Slashdot Mirror
PS3's Back-Compat Loss Explained, Analyzed
The news came down last week that future low-end PS3s won't have any backwards compatibility features, and that surprised a lot of onlookers. In response, Sony UK's Ray Maguire has attempted to clarify their logic. Essentially, in Sony's view, the money spent on back-compat features is better spent on developing new games or reducing the price of the console. "When PS3 first launched, Sony felt that backwards compatibility was an important feature as there were relatively few games for the new system, Maguire explained. 'So it was a big decision," he said of facility's removal, 'and we know it is a very emotive subject as lots of people think that backwards compatibility is high on the agenda and yet few really use it.'" For more on this, Joystiq has a few words on the implications of Sony's decision, while Kotaku says the 40GB unit will be arriving in the US on Nov. 2nd. For those of you who already own PS3s: would you have purchased a unit if it didn't have BC? If you don't have one yet, does the removal of BC make you less likely to buy one?
Further, 360 hardware has actually improved since launch (nowhere to go but up?) while the PS3 keeps receiving downgrades.
In Sony's defense, they basically got it right the first time, whereas MS has just been putting out fires since the beginning (literally and figuratively).
In fact, if anything the PS3 was criticized for being over-engineered, leading to its high price. Its cooling system is pretty insane. So now they're removing some features to get the price down; they're still ahead of where MS was when they launched the 360 on both features and stability. (You may not like Blu-Ray, but it is a feature, and the base PS3 still has more hard drive space than all but the top of the line 360.)
That's the thing. Consumers don't want BC. Or at least, they don't care.
You get a skewed view of the world when you read nothing but gaming forums online. This crowd (for some reason) thinks BC is really important. But the "unwashed masses" don't buy a new console to play old games. They just don't. They don't care. Hell, many of them probably don't even realize there IS BC on there PS2 or PS3.
Microsoft realized this when they went for pure software emulation of the Xbox, and then essentially gave up on it 6 months later (updates have stopped). BC is a red-herring.