The ONLY reason backwards compatibility is so impractical for the PS4 in the first place is because using the cell technology in the PS3 was a ridiculously short-sighted idea. Had they not done something so obscenely stupid that developers for their console still at the END of that console generation can't quite figure out how to design games around it, we'd all be talking as if backwards compatibility IS a staple. Sony shot themselves in the foot with that misstep. Let's be honest; backwards compatibility itself didn't shave off $200 from the console. In actuality, it might have shaved off half as much (if that), with the other $100 coming from Sony deciding to sell their consoles at a loss just so they could get people to buy their games in the first place. But that's only if you think that backwards compatibility was the only thing cut out in that price cut; it wasn't.
The PS3 lost quite a few features from its initial release, including a larger storage capacity. Truth be told, if I wanted anything jettisoned from the PS3, it would have been the BluRay. I still don't own a BluRay player and I have not seen--let alone touched--a BluRay disc or player since they came out. Sony was so obsessed with pushing their latest home entertainment tech during the PS3 launch that they forgot what they should have been pushing on a gaming console--games. During the PS2 era, DVD Players had already been out for a good while before the PS2, so integrating them in wasn't nearly as huge a gamble as with the PS3 and BluRay.
SirBryghtside said:
Just so you know, here's a complete list of consoles that have full backwards compatibility with a previous system:
PS2
Wii
Wii U
Anything before the PS2 era has found its way onto the PC in some form of emulation or another, but even then, those games were much easier to emulate so it's hardly fair to stretch that all the way back to the days of Atari when you're talking about a feature that's only been around for little over a decade (full backwards compatibility, that is, although partial and even significant backwards compatibility have been around since the days of SNES and Game Boy).
In this current age of gaming as we know it (which would have started with the PS2/XBox/Gamecube), Sony revolutionized the way we perceive what our consoles can do when they more or less said six, simple words: "Your PS2 can run PS1 games." This era STARTED with backwards compatibility, and in that context, your list actually comprises a third of the competitive consoles that have come out since then. More than half actually, since there still do exist PS3s that offer backwards compatibility, and it's a bit disingenuous not to point out that lack of backwards compatibility for Microsoft's consoles has always been a sore point for XBox owners. So really, if you exclude the company that refuses to play the compatibility game for whatever reason, even though PCs which have always been their domain do it so easily (hell, PCs are now emulating PS2 and Gamecube games), then it's actually half of the applicable consoles that have had backwards compatibility. And let's not forget that Nintendo's handhelds have offered full backwards compatibility as a near-staple since the GBA days, although they've only ever extended it to the immediately preceding handheld instead of all prior handhelds.
Sony STARTED something when they released the PS2, and they messed it up when they made that horrible decision to cut backwards compatibility instead of BluRay with the PS3. If the PS4 had been the PS3, we'd still have backwards compatibility and these arguments about cost-efficiency would have little merit; everyone would instead be praising Sony and Nintendo for their forward-thinking and the XBox One would have taken a much harsher blow than it did from the entire backwards compatibility debate. "It only does everything" would not have become the joke of a tagline that it is today.
