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XboxOne

A brace of news reports this week highlighted an interesting scenario in console world (and arguably for PCs also, though I'll accost that separately). Outset, 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 information technology wasn't seen as important within Sony.

"When we've dabbled with backwards compatibility, I tin say it is i of those features that is much requested, just not actually used much," said Ryan, in an interview with Time. "That, and I was at a Gran Turismo issue 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 information and the caveats to how it should be treated. But the bottom line, for our purposes, is that Ars' data backs up what Ryan said, 100%.

That tiny sliver (the Xbox 360 BC section) represents over 300 backwards-compatible titles.

There's little hard information on how much consumers want backwards compatibility as a whole. Some individual websites ran their own surveys in the run-up to the Xbox One and PS4 launches back in 2013, but that's scarcely authoritative. Still, we can safely say that many consumers talk about wanting backwards compatibility to at least some degree. Microsoft garnered a great deal of praise and media attention when information technology added backwards compatibility to the Xbox One, and the feature has been generally well-implemented. In some cases, emulated titles accept even delivered better, smoother experiences than the original Xbox 360 version did, despite running via emulation.

The huge gap betwixt how gamers talk virtually backwards compatibility and how much they apply it is even stranger if you consider the fashion both Sony and Microsoft have adjusted their own panel plans. This is the first time we've ever seen both manufacturers become all-in on the idea of an upgraded mid-generation platform that offers fundamentally faster functioning, rather than simply adding storage or back up for faster Wi-Fi. The PS4 Pro ($399 at Amazon) and upcoming Xbox Project Scorpio from Microsoft are said to be the beginning of an iPhone model for consoles, in which new editions with improved specs and capabilities arrive on a regular basis.

Implemented properly, this could exist a huge boon for both game developers and consumers. Developers are no longer required to learn a brand new architecture from scratch to have advantage of new console hardware. Backwards compatibility should be easier than ever to maintain across devices based on a common CPU and GPU compages. We don't know how all this will play out in exercise. Merely information technology's a huge change from in the past, and it would seem to evangelize precisely the kind of backwards compatibility that users merits to desire, yet don't take advantage of in practice.

Why Practice We Want the Right to Play Games We Don't Really Play?

I say "we" above, because I'1000 susceptible to this myself. I of the things I like most about the PC ecosystem is that games are, broadly speaking, backwards uniform over periods of decades, if not longer. Utilities like DOSBox and dedicated communities devoted to retro gaming take kept even most early PC titles playable. Sometimes they require more than hoop-jumping than others, and there are a handful of games that but tin't be emulated with the total graphics and audio capabilities they enjoyed on their original platforms. But generally speaking, PCs are bang-up 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'g being honest, it'due south not a characteristic I use very often. I've recently been playing through the survival-horror game Dead Infinite, which dates dorsum to 2008, and has an amazing issue I've but just discovered: If yous unlock the game's frame rate from the 30fps it specifies with Five-Sync enabled, y'all can also cutting your level and salvage-game load times from twenty-30 seconds to 2-3 seconds (values are approximate and calibration with your unlocked frame charge per unit).

Expressionless Space is hands the oldest game I've played in months. The games of my babyhood — the ones that had the biggest impact on me, and the ones I recall nearly fondly today — are games like Infinite Quest Three, Quest for Glory i and 2 (I still have my Sierra Online box with Hero's Quest printed on it before the company changed the game title to resolve a trademark dispute), and Doom.

Came a Hero from the East (Screenshot from AGD Interactive remake of QFG II).

I took Doom out for a spin via Cruel Doom before the 2016 reboot hit store shelves, merely Fell Doom is so different from the original game that it actually doesn't count as a straight replay. I haven't played my favorite Sierra games in at least a decade, though I did check out the amazing remake by AGDInteractive of Quest for Glory II: Trial by Burn. Wing Commander is i of my all-fourth dimension favorite game serial, only I don't think I've sat down in the cockpit with Christopher Blair in the past 10 years. Then why practise I care about being able to play games I oasis't played in such a long time?

Hither's my judge: It's not about the games, it'due south most the memories. I loved each of the titles to a higher place, and near of us have pains to save the things that had meaning to us, fifty-fifty if we don't take them down off the shelf and await at them oft. I want to know that I can fire upwardly an ancient EVGA hazard game to evidence 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 beyond an astonishing title for an older platform, one that you intended to play but never quite got around to, that you can still experience information technology.

If you've been gaming long plenty to have a prepare of legacy titles that yous want to be able to go dorsum to, what's your own reasoning for emphasizing that capability? Does information technology come down to nostalgia, or do you have a different motivation? Audio off and let us know.