Does Backwards Compatibility Matter Anymore?

By Joe Haygood | March 9, 2009

When the PS2 came out oh, so many years ago, it promised us a newfound concept on the console: Backwards Compatibility.  Before that, backwards compatibility was an idea that lived only on the PC, and it wasn’t even called that.  It was just the fact that games would continue to run on every iteration of DOS, because the underlying fundamentals of the OS never changed.  Same thing was true of the first few iterations of Windows 95 and forward, to a degree, but we digress.

When you bought your PS2, your entire catalog of PS1 games would work perfectly.  Well, as staticians would say, it was 99.9% compatibility, but it still meant that you did not have to trash your old library of games, or for that matter keep you PS1 console hooked up to your TV.  No more getting a different sized disc or cartridge.  It was a standardized media format and it worked so well, that it made the PS2 an instant success, because it started with a huge library of games from the PS1 era.

As the next generation of consoles became the current generation of consoles, backwards compatibility took a strange route.  Microsoft came to market first, and announced that they would support backwards compatibility with Xbox titles, but the support would be ongoing, based on a couple of factors: you had to have a hard drive for the emulation to work, and only about 50% of the titles would work from the initial launch of the 360.  Not bad for a first attempt from Microsoft, but far from what the PS2 had spoiled us with the first time around.  Sony again announced that the PS3 would support not only PS1 games, but PS2 games as well with 99.9% compatibility, due to full hardware emulation.  However, along the way, Sony decided that backwards compatibility requirements were changing, and they slowly weeded out support for older games, by first introducing software backwards compatibility, and then finally dropping it alltogether.  The Wii is the only game in town when it comes to full backwards compatibility to this day with their old Gamecube titles.  The claim from Nintendo is that 100% of their Gamecube catalog is compatible, and in practice, this does seem to be the case.

With all of that in play, where to the console manufacturers stand when it comes to backwards compatibility in the next generation that is coming about in approximately two to three years if the experts of the industry get it right?  I look at the issue, and say that while I hope that Microsoft and Sony support their library with the next generation of hardware, the incentive to do so may not be there.  Yes, I know a lot of people will say that is crazy talk, but the moves that the industry has made in the last year show a pattern that the days of backwards compatibility may be at an end.

Lets start with Microsoft.  They started off their generation with a bumpy road to compatibility with the Xbox games.  I know I am not the only one that remembers the joke about Barbie’s Horse Adventures being a big title that Microsoft pimped when it came to backwards compatibility.  Over time, the list did get better, but quality titles that made the most of the hardware were neglected by Microsoft.  Titles like The Warriors, that pushed the original Xbox to its limit, never got a patch due to the inability to make it work on the 360 side, due to the limitations of software emulation.  It did not help that development on the original Xbox came to a standstill a couple of months before the release of the 360, because Microsoft had already made the decision to put the original Xbox in the rearview mirror.

Sony on the other hand, saw how much success backwards compatibility did for them with the Playstation 2.  From day one, if you bought a PS3, you had access to all the PS2 titles, as well as PS1 titles.  It also helped that quality titles were still being designed for the PS2, like Persona 3 and God of War 2.  Sony continued to support development of PS2 titles, figuring that it would help migrate users from the PS2 to the PS3.  Of course, it did not happen in the manner that Sony thought it would.  Expensive hardware and competition with its previous generation console, hurt sales of the PS3.  Also, there was a growing populace of people that were buying the PS3 for the first time, and were not even aware of the ability to play PS2 games.  Even people like our own Fourhman, have looked at backwards compatibility as something that is nice, but little used.  So, Sony changed up strategy, and started to cut support for backwards compatibility.  First by going to emulation, and then, just ditching it alltogether.

So why would these companies drop support for backwards compatibility after including it in one way or another in this current generation.  Well, I think it largely has to do with the financial issue of supporting the back catalog, in regards to the return on that expense.  Microsoft had to spend a chunk of money every time to make those older games work with the 360.  And the emulation for good titles tended to be spotty at best.  Microsoft also dropped support for their older platform right off the bat.  You could not find a copy of an Xbox title after the start of 2006.  The platform was dead.  The incentive was greater for Microsoft to have you focusing on 360 titles, not titles from an aging platform.  Sony, the innovator in backwards compatiblity took the functionality out within a year or so of being on the market.  To them, they were not getting the return that they thought they would get from the inclusion of backwards compatibility support.  It was an added expense that was not paying for itself like it did with the PS2.  If Sony felt there was no reason to keep it, they obviously feel that the practice is not necessary.  It stands out even more so, when you realize that there are still quality games on the PS2 coming out, like Persona 4, but new PS3 owners will miss out of those titles, because of the lack of support.

Now I have heard the arguement that backwards compatibility is a must, and that companies would kill their support base if they did not add the functionality the next time around.  But you have to look at when the next generation will come about, and that timeframe looks like 2011.  That means we will have gone four to five years without seeing a meaningful version of backwards compatibility on either a Sony or Microsoft console.  People will have learned to do without backwards compatibility over that time.  Even I was a huge proponent of wanting a 99.9% backwards compatibility unit, but I have given up on that, because I see myself less and less, going back to my old games.  I can’t remember a time when I have gone back to play an Xbox game.

Also, a new form of revenue has started up for Sony and Microsoft, and that comes from selling previous generation games as downloadable items.  Microsoft has their Xbox Originals program where they have slowly started to release a chunk of content, at prices that cost more than buying a used copy of the game.  And they are making money off of it, as the program is growing, with more titles showing up each month.  Sony has done the same, but not on as big a scale.  They are releasing more PS1 games on their marketplace.  In Japan, they have release over 100 PS1 titles on the PS3.  Both companies could keep up this practice on the new platform, as hard drive space would be cheap.  I could see new consoles shipping with 1 to 1.5TB drives, giving an ample amount of room.  It also gives Microsoft and Sony a way to sell you a copy of a game you already bought again.  Hey, it worked for the record companies and the movie industry.  Buy it once on record, then again on tape, and then once more on CD, and if that wasn’t enough one more time digitally.

There are some roadblocks to all of this process.  The biggest would be bandwidth.  Original Xbox games are at the most 1 to 1.2 GBs.  Big, but managable downloads.  An Xbox game would be at least 4-5GB to start with and could go as high as 32GB if you look at a game like Lost Odyssey where it uses four DVD’s for the game.  Also, you have a fair amount of providers starting to cap their users downloads.  Too much data ends up costing the end user money, which would not go over well with the gamer if they had to pay an extra charge just to download their favorite title again.  The rural areas that might not have access to a broadband type of connection thereby stopping the ability to purchase the game again.  The huge library of games on both platforms could also fill up a huge drive after some time, forcing players to choose what games they keep installed vs. dropping for play another day.

I hope that I am wrong, and all the consoles keep supporting their back catalog with the next generation.  I for one would hate the idea of buying a game on the marketplace again, or looking at my old collection wondering why I cannot use it on my new console.  I hate that idea, but with console companies cutting costs whenever they can, and their studies showing that it is a feature not used by many that purchase the consoles, it would not suprise me to see the feature missing when the consoles launch.