Xbox One announcement

[Jeeba Jabba]

...and what happens when that older system dies? 360s aren't exactly known for their build quality

Would you be willing to pay an extra $100-$200 for them to stuff the 360 hardware under there? You do realize the One is x86, right?

I'm well aware of the architecture differences, and I really don't understand why that's treated as a legitimate excuse. Finding an effective way to create a product that meets consumer needs is THEIR problem, not mine.

Last year, our cat broke the Wii. (She learned that nuzzling the power button caused warm air to come out the side vent, so she'd turn it on at night while we were asleep and snuggle up to the vent. It wasn't too long before it overheated.) That left us without a way to play our not-insignificant library of Wii games. When the Wii U came out, I was a bit skeptical of its sparse launch lineup, but the fact that it would also replace the Wii was enough to drive our interest. Without that feature, we'd still be waiting for the Wii U library to fill out... and may have considered skipping it altogether.

Conversely: last fall, my launch-model PS3 broke. (Last year was a bad year for things breaking, but that's another story.) As a result, I have a cabinet full of games that I no longer have a way of playing. If the PS4 had maintained compatibility with the earlier PlayStation models, I would have preordered one ASAP and that would take care of it. But as it stands, we have a big cabinet full of PS, PS2, and PS3 games (not to mention the DLC titles purchased on my account). Instead of buying the new system, we went out and got a replacement PS3. But the PS3's product life is gradually coming to an end, and we can't just keep replacing it every few years. The lack of backwards compatibility made the difference between ordering the PS4 and ignoring it.

What if other content industries worked this way? Sure, new technology comes along every now and then which necessitates a format change, but it's nowhere near the frequency of a console generation. Can you imagine having to re-buy all of your music every 3-5 years, just because the players don't last, and each time they come out with a new one, they change formats and drop support for the older format. Video formats have a slightly higher turnover rate, but DVD players will play VideoCDs, and Blu-Ray players will play both of those previous formats as well.

Software is the only medium we treat this way, where sunsetting the actual media is completely acceptable and library building/maintenance is treated as a special case with no solution rather than an obvious and common need.

I think I'm done. I'm not buying any more consoles that don't explicitly address the ability to maintain a library over time.

Your argument should be solely about the terrible build-quality of said systems; not about a transitional standard that was never standard.

[cube_b3]

Damn, Fiddler knows how to drive a point home.

I already agree with him but the way he weaves his experiences in to text is Jaw Dropping.

You should seriously blog your experiences man!

[Specially Cork]

I'm well aware of the architecture differences, and I really don't understand why that's treated as a legitimate excuse. Finding an effective way to create a product that meets consumer needs is THEIR problem, not mine.

They have found a way - abandon the "my current gen console is broken" demographic in pursuit of an easier system to develop for, so they can meet the consumer needs of the larger "I'm excited about next-gen gaming and want new games" market.

Last year, our cat broke the Wii. (She learned that nuzzling the power button caused warm air to come out the side vent, so she'd turn it on at night while we were asleep and snuggle up to the vent. It wasn't too long before it overheated.) That left us without a way to play our not-insignificant library of Wii games. When the Wii U came out, I was a bit skeptical of its sparse launch lineup, but the fact that it would also replace the Wii was enough to drive our interest. Without that feature, we'd still be waiting for the Wii U library to fill out... and may have considered skipping it altogether.

And developers constantly moan about how difficult the Wii U is to develop for and how it lacks the horsepower for even current-gen gaming. Sales are shit, EA have abandoned it, and every analyst out there is waiting around for the others to follow suit. That's a very serious hardware con and is in no way outweighed by Nintendo's ability to meet you specific BC requirements.

To counter your PS4 point: My Wii works just fine so I couldn't give a shit about BC - I'd have a Wii U by now if it had a decent games library but instead I'm ignoring it. They've gained you, but they've lost me - and there's more of me.

What if other content industries worked this way? Sure, new technology comes along every now and then which necessitates a format change, but it's nowhere near the frequency of a console generation. Can you imagine having to re-buy all of your music every 3-5 years, just because the players don't last, and each time they come out with a new one, they change formats and drop support for the older format. Video formats have a slightly higher turnover rate, but DVD players will play VideoCDs, and Blu-Ray players will play both of those previous formats as well.

Discmans don't play casettes, iPods don't play CDs. DVD players don't play VHS. Support for old stuff is always abandoned when it damages the product to leave it in. In designing a good console that people actually interested in next-gen gaming would want to buy - they've had to abandon BC.

But that's your real problem - you've already made it clear you're not interested in next-gen gaming and are quite happy with 2006 standards. I completely disagree, and am happy that your demographic isn't holding technology back.

I think I'm done. I'm not buying any more consoles that don't explicitly address the ability to maintain a library over time.

You just did when you bought a Wii U. I'm going to assume your cat didn't sleep on your Gamecube so you're waiving that requirement.

This is a very exciting time to be a console gamer. I'm genuinely looking forward to what the next 6 years will bring. Forcing yourself to ignore all that because you care more about what the last 6 years brought? Seems ridiculous to me.

[cube_b3]

They have found a way - abandon the "my current gen console is broken" demographic in pursuit of an easier system to develop for, so they can meet the consumer needs of the larger "I'm excited about next-gen gaming and want new games" market.

Larger Market, how?
There are millions of people who already own Naughty Dog classics like Crash trilogy PS1, Jak's trilogy PS2, and Uncharted trilogy PS3.

Many of us may not have even played all the games in the trilogy, and would like to play it when time and/or money allows it and how are we going to do it, if the next gen system isn't compatible with them?

Discmans don't play casettes, iPods don't play CDs. DVD players don't play VHS. Support for old stuff is always abandoned when it damages the product to leave it in. In designing a good console that people actually interested in next-gen gaming would want to buy - they've had to abandon BC.

It isn't like we want the Wii U to have a Nes cartridge slot. A blu-ray player plays VCD's and DVD's. That is almost 30 years of video content that can still be viewed in the latest tech.

The only reason BC is being stopped is so that consumers can be forced into buying a game they already own. Why else would Nintendo remove Gamecube compatibility?

I don't mind Sony putting out PS2 classics remastered for PS3.
But the decision should be ours, and not forced by removing backward compatibility.

[Specially Cork]

The only reason BC is being stopped is so that consumers can be forced into buying a game they already own.

No, they did it to save me $100. My old consoles work just peachy for old games. I have no need to buy them again. I'm not paying a premium for a feature I'll never use just because DMF doesn't discipline his cat has had some hardware reliability issues.

[DaMadFiddler]

What if other content industries worked this way? Sure, new technology comes along every now and then which necessitates a format change, but it's nowhere near the frequency of a console generation. Can you imagine having to re-buy all of your music every 3-5 years, just because the players don't last, and each time they come out with a new one, they change formats and drop support for the older format. Video formats have a slightly higher turnover rate, but DVD players will play VideoCDs, and Blu-Ray players will play both of those previous formats as well.

Discmans don't play casettes, iPods don't play CDs. DVD players don't play VHS. Support for old stuff is always abandoned when it damages the product to leave it in. In designing a good console that people actually interested in next-gen gaming would want to buy - they've had to abandon BC.

But that's your real problem - you've already made it clear you're not interested in next-gen gaming and are quite happy with 2006 standards. I completely disagree, and am happy that your demographic isn't holding technology back.

You misunderstand my point about the next generation, but I'll cover that in a separate reply. First, I want to respond to the issue of media preservation.

The generational change in video games is not analogous to the generational change in other media formats, as I've pointed out.

First, pretty much every media format enjoys DECADES of industry-wide manufacturing, meaning replacement equipment is easily obtainable. Furthermore, equipment to play old formats is still manufactured long after the medium is "dead." Cassette decks are still made, as are turntables. Many turntables even still offer support for 78s, which (aside from a few novelty items) haven't been made in over 50 years. The life cycle of a game console is typically 3-6 years, and the console is only made by one company. That's a lot of dead media once those consoles are no longer available. And, due to their complexity, game consoles tend not to last as long as audio equipment, and are largely unrepairable once they do fail in any significant way. There are still many out there for now, but it is a finite and ever-dwindling supply, and relatively few of those will make it even to the end of our own lives.

Second, game media truly does die with its platform. Another difference between games and other forms of media is the lack of a transfer option. A tape deck may not play records, and an iPod may not play CDs, but it is relatively simple to transfer your records to tape, your tapes to CD, your CDs to your iPod.

Most forms of media--books, music, video, visual art, etc.--are treated as something that should be easily preserved and transferred from generation to generation, because that is how human society works. If the only games that are accessible to the masses are the newest ones, that's a very serious problem. The very thing that makes us different from other animals is the fact that we preserve and build upon our past works, rather than starting from scratch every generation. I'm not saying we shouldn't keep moving forward; I'm just saying that we need to remember how we got here in the first place.

[Jeeba Jabba]

Second, game media truly does die with its platform. Another difference between games and other forms of media is the lack of a transfer option. A tape deck may not play records, and an iPod may not play CDs, but it is relatively simple to transfer your records to tape, your tapes to CD, your CDs to your iPod.

You should check the URL your browser is displaying right now.

[DaMadFiddler]

Second, game media truly does die with its platform. Another difference between games and other forms of media is the lack of a transfer option. A tape deck may not play records, and an iPod may not play CDs, but it is relatively simple to transfer your records to tape, your tapes to CD, your CDs to your iPod.

You should check the URL your browser is displaying right now.

Given how strict current law is about piracy and even copy protection circumvention (enforcement is a separate matter), emulation really isn't a solution unless IP law is radically altered. Aside from that, most newer systems aren't emulated properly, and may never be. There are no useful emulators for the PS3 or 360, and likely won't be any time soon--if ever. Xbox and PS2 emulators are iffy at best, with lots of glitches and limitations, as are Dreamcast and N64. Even something as old as the Saturn doesn't really have a quality emulator. And that's not even getting into the issue of more obscure consoles, where there just isn't the interest to drive extensive preservation (or emulation) efforts.

Emulation *could* be the solution, but in its current state, it's something of a distraction from the topic at hand, except where said emulators (a) do not require original console firmware/BIOS dumps and (b) can play the original console's media (e.g., CD- and DVD-based systems). Very few emulators meet both of these criteria. Art preservation is a serious problem, and when the only solution is illegal and actively prosecuted, that's no solution at all.

[|darc|]

EDIT: DMF beat me to it, but I already wrote this post out, so...

Second, game media truly does die with its platform. Another difference between games and other forms of media is the lack of a transfer option. A tape deck may not play records, and an iPod may not play CDs, but it is relatively simple to transfer your records to tape, your tapes to CD, your CDs to your iPod.

You should check the URL your browser is displaying right now.

Don't be a dick. While emulation may be all good and well for older consoles, increasingly draconian DRM is making this much more difficult and illegal to implement in the near future, not to mention that today's console experiences are increasingly hardware+online services, so someone needs to reverse engineer and rewrite the server side of things from scratch which puts them at much legal risk.

While DMF's reasoning is a bit silly ("my cat broke my Wii therefore Nintendo owes me Wii functionality in their next console"), and providing backwards compatibility won't necessarily solve all of the problems I've raised, it's certainly a good start.

Keep in mind that this November will be the 15th anniversary of the Dreamcast's launch in Japan, and the Dreamcast emulators we have for PC, while playable, are far from accurate and are absolutely no substitute for a real Dreamcast by any stretch of the imagination. We're talking about a well documented and DRM-less console with a pretty sizable following within the hardcore gamer crowd that would be emulating. Also in November we will be 8 years removed from the Xbox 360 launch, with zero emulators in existence for a console that was much, much more successful than the DC, and still relevant today... but has a more complex architecture. At this rate we may not see an Xbox 360 emulator worthy of replacing the actual hardware until 2030+. And one cycle-accurate may never happen especially considering we don't have any decent cycle-accurate emulators for most 90s consoles and the ones we do have don't run very fast.

Not to mention that emulator development will always be limited to hobbyists considering the legal implications. Look at what happened to bleem!, and they didn't have anywhere near as serious reverse engineering/DRM issues then as we do now.

[Specially Cork]

that's a very serious problem.

How so? It might be an inconvenience that in three decades time the only way to play Uncharted is by dusting off an old PS3 (although I honestly don't think that will be the case), but I don't see how it's a "very serious problem".

[|darc|]

that's a very serious problem.

How so? It might be an inconvenience that in three decades time the only way to play Uncharted is by dusting off an old PS3 (although I honestly don't think that will be the case), but I don't see how it's a "very serious problem".

That's a serious problem if you want to preserve games as we do for books, films, and records.

[cube_b3]

Preservation of the Physical Medium is a problem however I don't think the actual software would be lost.

[melancholy]

that's a very serious problem.

How so? It might be an inconvenience that in three decades time the only way to play Uncharted is by dusting off an old PS3 (although I honestly don't think that will be the case), but I don't see how it's a "very serious problem".

That's a serious problem if you want to preserve games as we do for books, films, and records.

I would see the more serious problem of preserving the 360/PS3 era of games is the new business practice of shipping half a game and locking the rest behind DLC. Try playing a game like Asura's Wrath or 007 Legends 10 years from now and not being able to beat the game because the ending is a DLC that doesn't exist anymore.

You want to talk about the problems of game preservation in the future, just wait until this new generation of game consoles come out. Lack of backwards compatibility is far less concerning to me.

[Specially Cork]

that's a very serious problem.

How so? It might be an inconvenience that in three decades time the only way to play Uncharted is by dusting off an old PS3 (although I honestly don't think that will be the case), but I don't see how it's a "very serious problem".

That's a serious problem if you want to preserve games as we do for books, films, and records.

Not really? I mean, it's nice that people want to do that sort of thing, and I like playing old games from time to time, but I don't have one of those complexes where I feel my son's first game should be Super Mario Bros before I let him work his way up through the generations or something. And I'm certainly not cut up about a lack of BC because the people of the 22nd century might never get the chance to play as Nathan Drake.

[melancholy]

The other thing about backwards compatibility is that we are coming up on the 8th generations of consoles, but with the exception of the PS2 (and leaving out handhelds), only the 7th generation had BC. And it didn't even last the entire generation. PS3 dropped BC about the 3rd year in, the 360 only supported about half the Xbox library, and the Wii dropped it around 5 years in. So while I agree that BC is super nice, to avoid buying a new system just because it doesn't play older games is silly. We've spent the first 20 years of gaming not expecting it, so why is it a pressing matter now?

[cube_b3]

Up until 4th Gen all consoles were backwards compatible in many cases compatibility extended to rival consoles as well.

With 5th Gen aside from Nintendo the industry moved to compact disks so backward comparability wasn't directly an option. Sega did not make dreamcast backward compatible with Saturn otherwise all there preceding conses were backward compatible.

X-box considered bc with Dreamcast even though it was a new console.

Sony up until PS4 has always had bc, so in conclusion backward comparability has always been around, it just started to stop in 7th gen and looks to be completely stopped this gen with the exception of Wii U, which is offering half assed bc.

[cube_b3]

Up until 4th Gen all consoles were backwards compatible in many cases compatibility extended to rival consoles as well.

With 5th Gen aside from Nintendo the industry moved to compact disks so backward comparability wasn't directly an option. Sega did not make dreamcast backward compatible with Saturn otherwise all there preceding conses were backward compatible.

X-box considered bc with Dreamcast even though it was a new console.

Sony up until PS4 has always had bc, so in conclusion backward comparability has always been around, it just started to stop in 7th gen and looks to be completely stopped this gen with the exception of Wii U, which is offering half assed bc.

[Skynet]

Who the hell considered the Xbox backwards compatible with Dreamcast?

I know you could play Master System on Mega Drive with an adapter, but could you play NES on SNES? Also I don't consider the ability for the SNES to play Gameboy as backwards compatible as they're 2 completely different systems. It was definitely awesome to be able to do it though.

[DaMadFiddler]

Yeah, his statement was a little... inaccurate, at best. His point isn't really the same point I'm trying to make; they just happen to run parallel in some places. I was using the PlayStation as an example of backwards compatibility as it should be: software always, hardware until older accessories are obviously obsolete. (For example, the PS2 supported PS1 controllers and memory cards; the PS3 had an adapter to import data from these memory cards, but ended support for PS1/PS2 accessories because the combination of hard drive and Bluetooth controllers made them obsolete.) The Game Boy line also did this.

My case is not that it's something that HAS always been done by now, but rather that it's something that SHOULD be done.

Subpoint 1: Unlike almost any other form of artistic/entertainment media, video games have NO way of being played back correctly without their original, period-appropriate equipment--which was produced in limited quantities, and has a pretty fixed shelf life. (Components wear out with age and use, and electrolytic capacitors generally only last about 20-30 years before they start straying outside their proper operating specs.) When we get old, we WON'T be able to just "dust off the PS3," because none of those PS3s will work any more. This (a) gives all the expensive games we've bought for these systems a de facto expiration date, and (b) gives us NO way to keep playing any games that are not kept in print. To cite an example I used earlier: 20 years after the fact, Saturn emulation still sucks. Saturns themselves have maybe another 10-15 years left before it starts getting hard to find a working one, and maybe another 10-15 years after that before there ARE no working ones. Once that last Saturn dies, Panzer Dragoon Saga is gone forever. The binary still exists, but the source code was lost, and there is nothing left that will execute that binary correctly. Video games have become a large enough part of modern culture that this holds the potential to do lasting cultural and historical damage.

Subpoint 2. My earlier citing of the PS3 and the Wii U is that the backwards compatibility is part of what roped me in in the first place. Sony made a big deal at the launch of both the PS2 and the PS3 about how all PlayStation games would always work on the new system, so if you bought a game on PS, you would never have to worry about being able to play it. That was a BIG part of the draw for me; they were (without explicitly saying so) making the case for the PS as an ersatz "standard" platform, where you could actually build a library over time and not have to worry about longevity issues. This actually WAS sort of a new thing (since, as I mentioned before, the only other contemporary example of this as a standard feature was in the Game Boy line), and Sony made a big deal of it. Now, with a cabinet full of many hundreds of dollars' worth of PS, PS2, and PS3 games, announcing that the next system will completely cut off that lifeline feels like a betrayal of what we were led to believe we were buying into with the PlayStation brand.

Subpoint 3. DLC. Both add-ons and download-only titles suffer from the issues raised in #1 even worse, because not even the physical copies will remain any more.

[melancholy]

Look, we can argue the point all day, but it all boils down to a choice. Either Sony could move to a better architecture to increase their both their mainstream and indie catalog. Or they could buck the trend and make their system less accessible to developers in order to preserve PS3 functionality, possibly driving up hardware costs in the process. You say BC should be done, but what do you do in a situation where adding BC would hinder the success of the new hardware? The choice is pretty obvious.

I totally agree that BC would be amazing on the new systems. Hell, I'll admit that I specifically sought out a 60GB PS3 just for BC, and will be crazy pissed if it ever dies on me. But I'm not going to argue that Microsoft and Sony should stunt innovation just to make old games playable on new systems.

Now, with a cabinet full of many hundreds of dollars' worth of PS, PS2, and PS3 games, announcing that the next system will completely cut off that lifeline feels like a betrayal of what we were led to believe we were buying into with the PlayStation brand.

Sony 'cut off that lifeline' a mere 5 months after the launch of the PS3 by discontinuing the 60GB model in favor of emulated BC, and completely removed all BC 7 months after that. Your 'betrayal' happened 7 years ago, not with the announcement of the PS4.