Microsoft’s approach to backwards compatibility is the right one

As someone who’s primarily a PC gamer, the whole concept of backwards compatibility just seems bizarre to me. I have games over 20 years old that will still contently run on a modern PC. Sure, not everything works perfectly. Sometimes you need a tweak or an emulator in the case of DOS titles, but they do work for the most part. When it comes to consoles though, this certainly isn’t the case. Well, for most systems.

I think out of the big three, Microsoft is the only one that has the right idea. The Series X will support games from every Xbox console that came before it. The original, the 360, the One, it doesn’t matter. That’s two decades worth of titles wrapped up in a single platform. Mind you, not everything is supported. Microsoft still has to certify 360 games to work on the Xbox One, but at least the popular ones are there. Which is a lot more than what the competition is offering.

Microsoft doesn’t have to do this. It doesn’t really pay them to do so either. They’re not making money off old games people have lying around, or pick up in thrift shops. Yet it does give the console a significant boost in its value for consumers. A lot of earlier OG Xbox and 360 systems are pushing 15 years or older. Optical and hard drives are starting to fail. So being able to keep playing your favourite classics on new hardware is like a form of insurance, not to mention a lot more convenient. No struggling to find parts for old systems, or fiddling with PC emulators. This is definitely a complete 180 from the anti-used game stance they had at the beginning of this generation. It’s certainly a big win for consumers as well.

Which brings us to Sony. The PlayStation 5 is backwards compatible with the PS4 only. Even then, the company is not guaranteeing that all games will run on the new system. Which makes very little sense to me, as those games are using CPUs with the same instruction sets, and presumably have the same graphics APIs, all be it newer versions. So there’s no technical reason why they shouldn’t work. A least from my layman’s perspective.

Perhaps more disheartening is the lack of support for earlier PlayStation consoles. Notably the PS3, which was being heavily rumoured in the lead up to their next gen announcement.

Third party PC emulators have come a long way, to the point where a lot of these games are playable on hardware comparable to the PS5. That’s with hobbyists having to reverse engineer everything. They don’t have intimate knowledge of the platform like Sony does. Presumably the company is already using emulators for PS Now streaming, given that IBM hasn’t manufactured Cell processors in years. So I’m really struggling to find a technical reason for this as well. Same for the absence of PS1 and PS2 support, which has had mature PC emulation for over a decade now. Then again, you just have to look at the PlayStation Classic for an example of how well Sony handles that.

I’ve been at odds with many of the decisions PlayStation has made over the years; the censorship controversies over Japanese games, the TLOU2 copyright abuse scandal, abandoning Vita owners, breaking compatibility with my damn Nyko Rockband guitar. I was already on the fence about buying a PS5. However, since I have a rather sizable PS3 collection, having support for that platform would have gotten them another purchase from me. Looks like this time I’ll be sitting on the fence a while longer. At least I’ll wait for some better exclusive games to come out.

I get that backwards compatibility is not an issue for most gamers, but I circle back to that value added thing, and Sony has not been adding much value to their platforms lately. Microsoft has. And yes, there’s PS Now, but streaming any game is just not a good experience.

Hopefully Sony comes around and offers a better solution, but Xbox is definitely where it at if you care about playing, and preserving, your old classics.