We Really, Really Don't Need New Consoles

[AeroZeppelinSevenfold]

I'm just done with the console market. I really thought that having my purchases tied to an account would mean that I would get to keep them until Sony went out of business and shut down their servers.

But no. Not even my downloadable indie titles will work. That is ridiculous. I'm not buying a new console for several hundred dollars when I have plenty of games that I haven't even played yet on my old one.

I'm leaning towards the PC more and more. I'm done with this crap. If I want my JRPG or Nintendo fix I have my 3DS. I don't need a console. I just need someone to loan me $600 so I can build a decent gaming rig.

 

[mike1921]

A lack of foresight? So, Sony should have realized that they might lose backwards compatability on a system that is almost 10 years old? So, therefore they shouldn't have bothered trying to engineer a game specific processor? What company do you not find "worrisome"? Did you write off Nintendo when they created the Virtual Boy? Did you given up on Microsoft just because the first XBox wasn't that great? So, yeah, Sony cannot magically see into the future. I don't think you'll be consuming much if you only buy things from companies with psychic ablities.

Spare me the lame facetiousness, please. I find it annoying.

I just happen to consider future-proofing products of culture like games somewhat important. Not only because it is a nice service for a costumer like me to be able get more bang for my buck, but future generations should be able to experience retro gaming too. If the only available substitute is a "sub-par experience" as you called it in your first reply, that might make the enjoyment part kind of hard.

I'm gonna' just keep writing the way I write regardless of you finding it annoying. Sorry.

I don't think there's any problem with "future-proofing" until someone makes a console that cannot be emulated. Do you want all game consoles to somehow have backwards compatability for all previous generations? That just seems untenable. It's not that hard to find the last generations console, and beyound that I think you are asking for too much.

Even if backwards compatability is included, it's often not that great even without the complications of a streamed system like Gaikai. For example, I found playing Gamecube games on the Wii to not be a great experience. It was cool that the Wii could do that, but I wouldn't consider that future proofing.

Anyway, the main reason I replied originally was that I was unsure why you thought Sony specifically was something to be worried about. But, it sounds like you have a general problem with how the console market works. Did you also not want PCs to move from 32 to 64 bit since that would cause some problems with older titles? Technology has to keep moving forward. Backwards compatability and future proofing cannot be the main consideration, which they would have to be to achieve what you seem to want.

Why the hell would a console not be able to be emulated. Also, it doesn't seem untenable to me for one console to be able to emulate the others. I can emulate the PS1 on a 2 MB program, why the hell can't the PS4 at least do that?

You found playing gamecube games on wii not to be a great experience? What the hell does that even mean? Why would something like gaikai make it better?

It's future-proofing by increasing the amount of machines which can play a given game, since hardware dies eventually and any console has a limited supply. Quite frankly I think it's a moot point because consoles can be emulated eventually and digitally seems to be the only way to hold them from the abyss forever though.

Backwards compatibility isn't really about future-proofing though it's about a smooth transition and making one console an absolute upgrade of the previous one.I have used my own PS2 more times while owning a PS3 than I have used the PS3 in that same time period, and every time I used the PS2 I was frustrated. It has a broken disk drive that works on start-up like 1/15 times, and there was the hastle of moving it around every time I wanted to play a game. Normally if an appliance breaks and there's an upgraded version of it (and new consoles should be upgrades) I should be able to just buy/use the upgrade. Using your 64-32 bit example: In what scenario should I go out and buy a computer/OS that uses 32-bit (barring me being poor), because if I had neither the PS2 would just be a better buy than the PS3, even after it's been out for 8 years and even if they were the same price. Also: How much harder would the transition to 64-bit have been if every game made before the transition was now unplayable on any modern day PC? Don't act like this is just "some problems with older titles", that's absolutely ridiculous.

 

[tangoprime]

In the past year, I don't know if I've turned on my 360 more than 2 times, my PS3 is used exclusively as a Blu Ray player.

Also, and this is a bit off-topic, I know, but the other answer is tabletop gaming. Many board/card games are just more fan-friendly and more fun than video games right now.

I agree with every single thing you've said, but definitely had to single out these two bits to share my current situation. My PS3 is now solely used as a blu-ray player / netflix box to play stuff in the background of our gameroom while me and my family, or group of friends, play Arkham Horror + expansions. Way more fun than any mutiplayer video game I've played in a long freaking time.

As the first poster on this mentioned, it's come full circle for me, my intro to video gaming came with a Magnavox Odyssey system and a bit later an NES, but I first really got into gaming when I built a 486DX2 PC (god I used to love me some TIE Fighter). For years, despite owning and playing SNES/Genesis/PS1/PS2/Xbox they were second-string to the PC gaming scene for me. At somepoint during the life cycle of the PS2 though, when they were really hitting their stride, at about the same point PC hardware seemed be taking a great leap forward and invalidating most of my current setup, I switched to consoles, and had fun with it for a bit- until the introduction of the ship-now-patch-later model to console games. Once you didn't have to ship a complete, tested, approved product- I saw a shit storm a' blowing. At that point, some of the small frustrations of PC gaming that had built up over the years didn't look that much different than what was going on in the console world. And then my Xbox red-ringed. Then my PS3 YLOD'ed. Then my current PC had a motherboard failure.

Guess which one of them I bothered fixing, because it was cheap and I could do it myself, and could be reasonably assured that it was really fixed?

*This Post now enchanted with Resist Fire* ...then again it was just after that when I realized I was getting a bit older and had enough things around the house to be constantly tinkering with and I deal with computer/server problems all day, so I just bought an Alienware Aurora R3 with an outstanding warranty and discount from dell through work, lol. Couldn't be happier, does what I want, and at least one of my consoles can be used as a netflix box without having to renew a paywall.

 

[Clovus]

Why the hell would a console not be able to be emulated. Also, it doesn't seem untenable to me for one console to be able to emulate the others. I can emulate the PS1 on a 2 MB program, why the hell can't the PS4 at least do that?

That as my point. We don't need "future proofing" since consoles can be emulated. There's not much of a chance for a game to simply become unplayable just because a current console won't play it.

Yeah, I don't see any reason a PS4 can't emulate a PS1. I guess they don't build that in because they'd rather sell you a version of the game on PSN. Now, the PS4 probably has zero chance of emulating the PS3.

You found playing gamecube games on wii not to be a great experience? What the hell does that even mean? Why would something like gaikai make it better?

I should have left that out. I just didn't enjoy it. I don't think Gaikai would make things better really. Maybe it's just because the built in emulation of the Wii was a bit off sometimes. I remember enjoying NES emulators. I'll admit that I didn't make much sense here.

It's future-proofing by increasing the amount of machines which can play a given game, since hardware dies eventually and any console has a limited supply. Quite frankly I think it's a moot point because consoles can be emulated eventually and digitally seems to be the only way to hold them from the abyss forever though.

Yeah, I agree with this.

Backwards compatibility isn't really about future-proofing though it's about a smooth transition and making one console an absolute upgrade of the previous one.

Yeah, I agree with this. I was only talking about future proofing because the other guy mentioned it.

I have used my own PS2 more times while owning a PS3 than I have used the PS3 in that same time period, and every time I used the PS2 I was frustrated. It has a broken disk drive that works on start-up like 1/15 times, and there was the hastle of moving it around every time I wanted to play a game. Normally if an appliance breaks and there's an upgraded version of it (and new consoles should be upgrades) I should be able to just buy/use the upgrade. Using your 64-32 bit example: In what scenario should I go out and buy a computer/OS that uses 32-bit (barring me being poor), because if I had neither the PS2 would just be a better buy than the PS3, even after it's been out for 8 years and even if they were the same price. Also: How much harder would the transition to 64-bit have been if every game made before the transition was now unplayable on any modern day PC? Don't act like this is just "some problems with older titles", that's absolutely ridiculous.

I'm pretty sure the 32-bit to 64-bit (and some of the OS upgrades) made a few older PC titles harder to play.

I'm not saying that this just has to do with older titles - why the quotation marks? If backwards compatability can be achieved, I think that's absolutely fantastic. But, wouldn't you agree that especially with the PS4, it would be very difficult to achieve it since the architecture is comletely different? They'd pretty much have to include a Cell processor in the PS4. That's a pretty signficant extra cost to just achieve backwards compatability.

Lots of people enjoy playing older games (I just bought KOTOR II, for example), but they aren't in the majority. You will still be able to get a PS3 with little difficulty for years to play those titles. After that, you'll be able to emulate them. That's not an ideal solution - an ideal solution would be using the PS4 to play them. But, achieving that particular solution has little chance of being a good return on investment for Sony. Clearly that was the case with the Emotion engine. Sony dropped that, and apparently have learned from that experience that it's not worth the extra cost. Every extra cost drives the product's price up - and pricing was a huge problem for Sony last time. I don't think it's crazy for them to try and avoid that this time around.

 

[mike1921]

I'm pretty sure the 32-bit to 64-bit (and some of the OS upgrades) made a few older PC titles harder to play.

Yes but not unplayable generally and not the whole-pc back-catalog. If PS4 emulation of earlier hardware just made a few games harder to play than I would have no issue

I'm not saying that this just has to do with older titles - why the quotation marks? If backwards compatability can be achieved, I think that's absolutely fantastic. But, wouldn't you agree that especially with the PS4, it would be very difficult to achieve it since the architecture is comletely different? They'd pretty much have to include a Cell processor in the PS4. That's a pretty signficant extra cost to just achieve backwards compatability.

because word for word that's what you said and there's a difference between "some problems" and "they're all unplayable". Also, I remember thinking at the release of the PS4 that I would be fine with it as long as they had PS2 and PS1 backwards compatibility. If PS3 backwards-compatibility has to be sacrificed because of processor architecture than fine but a lack of PS2 backwards-compatibility is the outrage to me. As yahtzee said

You CANNOT replace a library of hundreds of games with a library of ZERO games and tell us it's an improvement. That is fucking bonkers.

The PS4 would have a stronger library at launch than the PS3 does currently if it had PS2-compatibility.

 

[Olas]

Have you seen his Witcher 2 review? Or his review of the original Witcher (the one that coined the phrase)? I'm pretty sure 'PC master race' is meant to be ironic, since he seemed pretty contemptful of the elitist PC gaming mindset in those. Or at least he used to, it's pretty clear times are a-changing.

Really? You think he was being ironic about PC gamers being a whole nother race of human? I just assumed he was being totally serious. You know how down to earth Yahtzee is. Okay sorry, that was a bit rude.

I think in those reviews he was being more critical of certain types of RPGs than PC gaming elitism, or perhaps more specifically how some PC gamers would prefer a game that's complex purely for complexities and not because it's more fun. However it has nothing to do with console gaming as a platform.

 

[tangoprime]

snip

I'm not sure why that quote was attributed to me... I think an edit may be in order?

 

[Clovus]

I'm pretty sure the 32-bit to 64-bit (and some of the OS upgrades) made a few older PC titles harder to play.

Yes but not unplayable generally and not the whole-pc back-catalog. If PS4 emulation of earlier hardware just made a few games harder to play than I would have no issue

Oh boy, this is getting confusing. I wasn't trying to make the point you think I was or something. I'm just saying that you sometimes have to make changes and then stuff becomes unplayable. You don't want to avoid moving forward with tech just because it breaks compatability. I think we agree on that. Yeah, it'd be cool if the PS4 played PS2 and PS1 games. Like I said, I think Sony wants to charge for that through PSN though, just like the Wii and probably XBox does (I don't own an XBox). Just like buying stuff on GOG on PC so that it works on a modern PC. Maybe Sony should consider going the other route and writing emulators so that people can use their super old disks. That sounds a bit crazy actually ...

I'm not saying that this just has to do with older titles - why the quotation marks? If backwards compatability can be achieved, I think that's absolutely fantastic. But, wouldn't you agree that especially with the PS4, it would be very difficult to achieve it since the architecture is comletely different? They'd pretty much have to include a Cell processor in the PS4. That's a pretty signficant extra cost to just achieve backwards compatability.

because word for word that's what you said and there's a difference between "some problems" and "they're all unplayable". Also, I remember thinking at the release of the PS4 that I would be fine with it as long as they had PS2 and PS1 backwards compatibility. If PS3 backwards-compatibility has to be sacrificed because of processor architecture than fine but a lack of PS2 backwards-compatibility is the outrage to me. As yahtzee said

You CANNOT replace a library of hundreds of games with a library of ZERO games and tell us it's an improvement. That is fucking bonkers.

The PS4 would have a stronger library at launch than the PS3 does currently if it had PS2-compatibility.

Yeah, I still agree with you. I was confused about the quotes since I was saying that only old titles were affected *on PC*. I agree that with the PS4 it is very important to people to want to play PS3 titles that, like, came out this year. So, yes, the issue of backwards compatability is something that affects old and recent titles. I never said otherwise.

So, yeah, it would be awesome for the PS4 to have tons of old games available. But consoles are a mass market. The super-super-majority of people who buy a PS4 aren't going to care about PS2 and PS1 titles. You can just emulate those on a PC if you really want. It's the hundreds of PS3 titles that could make an actual difference. I just don't think that difference is worth the cost of including a Cell processor. So ... I think we mostly agree on this.

Out of curiosity, why would you possibly think PS2 and PS1 titles would be backwards compatable? Has any console every allowed you to put a disc/cartridge in from a sytem 2 generations ago? Especially when the previous system didn't handle old tiles for most of it's life? That seems like an odd thing to be "outraged" at. I can understand being a little let down if you really were hoping for this unprecedented thing to happen, but outraged?

(Sorry to tango for the misquote. I'm not sure how that happened. I edited it.)

 

[xdiesp]

Never Yahtzee has been more wrong about a game, than with Super Mario Galaxy 2. That game's levels were ever new and their gimmicks so smart that entire indie games would be based on a single one.

 

[Yuuki]

"And I, for one, am not going to burn all my photos just because you invented a shiny new photo album that only holds photos of an approved shape and format."

A lot of times I agree with you. However, on this point not only are you wrong, your point is fucking retarded. Why can't the old system be treated the same way as when you run out of room in your old photo album? Put on the shelf until you want to play with it again.

It's really lazy to continue harping on backward-compatibility when so many gamers don't even use it. We always want the next thing. New phones, TV's, clothes, furniture etc. Some of those things we can and do use again. And when we need to put on a shirt that is three years old, we go to the closet and put it on. Old consoles can be the same way. BC is nice, but it's an arrogant, simple-minded thing to get bent out of shape over, as though you're owed this luxury. And when it comes down to it, that's all it is.

So you're going to assume that every buyer of a PS4 already owns PS2 and PS3?

What about people like me, who are looking to buy a brand new console but are also interested in the library of classic games provided by previous consoles? Why can't the new console play the old stuff? PC's can play older games (my Steam library dates a long way back and everything works) so there's really no excuse for why the latest consoles can't do it too.

Your example of "phones, TV's, clothes, furniture" is retarded because all of those things can do what previous generations of those things did PLUS more, they all do the older functions while enhancing them and adding new stuff at the same time.

Here's your example returned to you, what if you bought a TV that refused to play older shows/movies and you had to wait for new shows/movies to arrive just so you could make use of that fucking TV? Or how about a TV that only played a brand new format specific to that TV and no other formats, so you have to wait for media to arrive in that new format?
Without a library of stuff to watch your TV, it's nothing but a piece of expensive junk.

"But why can't I watch my favorite western classics on my new TV?" the poor buyer asks.
"Just keep your old TV handy for when you want to watch the old stuff!" would be your response (with a completely straight face). Hahaha, just store it in the closet like t-shirts right?

Ooh, how about a new phone that only accepts the numbers of friends who own phones from that current year onwards? "Just keep your old phone handy for when you want to contact friends who have older phones!" would be your response. Err, no, fuck that.

The entire point of new technology is to serve the core functions we have always required of them, enhancing those functions, and THEN perhaps introducing new functions. You don't throw out the core functions and expect us to keep the old stuff around! A big healthy game library is exactly that to a console - a core function.

A new car needs to be able to function on old roads - if the car seller tells me that I should just keep my old car handy for when I need to drive on old roads (your logic, right?) I would tell him to shove that new car up his ass.

Hope Yahtzee's point got through to you.

 

[mike1921]

Out of curiosity, why would you possibly think PS2 and PS1 titles would be backwards compatable? Has any console every allowed you to put a disc/cartridge in from a sytem 2 generations ago? Especially when the previous system didn't handle old tiles for most of it's life? That seems like an odd thing to be "outraged" at. I can understand being a little let down if you really were hoping for this unprecedented thing to happen, but outraged?

(Sorry to tango for the misquote. I'm not sure how that happened. I edited it.)

Sony invented backwards compatibility on console and originally had it on PS3, the precedent is for them to give a damn about BC. In the previous generation they had the excuse of "we're doing this new processor architecture and this extra stuff we need to add to make BC work is too expensive", now they took away their excuse but kept the BC out of the picture totally. To not do the bare-minimum and have backwards compatibility for the older consoles, something that should be simple and something that they'd have to have been morons to never consider is a massive "fuck you" to me. It's not that they just don't have ps2 BC, it's not that they just don't have ps3 BC, it's that they have fucking nothing.

I guess you're right though, I'll just emulate PS2 games for now on.

 

[Aardvaarkman]

Sony invented backwards compatibility on console and originally had it on PS3, the precedent is for them to give a damn about BC.

And how did that work out for them? It made the console really expensive, and didn't really drive many sales, if any. Meanwhile, Microsoft eats their lunch by not providing backwards-compatibility and lowering costs.

As much as you or I would like backwards-compatibility, it doesn't seem to make business sense. It requires a huge engineering effort and increased hardware costs, for little, if any gain. The niche that wants to play last-gen games is very small, and they don't provide much new income, compared to the influx of new users who didn't own the previous console.

It may not be pleasant, but that's the reality. Why would console makers be interested in servicing people who have already bought a game, rather than the new consumers who want to buy the new one?

 

[Moonlight Butterfly]

I'm caught between buying a new graphics card or getting a PS4, running 2 gtx 580's on SLI atm. Tempted to get some Titans.

 

[RUINER ACTUAL]

I need a new PC, not a new console. I'm happy with my 360. I need a PC for school to play Hawken, ARMA, and Starcraft, and to work in Maya.

 

[Vigormortis]

Get out of my head Croshaw. You've essentially summarized most of my thoughts on the console industry in their entirety.

One of the only real differences being I've been saying these things since the half-way mark of the current gens life-cycle.

At this point, I honestly regret buying an Xbox360.

the probable 2nd Video Game Crash happens

lolwhaaaaaaat?

There's nothing probable about a second video game crash. Even if the big companies fail, they're not going to have the massive impact that the Atari generation had.

Gaming has passed the fad threshold.

By leaps and bounds, in fact.

Even if every major publisher went under; and dragged most of their developer subsidiaries with them; we would still have a thriving video game industry.

Perhaps not quite as large nor "mainstream" as before, but we would still have developers and smaller publishers churning out titles and making plenty of cash in the process. (perhaps more, even)

And this isn't even addressing the ever expanding, and rather lucrative, indie scene nor the prevalence of crowd-funding ventures like Kickstarter.

 

[Quantum Glass]

"Need," is a kind of weird word to use. Does, "need," imply that computers have advanced enough that the old hardware is holding game development back? If so, modern consoles are fairly outdated, and perhaps new tech would create a market for new games.

It depends on how they play their cards, but a next generation console (That didn't require the developers to find uses for cheap hardware gimmicks, I mean) could inspire quite a bit more launches. There aren't many new launches now, but that's not really surprising, seeing as how the next generation consoles are around the corner.

And more importantly than need, is there a market for new consoles? Probably. I'd certainly buy one, since my computer can't really be used for gaming and I don't want to spend the money for one that can. And short of using virtualized OS's, non PC users can't really play more than a handful of games. "Need" is a moot point when people will buy it anyways; it's just a matter of numbers.

 

[mike1921]

Sony invented backwards compatibility on console and originally had it on PS3, the precedent is for them to give a damn about BC.

And how did that work out for them? It made the console really expensive, and didn't really drive many sales, if any. Meanwhile, Microsoft eats their lunch by not providing backwards-compatibility and lowering costs.

As much as you or I would like backwards-compatibility, it doesn't seem to make business sense. It requires a huge engineering effort and increased hardware costs, for little, if any gain. The niche that wants to play last-gen games is very small, and they don't provide much new income, compared to the influx of new users who didn't own the previous console.

It may not be pleasant, but that's the reality. Why would console makers be interested in servicing people who have already bought a game, rather than the new consumers who want to buy the new one?

For christ's sake did you even read my whole post. I'm not going to repeat myself, here's what I said saying they had good reason to not have it last gen

In the previous generation they had the excuse of "we're doing this new processor architecture and this extra stuff we need to add to make BC work is too expensive",

I even said that I don't give a fuck about PS3 BC

. To not do the bare-minimum and have backwards compatibility for the older consoles, something that should be simple and something that they'd have to have been morons to never consider is a massive "fuck you" to me.

Getting on to your points that can't be reflected by reading, it worked out really well for them to have BC, look at the success of the PS2. The PS3 had some dumb architecture that made Backwards-compatibility more expensive, having architecture that natively supports PS2 games without raising costs significantly should have been something that the console was designed around, not an afterthought. But at this point they shot themselves in the foot so they need to break BC at some point, but there's no reason a PS4 can't emulate a PS2.

The 360 has software-based backwards compatibility of most popular games on the console : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Xbox_games_compatible_with_Xbox_360

Any source on that being a small niche? That makes absolutely no sense to me as anyone who is in anyway a gamer either has games from last gen or the one before that they want to play, either for the first time or a second, at some point or is likely to hear about games from previous generations that they want to play. Also consider that the people who do want BC are the more hardcore gamers who would probably buy more games.

They would want to service people who already have games to get consoles in homes. The more consoles in homes the more your new games can sell.

 

[MrBaskerville]

Out of curiosity, why would you possibly think PS2 and PS1 titles would be backwards compatable? Has any console every allowed you to put a disc/cartridge in from a sytem 2 generations ago? Especially when the previous system didn't handle old tiles for most of it's life? That seems like an odd thing to be "outraged" at. I can understand being a little let down if you really were hoping for this unprecedented thing to happen, but outraged?

(Sorry to tango for the misquote. I'm not sure how that happened. I edited it.)

Ps3 could play discs from a system 2 generations ago, every single ps1 game is compatible with that system, something that´s apparently very easy to include, which makes you wonder why they would remove it on ps4.

The thing is, they probably already have the Technology, since people have been making functional ps1/ps2 emulators for ages, if the ps4 is as easy to work with as they say, it shouldn´t be tough to include it. But it will probably never happen because they would rather sell the games to us again :/. I would prefer Gaikai + Psn ports AND my own library of games. But they´d rather take away our choices and force us to rebuy our games (or the small segment that were popular enough to be rereleased...)

 

[keniakittykat]

Now that a lot of games are getting pc releases, I don't think I'm gonna get suckered into buying another overpriced console for a while. I have some very good compatible-with-everything controllers and an hd cable, so it's just like playing on a console, minus the bullshit I have to deal with using consoles. And if I don't want online play? I just turn off the internet connection. Seriously, unless some of those consoles show up at goodwill or a second-hand store I don't think I'll be buying it.

It's strange, I started gaming on a windows 95, gamed exclusively on consoles for almost 20 years because pc gaming was a hasstle, and now I'm back to pc games because console gaming is becoming a hassle.

 

[Kathinka]

Out of curiosity, why would you possibly think PS2 and PS1 titles would be backwards compatable? Has any console every allowed you to put a disc/cartridge in from a sytem 2 generations ago? Especially when the previous system didn't handle old tiles for most of it's life? That seems like an odd thing to be "outraged" at. I can understand being a little let down if you really were hoping for this unprecedented thing to happen, but outraged?

(Sorry to tango for the misquote. I'm not sure how that happened. I edited it.)

Ps3 could play discs from a system 2 generations ago, every single ps1 game is compatible with that system, something that´s apparently very easy to include, which makes you wonder why they would remove it on ps4.

The thing is, they probably already have the Technology, since people have been making functional ps1/ps2 emulators for ages, if the ps4 is as easy to work with as they say, it shouldn´t be tough to include it. But it will probably never happen because they would rather sell the games to us again :/. I would prefer Gaikai + Psn ports AND my own library of games. But they´d rather take away our choices and force us to rebuy our games (or the small segment that were popular enough to be rereleased...)

the problem is the changed architecture. previous consoles all had identical or similar architecture with just pimped hardware. now the complete architecture has changed.
PCs can emulate consoles because they have the processing power to run a virtual machine with the simulated architecture of the console. but it takes a lot of power, and even fast PCs struggle a bit and the emulation often runs pretty chuggy and slow.
now the architecture has changed. the ps4 is essentially just yesterdays low-middle class PC and thus completely lacks power to emulate a PS3 with any sort of speed that would be sufficient to make games playable.