The current generation of consoles has been a weird ride. Over the past 5 years since they debuted (half a decade?!) we have seen some of the finest games to ever grace the market and some absolute stinkers. We now have consoles that can match (dare we say exceed?) PC’s and there’s little sign of the growth stopping.
This cycle began with a bit of a bump when Sony confirmed that you cannot play older games on their new console and Microsoft said the same. Microsoft were not content to stop there and they went on to host perhaps the most disastrous unveilings of anything, of all time. The huge backlash from the public (honestly, look up the fallout from the 2013 Microsoft E3 panel) saw an almost 180 degree turn and they walked back most of the missteps, the arguably biggest one being; old games will be playable on the Xbox One.
You could say that removing the restrictions on an “always online” connection or the lending of games were bigger but I truly don’t think they are. Most people do now play “always online” and sharing games is nigh impossible as digital downloads can’t be shared (easily). Being able to play my 360 games is what convinced me to stick with Microsoft and I’m glad I did (I later got a PS4 too), though I’m left wondering; how different would the console war had been, if Microsoft hadn’t shot themselves in the foot to start with? It seems Sony took notes too though.
Rumours persist of the next gen launching late this year, I’d still expect it to be next year though, we did get a little nugget of information. Sony have released a patent document which could indicate plans for the next PlayStation to have backwards compatibility.
The patent published by Sony, in Japanese, does show a few diagrams suggesting how the older style graphics could potentially be remastered (essentially re-rendered) into more higher quality automatically. While not necessarily be such an issue for the Ps4 (especially with the Pro already doing the same thing for most Ps4 titles), a number of PS3 games could certainly use a little polish if they were to be played again.
What do you think? Would you like the PS5 to be backwards compatible? I think it’d be great!