06-08-2017, 08:35 PM
https://www.extremetech.com/gaming/25057...nybody-use
Quote:A brace of news reports this week highlighted an interesting scenario in console world (and arguably for PCs as well, though I’ll address that separately). First, Sony executive Jim Ryan was openly dismissive of backwards compatibility as a major focus or feature for the PS4, noting that few console players actually took advantage of the feature when it was available and that it wasn’t seen as important within Sony.
“When we’ve dabbled with backwards compatibility, I can say it is one of those features that is much requested, but not actually used much,” said Ryan, in an interview with Time. “That, and I was at a Gran Turismo event recently where they had PS1, PS2, PS3 and PS4 games, and the PS1 and the PS2 games, they looked ancient, like why would anybody play this?”
Second, a report from Ars Technica on how Xbox One and Xbox 360 users actually use their devices was released. The report includes information on how they gathered their data and the caveats to how it should be treated. But the bottom line, for our purposes, is that Ars’ information backs up what Ryan said, 100%.
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I say “we” above, because I’m susceptible to this myself. One of the things I like most about the PC ecosystem is that games are, broadly speaking, backwards compatible over periods of decades, if not longer. Utilities like DOSBox and dedicated communities devoted to retro gaming have kept even most early PC titles playable. Sometimes they require more hoop-jumping than others, and there are a handful of games that simply can’t be emulated with the full graphics and sound capabilities they enjoyed on their original platforms. But generally speaking, PCs are great at backwards compatibility in ways that consoles simply aren’t.
And yet — for all the value I put on backwards compatibility as a theoretical feature, if I’m being honest, it’s not a feature I use very often. I’ve recently been playing through the survival-horror game Dead Space, which dates back to 2008, and has an amazing issue I’ve only just discovered: If you unlock the game’s frame rate from the 30fps it specifies with V-Sync enabled, you can also cut your level and save-game load times from 20-30 seconds to 2-3 seconds (values are approximate and scale with your unlocked frame rate).
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Here’s my guess: It’s not about the games, it’s about the memories. I loved each of the titles above, and most of us take pains to save the things that had meaning to us, even if we don’t take them down off the shelf and look at them often. I want to know that I can fire up an ancient EVGA adventure game to show it to friends as the game that got me hooked on gaming, or to share the same experience with a loved one. And robust backwards compatibility does help ensure that if you happen to come across an amazing title for an older platform, one that you intended to play but never quite got around to, that you can still experience it.