowed for 100% backwards compatibility?

Think about this.

The PS2
The Wii (and by extention the Wii U)
The 3DS (the DS does not, for later models dropped the GBA slot. The GBA doesn't count as it could only play GBC games, which counts as an expansion to a console, rather than an outright new one.) (EDIT: My mistake, upon reflection (in other words, thinking about this when I was more awake) it DOES play original Gameboy games).

So there you have it. Four five console jumps (three four if you decide not to count the Wii U, I know I don't) where we have 100% backwards compatibility for the entire consoles life span. Five if the PS Vita has it, I don't know, but who gives a fuck about the Vita?

So this should come as a surprise to absolutely no one at all anywhere. A lack of backwards compatibility is the norm.

I think it would be really cool if it was a thing, but the fact the everyone is so up and arms about it rather than just slightly disappointed baffles me.

Focus on the actually bad stuff. Like the used game bullshit.

EDIT: Also, to everyone saying "he insulted us", he didn't. He's saying that the creator of the consoles that are backwards. Not the people that used them for the backwards compatibility.

Does everyone just WANT to be pissed off about everything that every major company does nowadays? Fuck, guys, give it a rest sometimes, will ya?

 

[TelHybrid]

I don't get why so many people are annoyed about the lack of backward compatibility. From a technical standpoint, trying to incorporate it into a new system is pretty difficult and time consuming, and costly.

It limits what hardware can and can't be used in a new system, potentially inhibiting it.

If you have a back catalogue of old games, keep your old system. Simple.

Also to those who complain about your digital games not working on the new system, it's exactly the same reason your disc games wont work. They're made and programmed for the same hardware. They're both incompatible for the same reason! Why would you think otherwise?

It's this sort of thing that gives the gaming community a stigma of being a bunch of peaty whiners.

 

[rob_simple]

I'm still with Yahtzee's stance on backwards compatibility: if you can't make it happen because of the technology you have, wait until the technology you have can make it happen. I have seen absolutely nothing from the upcoming Sony and Microsoft consoles that shows why we currently need a new generation, and I've definitely seen nothing that's encouraging me to buy.

The Playstation 4 seems to have marginally improved graphics and that's about it: the few games they've trailed are all sequel fodder, many of which are for series that ceased to be interesting a long time ago. And the Xbone...Well as others have said, I don't know why Microsoft think I need a console to do what my Tivo box has already done for years

It feels like Sony and Microsoft are using these new consoles as an extremely expensive trial by fire to test every single bad idea they could come up with. If they make money off of these consoles, I dread to think where this is going to take the industry.

 

[Orekoya]

Even if you had an OS for the worlds strongest gaming PC that also uses 100% of its potential, it would be too weak to emulate a 360 or PS3. Emulation is just so extremely demanding that the OS you run doesn't matter so much, as we're stil far away from emulating the 360/PS3 at all.

*facepalm*
Really [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBY2rpWu24Q], then [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucDdidcKzn0]? I guess these pcs are from the future!
I'm glad you accused me of not knowing what I'm talking about.

 

[Flatfrog]

I don't own an XBox of any kind. If this one had been backwards compatible, I might have been tempted to buy it, knowing that there were a lot of titles on it. I don't have the gaming time or the money to have multiple consoles and so far I've always had PlayStations. So they've lost whatever small chance they had to make me switch.

 

[F'Angus]

First has anyone called it Xbone?

Second. Microsoft really need to work on their marketing...and their research.

 

[Ruley]

Well, if Xbox had an eye in my house, they would see i play a wealth of original Xbox games on an Xbox i bought off a friend for £10 because the 360 had no backwards compatibility for Time Splitters: Future Perfect, amongst many other of my beloved games.

Seems like i'll be keeping my 360 if i get an Xbone, and that also means i still need my original Xbox! Time to invest in some shelves i think...

Seriously though, what the hell? Stating the obvious, with Halo 4 still relatively new and with the announcement of the Halo TV Series and ultimately Halo 5, did it occur to them that people might want to play some old halo games on the Xbone? or other good 360 Games? Moreover, early adopters might not have a huge library to play with in the first few months of the Xbone so backwards compatibility would have helped pad that out a bit?

But yeah, he's stirred up the hornets nest on this one. how did he get to be an exec with thought patterns like that?