Sony: Backwards Compatibility Is Never Coming Back

[XT inc]

Seeing that I quite enjoy dusting off old titles I own like dinocrisis 2, ff7-8-9 and my ps2 games I think it is a horrible idea to dash out the ability to play these titles without having to dust off rickity aging systems to play them.

I haven't bought a ps3 mainly because some didn't have bc and I never saw the point in having to keep a ps2 right next to a ps3 to play all of my old rpgs. This is as annoying as walking past timesplitters future perfect for the xbox and knowing I cant play it without the huge hassle of wiring up the original xbox. I am sure that they might change their mind if enough people disagree with them.

 

[Lusulpher]

The guys right about it not being a primary sales driver.

If your main reason for buying a PS3 was so you could play old PS2 games your idiot. Just go buy a cheap PS2 instead.

Also by not having it in they keep PS3 costs down, which means cheaper prices (well sort of).

What about those of us who want a PS3 with that feature, are they producing them so we can show our "salesdriving"?
And when the few with the best PS3 out there need repair what happens then. This sounds like they are shooting themselves in the foot especially IF they do not provide support for the one people are still wanting.

My brother owns a PS2, and I use computers exclusively, they have EXCELLENT PS2 titles I wish were on my computer...but they shot that foot off ages ago.

Console companies really are run by greedy buffoons.

 

[Nieroshai]

John Koller, backwards compatibility is why I bought a PS3 in the first place! XBOX did it, Nintendo does it for every other console, you USED to do it... Even the PS3s that don't have BC have a PS/PS2 Memory Card Creation feature! Prepare for a lot of hate mail from angry fans, my friend. When I bought my Wii, I SOLD my Gamecube. I didn't NEED it anymore since the Wii could do that job. When I bought my Advance SP, I could finally get rid of my Gameboy Color. We LIKE upgrading we LIKE getting rid of obsolete technology. But we also LIKE continuing to play our favorite games. Nintendo was supposedly going to die from the Wii alienating hardcore gamers. You know why they didn't fail? Hardcore gamers also like going back and playing their favorite games occasionally. I can play the original Donkey Kong on my Wii whenever I want, play Ocarina of Time whenever I want. What if I want to play the PS Metal Gear Solid? What if I feel like playing through a CHALLENGING Resident Evil game like the original? My PS2 will probably die of hardware failure in a couple months since it's one of the original bulky PS2s on the 1.0 OS.

 

[Nieroshai]

Wow, sony just keeps making stupid decisions 1 after another. What do i mean by this? Just look at the psp and you'll see what i mean.

What's so bad about the PSP? 50 million units is decent enough, I can't see how Sony is saying "By. GOD. man, this is. clearly. not enough. stop. the ships, man the. stations!!"

What's wrong with PSP? The thing that's wrong with all portables. It turns good game design studios into jerks. I have a PS3 and a PS2. Let's say I want to play Kingdom Hearts 1 or 2. I just pop it into my PS2(Which I was PLANNING on selling to get money down on a PS3 until I learned the PS3 BC was not sold in my area) and play. Until a year or so ago, or even longer if I was Japanese, I had to own a Gameboy Advance to play Chain of Memories, in the same series. There's two systems just so I can keep playing the series. The next installment in the series is for Nintendo DS. There's a third system. Next is the actual KH3. Guess what! PS3! Four systems to keep playing the series, and there's ANOTHER prequel planned for PSP. Five systems to play story-relevant installments in a single series. I should really blame marketing execs for this, but it wouldn't be possible if it weren't for portables trying so hard to be legitimate consoles. The heirarchy of hard-core to soft gamers is thus:
PC gamers->Console Gamers->Portables gamers.

 

[LeQuack_Is_Back]

Sony, just because you got some decent PS3 games out there doesn't mean the "massive backlog" (to steal a phrase from a certain someone) of PS2 games has ceased to exist.

 

[jimduckie]

wtf? they never asked us about playing old games ,they are wrong to assume we don't the bastards

 

[Bhuggy]

the title made me smile, there seems to some irony in it.........that's probably the wrong use of the word Irony but whatever!...mon,
I have a backwards compatible PS3......Oh wait no that one died on me and wouldn't read disks.
However! for my vast collection of over 50 PS2 games from the very start of the PS2 I got about £15? so y'know. FREE MONEY! Go spend it on something else it's alot easier.

 

[CDog2910]

On the surface, it appears to be a misstep for Sony until you look at the ongoing sales figures for the PS2. It is still quite alive, folks.

You bring BC back to the PS3 and who would have reasons beyond price to buy a PS2 anymore?

Pure economic decision. Self-preservation, really.

You're right. Why encourage people to purchase your NEWER, costly system you invested ludicrous amounts of capital into at tremendous losses when you can keep milking the cow from the last generation. I guess if you don't mind being the bottom shelf system of the gaming future.

It's a smart plan I guess... PS3's will be the top-selling system in 2015 for all the people who don't want the xbox 3rd or 4th iteration and the Nintendo Flesh-light...

nice.

Oh well, spilled milk, spilled milk.

no. no it's not.

Heh, this is one of the reasons I won't buy consoles, ever. Because with PC, there is always backwards compatibility, no matter what. Right now, I have every Fallout game installed, and they work perfectly, and I don't need to buy three separate consoles just play them.

Go on Sony, torture the dirty console playing peasants, so they'll realize the err of their ways, and join the PC gaming master race! ~snicker~

excellent... although I'd kinda lose halo3 though.

...PC RULES!!!

 

[TelHybrid]

It looks like I'll be sitting out until the next Sony console arrives.

I doubt that will play PS2 games either.

Oh no, it'll have backwards compatibility, but only when the console comes out initially. That seems to be the way Sony operates with BC: I've opened up to their game.

When the PS4 comes out, I'll grab one ASAP, and laugh when BC is inevitably cut later on.

I did that with PS3, and I tell you, it's damn annoying when some PS1 and 2 games don't work on it.

Gitaroo Man freezes after a level, Tomb Raider II freezes at the 1st loading screen, Crazy Taxi wont run at all... just to name a few. Even Tekken Tag Tournament lags like crazy.

 

[Sindaine]

Welp, that settles it; I'M never going to buy a PS3.

 

[BlueMage]

Sony, cockslapping their supporters and fans? Well I never, that's a first!

Someone honestly tell me - why do people still support this company?

you mean like what m$ has done to everyone for many years? why do you continue to support them?

*sigh* Another fanboy/girl. Look friend, the last console I got was a GameCube, good couple of years back, and then that would be because I've been a Zelda player longer than most folks on here have been alive. The only reason I supported MS was because Vista was far-and-away a better OS than XP was (and Win 7 is better still)

Not all who criticise Sony are boxhuggers.

vista was better than xp? wow where do i start with that?

Vastly. Shits all over it from a technical perspective.

it was universally panned by EVERYONE

IF everyone says the earth is flat, everyone is wrong. That simple.

it took 2 services packs to even be halfway usable on the top of the line pc's

Odd, it was perfectly usable pre-SP1 on my machine which, while powerful, was no Beast.

not to mention how they disabled basic things from xp

Do tell. No really. Spell it out. Please?

the amount of drm and other nasty stuff they decided to put in there

Odd, DRM never seemed to affect my usage, nor all this so-called nasty-stuff. What was it supposed to do? No, really, what?

and the total lack of security they continue to have in their os

And now you well and truly reveal your ignorance friend. Vista is, out of the box, more secure than XP is at its height. Yes, yes, ***** about UAC and ***** about it breaking compatibility. ***** all you like. It changes NOTHING. Your bitching doesn't change the fact that code that has system-wide effects must first be elevated (that's right, Admins who aren't Administrator need to invoke admin privilege first) and that's either password-protected or at least alerts the user to the fact. Broken compatibility? Well shit, it would help if developers wrote their code properly and didn't, oh, I don't know, constantly attempt to write to protected segments of the OS and its filestructure. That would've been a nice start.

i might not like m$ but i do have very good reasons NOT to like them and the illegal tactics and also the lies and chicanery that they've spewed forth over the years. i mean i would be more nice towards them if they weren't lying with most any statement that comes out of them or tries to deceive everyone. they were one of the first companies to say "it's not a bug it's a feature" and use that as a reason why to buy their products

First and not last. The light at the end of this tunnel is that things seem to have changed (go read the Win7 dev team's blog)

i also happen to be a big supporter of Nintendo and think they make a great product and always have, even if sometimes it gets a bit delayed

btw saying companies are cockslapping customers isn't the best way to say you're not a box hugger, nor is saying they've never been good to customers and then saying you support a company that has been convicted of antitrust and other crimes

Possibly not. Nor have I said that MS isn't guilty of the same sort of cockslapping (certainly they have in the past.) However, that era seems to be coming to an end for MS. While MS maintains some facade of caring about their customers (and I'm under no illusions about it being a facade) Sony appears to have a habit, in recent times at least, of all but shitting all over customer expectations and feedback.

 

[Snotnarok]

Come to think of it the reason they're probably not doing the BC is because they're going to do what Xbox360 does, don't add in BC just charge users money to download the game to the HDD and emulate it. Kind of annoying since my PS2 library is 3 times bigger than my PS3 library, then you add in my PSOne library and PS3 is far far in the minority of Sony games.

 

[cleverlymadeup]

vista was better than xp? wow where do i start with that?

Vastly. Shits all over it from a technical perspective.

not really, the tcp/ip stack is actually the windows 95 one, they ditched the superior bsd tcp/ip stack they used in win2k and xp, they put in "security" measure that didn't actually do anything useful besides making you click a "continue" button

it was universally panned by EVERYONE

IF everyone says the earth is flat, everyone is wrong. That simple.

yeah but in this case they are right, no big corporations switched over to vista, it didn't really get beyond the testing phase in most corps. so in this case your analogy fails

it took 2 services packs to even be halfway usable on the top of the line pc's

Odd, it was perfectly usable pre-SP1 on my machine which, while powerful, was no Beast.

really? xp STILL runs faster on the same equipment and a LOT faster, only windows 7 is coming close to being faster than xp and that is after a few service packs, it was horribly slow and still is

not to mention how they disabled basic things from xp

Do tell. No really. Spell it out. Please?

off the top of my head

they disabled the ability to cancel mic output thru the speakers, so if you have a mic and no headphones you get endless feedback

they horribly messed with the control panel and moved things from places they had for well over 10 years

they put in the stupid security thing instead of putting in REAL security, sorry but stopping something from running is NOT making it more secure, it's just making people click more crap

the amount of drm and other nasty stuff they decided to put in there

Odd, DRM never seemed to affect my usage, nor all this so-called nasty-stuff. What was it supposed to do? No, really, what?

try running something they don't want you too or go buy something and having them decide you shouldn't run it or have them decide you didn't pay for your os and disable it for you

there's also the bad trusted computer stuff, which means they can force you to run only things they want you to

and the total lack of security they continue to have in their os

And now you well and truly reveal your ignorance friend. Vista is, out of the box, more secure than XP is at its height. Yes, yes, ***** about UAC and ***** about it breaking compatibility. ***** all you like. It changes NOTHING. Your bitching doesn't change the fact that code that has system-wide effects must first be elevated (that's right, Admins who aren't Administrator need to invoke admin privilege first) and that's either password-protected or at least alerts the user to the fact. Broken compatibility? Well shit, it would help if developers wrote their code properly and didn't, oh, I don't know, constantly attempt to write to protected segments of the OS and its filestructure. That would've been a nice start.

actually the UAC was proven to be circumventable a while ago. the UAC itself doesn't provide security, it makes it so you have to click another button before doing something, that is NOT secure, that is called a security blanket and doesn't help anyone

as for having to elevate privileges, well that's another issue right there, it can be gotten around as well. also most of the time people are given admin rights right off the hop, so that's not a real help cause you can't install anything

look at how *nix does stuff, i can install stuff as root OR as my own user account and either one works from my user account. no need to be root to install stuff or need the power of root to do anything such as run office for a first run.

i might not like m$ but i do have very good reasons NOT to like them and the illegal tactics and also the lies and chicanery that they've spewed forth over the years. i mean i would be more nice towards them if they weren't lying with most any statement that comes out of them or tries to deceive everyone. they were one of the first companies to say "it's not a bug it's a feature" and use that as a reason why to buy their products

First and not last. The light at the end of this tunnel is that things seem to have changed (go read the Win7 dev team's blog)

i highly doubt that things have changed.

and the saying "fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice shame on me" well they've been fooling us for years and frankly i don't believe a word they say about how well things work

i also happen to be a big supporter of Nintendo and think they make a great product and always have, even if sometimes it gets a bit delayed

btw saying companies are cockslapping customers isn't the best way to say you're not a box hugger, nor is saying they've never been good to customers and then saying you support a company that has been convicted of antitrust and other crimes

Possibly not. Nor have I said that MS isn't guilty of the same sort of cockslapping (certainly they have in the past.) However, that era seems to be coming to an end for MS. While MS maintains some facade of caring about their customers (and I'm under no illusions about it being a facade) Sony appears to have a habit, in recent times at least, of all but shitting all over customer expectations and feedback.

ummm sorry but it's no where NEAR coming to an end with them, they KEEP doing it, they keep lying and keep getting caught over and over about it.

as for Sony not listening, i'm going to say it's more the people not listening to what Sony is saying and this whole BC thing is a prime example, people wanted a cheaper console so they took out BC so it became cheaper and they reduced the price. so people complained about there being no BC but they got what they wanted, a cheaper console. so be happy with what you got

 

[BlueMage]

Clearly neither of us are willing to budge on any of the points - let us instead agree to disagree, and leave it at that.

 

[HEXYDEZiMAL]

At the end of the day, Sony isn't discontinuing backwards compatibility because it's overly expensive to implement.

It seems pretty clear that they're doing so because they want you to either buy the games on their online service, or buy the older system along with the games. Either way, they make more money than including that same compatibility on the PS3.

Wouldn't any consumer be more than happy to pay a little bit more for this feature to avoid buying more than what it's worth? Sony also states the removal of being able to install another OS on the PS3 Slim as a bullet point, like it's some kind of great new feature. With all the shit they subtract as their console rolls onward, it makes you wonder what the hell they were thinking when they first designed and released it.

Why do Sony fans continually insist on this battered wife syndrome from a corporation that has shown that they care little about their customers or game developers? The Sony executives are so out of touch with reality that you'd think them space aliens.

By the way, the PS3 Slims that I mentioned a 50% failure rate on at my friend's Wal-Mart didn't play their Blu-Ray discs out of the box.

Dismiss that news all you want, it doesn't make it any less true. The 360s didn't fail right away -- it took years for them to do so. Before they point fingers at what they consider Microsoft's shoddy craftsmanship, maybe the Sony fanboys should glance at their own backyard.

 

[Wintermoot]

WHAT THE HELL ARE GAMING COMPANIES THINKING!? first the GB(C) removal from the DS then the GBA slot from the DSi and now this! if you make it backwards compatible your users have a bigger game library!