Sony PS4 Backward Compatibility

[owsf2000]

People were excited for a while there that Sony was going to answer Microsoft's bid for favor by working on 360 BC on the Xbone. Apparently Sony had quietly enabled PS2 BC recently as well. Among the musings over what it meant, my prediction on forums ended up being correct. This isn't disc-based BC people were hoping it would be - where you'd be able to put in your old PS2 discs into the PS4 and play the games natively. (Like early PS3 models)

Instead it was pretty much what I figured it would be. The emulation is intended to let them add PS2 games to the PS4's digital store - since the PS3 versions of those PS2 games aren't compatible. (Those were partly emulated, partly re-compiled code.) As a result, at present at least, you can look forward to rebuying the games you bought on the PS3 all over again, unless Sony decides to set it up so that you get the PS4 version if you already have the PS3 version, and make them cross-buys going forward.

Otherwise you can pay 14.99/game. I'm not sure if that's the same price as the PS3 versions or not anymore to be honest.

In short, as far as consumers are concerned, there is no BC on the PS4. The emulator the PS4 has is just so Sony can easily add new titles for you to repurchase.

And this means my interest in the PS4 can safely stay at 0%. A whopping 100% higher than the Xbone. I guess the Wii U will have a monopoly on my current-gen gaming budget next year. (Yeah, despite the inferior stats, I still place the Wii U in with the PS4/Xbone since it's still commercially supported.)

Mind you, I'll probably be buying more retro stuff overall.

Comments

[kane-magus.livejournal.com]

And, of course, there's the usual "access to everything will be lost when they inevitably turn off Store support for the PS4 in a decade or so" issue as well. So if one did get a PS4 and did want older games from the Store on it, one had better buy them as soon as possible and then hope against hope that they don't additionally require some sort of online access just to be able to use (like most indie games on the 360 did, and likely still do, for all I know).

(EDIT) For the record, if I ever do get a PS4 someday, it will likely be near the end of its life cycle. As such, I very likely won't go too deeply at all into the Store aspect of it, just for that very reason. (/EDIT)