Loading times are huge for me (I'll replay Bloodborne on the PS5 but not PS4).
But additionally, consider the potential for higher actual speed in games.
Not speed of the hardware - speed of the player's movement.
Most games where you can move really fast are either closed-circuit so the whole thing can be loaded at once (Wipeout) or have rather low graphical fidelity and lots of asset repetition (No Man's Sky).
With very fast data transfer rates, you could have speeds similar to Wipeout while cruising through a high-fidelity massive world that's loading as you're careening forward. "Fast Travel" options could become visual. Imagine Elder Scrolls VI with a teleporter that auto-flies you at breakneck speeds from the origin spot to the destination (with clipping), or a post-apocalyptic wasteland that you can Wipeout-fly down the battered highways. Those are simple "neat feature" examples, but now consider that new games can be designed around those assumptions (if they're willing to be PS5 exclusive).
We won't see this everywhere because of cross-platform problems, but PS5 exclusives should be able to offer some new takes on gaming (without having to revert to minimal graphical presentation in the process).
Fleur de Alys on
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syndalisGetting ClassyOn the WallRegistered User, Loves Apple Productsregular
Loading times are huge for me (I'll replay Bloodborne on the PS5 but not PS4).
But additionally, consider the potential for higher actual speed in games.
Not speed of the hardware - speed of the player's movement.
Most games where you can move really fast are either closed-circuit so the whole thing can be loaded at once (Wipeout) or have rather low graphical fidelity and lots of asset repetition (No Man's Sky).
With very fast data transfer rates, you could have speeds similar to Wipeout while cruising through a high-fidelity massive world that's loading as you're careening forward. "Fast Travel" options could become visual. Imagine Elder Scrolls VI with a teleporter that auto-flies you at breakneck speeds from the origin spot to the destination (with clipping), or a post-apocalyptic wasteland that you can Wipeout-fly down the battered highways. Those are simple "neat feature" examples, but now consider that new games can be designed around those assumptions (if they're willing to be PS5 exclusive).
We won't see this everywhere because of cross-platform problems, but PS5 exclusives should be able to offer some new takes on gaming (without having to revert to minimal graphical presentation in the process).
I mean... we are talking about 2.4GB/s as the floor for consoles this generation, with Sony pushing over 5.
With these machines only operating with 16 gigs of ram, I feel like the use case you are describing will be more than achievable on both systems, and I agree it is exciting as fuck.
SW-4158-3990-6116
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
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syndalisGetting ClassyOn the WallRegistered User, Loves Apple Productsregular
Like, Imagine Forza and Gran Turismo if they can go 100% all out on the environments, not just the cars. HDR, Ray Tracing, and ultra high quality textures, all streaming in real time off the SSD as you barrel down the road at ludicrous speed.
SW-4158-3990-6116
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
Boy I don’t understand all of this negativity about faster load times. I play Destiny 2 on PC (where I have a pretty slow SATA SSD) and on PS4 Pro, and the load times are shockingly bad on the console. It’s crazy how much that makes me happier when I’m back on PC.
I play Destiny 2 on Xbox One X, and bought an external ssd just for Destiny, and it almost halved the load times.
So yes, I’m really looking forward to another speed boost.
Plus RPGs, like Pillars of Eternity 2, with lots of level transitions every time you fast travel or go into a tiny fucking one-person shack which for some reason requires ANOTHER BLOODY LEVEL TRANSITION.
I swear, I almost gave up on PoE2, the loads times got so bad at the end.
Also nicer graphics, and such.
I’m waiting for some developer interviews now the specs are released, and would like to know what their thoughts are regarding the new specs they’ll have to work with.
Some games run worse on PS4 than Xbox One for whatever reason until they're patched--look at Borderlands 3, Control, or Red Dead Redemption 2. Despite it being the more popular platform. Given what we know about the Playstation 5's GPU and the Xbox Series X's GPU, I'm rather dubious about "lower quality textures", and it sounds like the reverse is more likely.
Sony's SSD is fast enough they can be loading textures mid-scene. Like not for the next area, like for use in that very scene. Cerny mentioned around a 1 second buffer. That's the kind of revolutionary stuff devs might drool over. They have the same overall memory and Sony's is fully unified, so they should have the advantage here. Of course they are probably rendering at lower resolution on PS5 so that could be a moot advantage, but...
So - does this mean you could have a first person game, but also a rogue-like game, generating the map as you go ?
Not just small dungeons, like most rogue-likes, but huge, sprawling levels like an Elder Scrolls Game ?
Let's be honest, we haven't really gotten a widespread revolution in gaming hardware since the online era of the 360/PS3/Wii. And even then, the oXbox did that first (if not hugely popularized). Since then we haven't really gotten any games that haven't been possible before (Wii/VR/Kinect/other accessory weirdness aside), and graphical improvement has been increasingly less noticeable compared to previous generational leaps. Yes, there's still infinite room for improvement. Just like there's an infinite number of possible hues between very very very very very very light blue and very very very very very very very light blue.
That said shorter load times will be nice.
We have the original Xbox to credit/blame for the notion that internal storage (and an internal modem, though the Dreamcast and other systems already had online infrastructure going back well into the 1990s) should be mandatory across all hardware. This helped somewhat with loading times (compared to on the PS2, where they were getting exceedingly long, but that has more to do with Sony cheaping out on optical drives than anything clever feature on the Xbox). Popularizing dual-layer DVDs alongside the PS2, as oppose to the substantially smaller optical storage on the Gamecube, helped--the Xbox sold better than the Gamecube, to everyone's surprise, and all consoles used full-sized dual-layer optical media going forward. Sony's adoption of bluray as the new optical storage, and the move towards mandatory installations, allowed games to grow exponentially bigger....and, inevitably, have longer load times.
So, you can see a pattern here. I say this as someone who is happy games are not constrained by storage as they were during the period where ROM cartridges and optical media were in earnest competition (and which the original Playstation won). But it's very obviously lead to longer load times in games--but I'm not really bothered by long load times as other people. I like them being shorter, which is why I bought a 1 TB SSD for my XB1X, but I'm not for everything else suffering for the shortest possible load times.
Some games run worse on PS4 than Xbox One for whatever reason until they're patched--look at Borderlands 3, Control, or Red Dead Redemption 2. Despite it being the more popular platform. Given what we know about the Playstation 5's GPU and the Xbox Series X's GPU, I'm rather dubious about "lower quality textures", and it sounds like the reverse is more likely.
Sony's SSD is fast enough they can be loading textures mid-scene. Like not for the next area, like for use in that very scene. Cerny mentioned around a 1 second buffer. That's the kind of revolutionary stuff devs might drool over. They have the same overall memory and Sony's is fully unified, so they should have the advantage here. Of course they are probably rendering at lower resolution on PS5 so that could be a moot advantage, but...
So - does this mean you could have a first person game, but also a rogue-like game, generating the map as you go ?
Not just small dungeons, like most rogue-likes, but huge, sprawling levels like an Elder Scrolls Game ?
No Man's Sky literally does this. It uses pre-generated random seeds so that the auto-generated stuff is the same every time you go to a particular spot.
Fleur de Alys on
Triptycho: A card-and-dice tabletop indie RPG currently in development and playtesting
Some games run worse on PS4 than Xbox One for whatever reason until they're patched--look at Borderlands 3, Control, or Red Dead Redemption 2. Despite it being the more popular platform. Given what we know about the Playstation 5's GPU and the Xbox Series X's GPU, I'm rather dubious about "lower quality textures", and it sounds like the reverse is more likely.
Sony's SSD is fast enough they can be loading textures mid-scene. Like not for the next area, like for use in that very scene. Cerny mentioned around a 1 second buffer. That's the kind of revolutionary stuff devs might drool over. They have the same overall memory and Sony's is fully unified, so they should have the advantage here. Of course they are probably rendering at lower resolution on PS5 so that could be a moot advantage, but...
So - does this mean you could have a first person game, but also a rogue-like game, generating the map as you go ?
Not just small dungeons, like most rogue-likes, but huge, sprawling levels like an Elder Scrolls Game ?
No Man's Sky literally does this. It uses pre-generated random seeds so that the auto-generated stuff is the same every time you go to a particular spot.
So do Elite Dangerous and Space Engine I believe. The later isn't on consoles, but it's been around for years.
Interesting. This sounds like IP issues aren't a concern, it's just technical hurdles in getting the BC to play nice across the systems. Which is obviously good news, as I was concerned we'd see a fresh round of publishers pulling BC coverage so they could try and overcharge for their own shitty rereleases.
Interesting. This sounds like IP issues aren't a concern, it's just technical hurdles in getting the BC to play nice across the systems. Which is obviously good news, as I was concerned we'd see a fresh round of publishers pulling BC coverage so they could try and overcharge for their own shitty rereleases.
I imagine contracts are a lot smarter on average than they were in the PSX days where you could lose rights to the bloody music in your game.
Yeah, it sounds like they'll personally make sure the big flagship games are compatible if they need tweaking, but everything else is in a state of "you're on your own, we can't really guarantee anything but it should be fine". I remember a long long time ago, I tried to play Halo 2 on a 360, and while it did work, there were ghosting issues with the graphics every so often.
"The sausage of Green Earth explodes with flavor like the cannon of culinary delight."
Yeah, it sounds like they'll personally make sure the big flagship games are compatible if they need tweaking, but everything else is in a state of "you're on your own, we can't really guarantee anything but it should be fine". I remember a long long time ago, I tried to play Halo 2 on a 360, and while it did work, there were ghosting issues with the graphics every so often.
Based on Cerny's presentation, the PS5 has the innate capability of running in PS4 & PS4Pro Legacy Modes, which presumably means the full catalog just works as they would when played on a PS4 (or Pro). What confused the messaging was that Cerny was trying to explain how BC could take advantage of playback in the PS5 "native" mode, which could result in any number of things going awry due to being "boosted"; as this clarification indicates, the hope is that every game can be "boosted", but that such an outcome could demand additional developer intervention to produce & thus requires prioritized testing to identify key titles for guaranteed "this shit gets even better on PS5".
It's such a bummer. a) They're still selling those games digitally and b) it's such a great back catalog of games.
Yeah, I always figured they wouldn't bother giving off-the-disc BC for PS1 or 2. But that stuff is mostly available as download titles using software emulation on the more recent Playstations, and IIRC Sony has an integrated multi-platform account system, so they should be available to anyone who has already purchased them that way.
PS3 was always kind of a pipedream, as I understood it. I just remember reading about all the issues companies had with multiplatform titles because of its unique architecture, and hearing of the difficulties the emulation community has had (not that I support such things). Our best bet is probably going to be having to buy ports of those, and I don't think you'll see anything other than major 1st party titles, and stuff that was also released for XBox 360 or PC (since it might well be easier to just port that version, although it likely means losing any PS3-exclusive features).
I mean, we would love access to PS1-PS3 games, but they probably wouldn't sell nearly well enough to justify the legwork. The vast majority of the audience has likely moved on.
I mean, we would love access to PS1-PS3 games, but they probably wouldn't sell nearly well enough to justify the legwork. The vast majority of the audience has likely moved on.
I feel like with Ps3 games there's a missed opportunity there. A large portion of the audience demonstrably went from 360 to Ps4. I'd like to play the Ps3 Infamous games and the Ratchet & Clank games and that one weird God of War they made. Stuff like that.
Well, its not like they have to do much work for PS1, they can just copy the open source emulator they used for the PS Classic...
I do think that's what gets peoples goats when manufacturers talk about how BC isn't possible; that emulators exists where all these games can be played digitally, with little consideration of hardware.
I don't know about PS3, but software PS2 emulators exist.
It's such a bummer. a) They're still selling those games digitally and b) it's such a great back catalog of games.
Yeah, I always figured they wouldn't bother giving off-the-disc BC for PS1 or 2. But that stuff is mostly available as download titles using software emulation on the more recent Playstations, and IIRC Sony has an integrated multi-platform account system, so they should be available to anyone who has already purchased them that way.
PS3 was always kind of a pipedream, as I understood it. I just remember reading about all the issues companies had with multiplatform titles because of its unique architecture, and hearing of the difficulties the emulation community has had (not that I support such things). Our best bet is probably going to be having to buy ports of those, and I don't think you'll see anything other than major 1st party titles, and stuff that was also released for XBox 360 or PC (since it might well be easier to just port that version, although it likely means losing any PS3-exclusive features).
Actually, in recent years, PS3 emulation has made incredible strides. The comparability list of games running perfectly is up to nearly 55% of everything tested and will only get better with time. An achievement for how crazy the PS3's architecture was.
BRIAN BLESSEDMaybe you aren't SPEAKING LOUDLY ENOUGHHHRegistered Userregular
I mean, with the power of the greater internet community anything is possible when people put their mind to it, but I assume Sony simply doesn't hold the resources to have as dedicated a backwards compatibility team like Microsoft does to develop an in-house emulator for Cell architecture (but if they did they probably would)
Well, its not like they have to do much work for PS1, they can just copy the open source emulator they used for the PS Classic...
I do think that's what gets peoples goats when manufacturers talk about how BC isn't possible; that emulators exists where all these games can be played digitally, with little consideration of hardware.
I don't know about PS3, but software PS2 emulators exist.
Didn't Sony's abysmal ps-mini even use one of these emulators?
I haven’t put more than five seconds-worth or thought into this beyond the initial question, so maybe the answer is obvious, but ... which would be a better solution: BC within the system, or streaming of the back catalogue as a service? I don’t give a shit about the e-peen masturbatory “your machine can’t even play those old games?!” nonsense that would come from some quarters of the Internet. If I had access to the entire library, for a small fee, I would use it once in a while, probably.
But then again, I just got an Xbox One X specifically for my wife to play L4D2 on. All we’ve played so far is State of Decay 2, Ori and the Blind Forest, and now I’m checking out Vampyr before it leaves Game Pass. The only BC aspect I truly care about is having my Rock Band library on here (still need to get that all sorted out).
As a collector I'd absolutely love "put the original disc in" style BC. I already own all these games and unless they're Final Fantasy 7 I don't really want to buy them all again.
But...
a) I still have the original hardware
b) I know I'm in the minority and most people DON'T still own all their old games
c) There's no extra money for Sony in doing it that way
d) It's not that much of a selling feature for "the casuals" aside from PS4 BC (because who wants to play old games with ugly graphics, ew)
I still think it would be trivial to do PS1 and even PS2 emulation in software, but I don't expect Sony to do that.
I strongly doubt you want to be playing Rock Band streamed of all things. But unless you are running native hardware it doesn't solve the software problem. If you are running old games on a CPU server rack or bunch of PS5 blades sony still needs to make the emulation software. The only edge PSNOW has is running PS3 games on actual PS3 blades. And I guess they can also run PS1/2 off PS3 backcompat if they want to be lazy.
rahkeesh2000 on
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BRIAN BLESSEDMaybe you aren't SPEAKING LOUDLY ENOUGHHHRegistered Userregular
Backwards Compatibility would also give PlayStation Plus the potential to offer a much larger catalogue of games like XBLG does
If the games are good enough (and I'm sure at least some of them were), their age shouldn't diminish their value proposition
Backwards Compatibility would also give PlayStation Plus the potential to offer a much larger catalogue of games like XBLG does
If the games are good enough (and I'm sure at least some of them were), their age shouldn't diminish their value proposition
Producing a digital marketplace full of PS1 + PS2 games is likely a more significant hurdle than producing the means to playback that media, as I imagine there are a variety of licensing and archival woes to navigate, with the cost of doing so prohibitive. Even if we assume a great breadth of those catalogs exist in some form within the realm of emulation, ripped from one source or another, I don't know that Sony (or the respective copyright owners) would want to use those [roms?] to populate their official marketplace.
Backwards Compatibility would also give PlayStation Plus the potential to offer a much larger catalogue of games like XBLG does
If the games are good enough (and I'm sure at least some of them were), their age shouldn't diminish their value proposition
Producing a digital marketplace full of PS1 + PS2 games is likely a more significant hurdle than producing the means to playback that media, as I imagine there are a variety of licensing and archival woes to navigate, with the cost of doing so prohibitive. Even if we assume a great breadth of those catalogs exist in some form within the realm of emulation, ripped from one source or another, I don't know that Sony (or the respective copyright owners) would want to use those [roms?] to populate their official marketplace.
They... already have the digital marketplace of PS1 games.
Also, not sure if everyone knows, but you can play physical PS1 discs on even non-PS2-BC PS3s.
Backwards Compatibility would also give PlayStation Plus the potential to offer a much larger catalogue of games like XBLG does
If the games are good enough (and I'm sure at least some of them were), their age shouldn't diminish their value proposition
Producing a digital marketplace full of PS1 + PS2 games is likely a more significant hurdle than producing the means to playback that media, as I imagine there are a variety of licensing and archival woes to navigate, with the cost of doing so prohibitive. Even if we assume a great breadth of those catalogs exist in some form within the realm of emulation, ripped from one source or another, I don't know that Sony (or the respective copyright owners) would want to use those [roms?] to populate their official marketplace.
They... already have the digital marketplace of PS1 games.
Also, not sure if everyone knows, but you can play physical PS1 discs on even non-PS2-BC PS3s.
Something beyond the curated collection of titles found on PSN for PS3? A quick glance shows 211 PS1 games and 98 PS2 games. I'm under the impression that's a very small portion of the overall "legacy" catalog, but maybe that's all anyone cares about?
Backwards Compatibility would also give PlayStation Plus the potential to offer a much larger catalogue of games like XBLG does
If the games are good enough (and I'm sure at least some of them were), their age shouldn't diminish their value proposition
Producing a digital marketplace full of PS1 + PS2 games is likely a more significant hurdle than producing the means to playback that media, as I imagine there are a variety of licensing and archival woes to navigate, with the cost of doing so prohibitive. Even if we assume a great breadth of those catalogs exist in some form within the realm of emulation, ripped from one source or another, I don't know that Sony (or the respective copyright owners) would want to use those [roms?] to populate their official marketplace.
They... already have the digital marketplace of PS1 games.
Also, not sure if everyone knows, but you can play physical PS1 discs on even non-PS2-BC PS3s.
Something beyond the curated collection of titles found on PSN for PS3? A quick glance shows 211 PS1 games and 98 PS2 games. I'm under the impression that's a very small portion of the overall "legacy" catalog, but maybe that's all anyone cares about?
Sadly, the Japanese PSN has an absurd number of PS1 games released compared to the other PSNs, even on games that got English releases.
Like, Square Enix has basically their entire PS1 library available digitally in Japanese but only a curated list for English audiences for some crazy reason.
BRIAN BLESSEDMaybe you aren't SPEAKING LOUDLY ENOUGHHHRegistered Userregular
edited March 2020
That said, given Square Enix only just started releasing their legacy Final Fantasy games on non-Sony platforms like... last year, I'm assuming it's holdover from whatever esoteric and arcane contracts they signed way back in the day
As a collector I'd absolutely love "put the original disc in" style BC. I already own all these games and unless they're Final Fantasy 7 I don't really want to buy them all again.
But...
a) I still have the original hardware
b) I know I'm in the minority and most people DON'T still own all their old games
c) There's no extra money for Sony in doing it that way
d) It's not that much of a selling feature for "the casuals" aside from PS4 BC (because who wants to play old games with ugly graphics, ew)
I still think it would be trivial to do PS1 and even PS2 emulation in software, but I don't expect Sony to do that.
For people wondering, the way this is done on Xbox One (and Xbox Series X, in all likelihood) is that your original Xbox games (and your Xbox 360) games act as physical licenses--the console doesn't use the actual data, even though you couldn't really describe the games as "100% different", it's not considered practical to copy all the data from the disc, then patch it into usable software.
(That is what happens to Xbox One games--if you put a disc in to install, the game will simultaneously install from disc and download patches, even if the patch is comparable in size to the game at this point.)
I assume this would be how the Playstation 5 would work...for PS3 and PS4. In all fairness, I'm fairly certain a PS4 can't even read a PS1 disc to the point of even being able to identify what it is, much less salvage any usable data from it, the way Bleem! style PS1-emulation has worked on x86 systems. The Xbox One can do that much with original Xbox discs, but maybe not much else, because it can read dual-layer DVDs in general.
It's such a bummer. a) They're still selling those games digitally and b) it's such a great back catalog of games.
I'm willing to bet PS1 and PS2 games are easy to emulate on considering it's based on Ryzen x86 architecture. PS3, would be the biggest issue as far as emulation. PS4 would be straight up compatible considering it's x86 as well. Unless you're Bethesda of course and you still rely on clock/fps lock tricks as a foundation for your physics model :P
I would throw my money at them if they would go all in on Backwards compatibility, or as close to all in as possible.
victor_c26 on
It's been so long since I've posted here, I've removed my signature since most of what I had here were broken links. Shows over, you can carry on to the next post.
I'd want direct BC of older games and/or a download library of them, rather than streaming. My internet just isn't up to constant streaming; I've tried it and the lag is ridiculous for anything that needs reactions, and I think that's true for a fairly large chunk of their user base.
Nobody remembers the singer. The song remains.
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Zavianuniversal peace sounds better than forever warRegistered Userregular
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But additionally, consider the potential for higher actual speed in games.
Not speed of the hardware - speed of the player's movement.
Most games where you can move really fast are either closed-circuit so the whole thing can be loaded at once (Wipeout) or have rather low graphical fidelity and lots of asset repetition (No Man's Sky).
With very fast data transfer rates, you could have speeds similar to Wipeout while cruising through a high-fidelity massive world that's loading as you're careening forward. "Fast Travel" options could become visual. Imagine Elder Scrolls VI with a teleporter that auto-flies you at breakneck speeds from the origin spot to the destination (with clipping), or a post-apocalyptic wasteland that you can Wipeout-fly down the battered highways. Those are simple "neat feature" examples, but now consider that new games can be designed around those assumptions (if they're willing to be PS5 exclusive).
We won't see this everywhere because of cross-platform problems, but PS5 exclusives should be able to offer some new takes on gaming (without having to revert to minimal graphical presentation in the process).
I mean... we are talking about 2.4GB/s as the floor for consoles this generation, with Sony pushing over 5.
With these machines only operating with 16 gigs of ram, I feel like the use case you are describing will be more than achievable on both systems, and I agree it is exciting as fuck.
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
I play Destiny 2 on Xbox One X, and bought an external ssd just for Destiny, and it almost halved the load times.
So yes, I’m really looking forward to another speed boost.
Plus RPGs, like Pillars of Eternity 2, with lots of level transitions every time you fast travel or go into a tiny fucking one-person shack which for some reason requires ANOTHER BLOODY LEVEL TRANSITION.
I swear, I almost gave up on PoE2, the loads times got so bad at the end.
Also nicer graphics, and such.
I’m waiting for some developer interviews now the specs are released, and would like to know what their thoughts are regarding the new specs they’ll have to work with.
So - does this mean you could have a first person game, but also a rogue-like game, generating the map as you go ?
Not just small dungeons, like most rogue-likes, but huge, sprawling levels like an Elder Scrolls Game ?
We have the original Xbox to credit/blame for the notion that internal storage (and an internal modem, though the Dreamcast and other systems already had online infrastructure going back well into the 1990s) should be mandatory across all hardware. This helped somewhat with loading times (compared to on the PS2, where they were getting exceedingly long, but that has more to do with Sony cheaping out on optical drives than anything clever feature on the Xbox). Popularizing dual-layer DVDs alongside the PS2, as oppose to the substantially smaller optical storage on the Gamecube, helped--the Xbox sold better than the Gamecube, to everyone's surprise, and all consoles used full-sized dual-layer optical media going forward. Sony's adoption of bluray as the new optical storage, and the move towards mandatory installations, allowed games to grow exponentially bigger....and, inevitably, have longer load times.
So, you can see a pattern here. I say this as someone who is happy games are not constrained by storage as they were during the period where ROM cartridges and optical media were in earnest competition (and which the original Playstation won). But it's very obviously lead to longer load times in games--but I'm not really bothered by long load times as other people. I like them being shorter, which is why I bought a 1 TB SSD for my XB1X, but I'm not for everything else suffering for the shortest possible load times.
So do Elite Dangerous and Space Engine I believe. The later isn't on consoles, but it's been around for years.
Interesting. This sounds like IP issues aren't a concern, it's just technical hurdles in getting the BC to play nice across the systems. Which is obviously good news, as I was concerned we'd see a fresh round of publishers pulling BC coverage so they could try and overcharge for their own shitty rereleases.
// Switch: SW-5306-0651-6424 //
I imagine contracts are a lot smarter on average than they were in the PSX days where you could lose rights to the bloody music in your game.
Based on Cerny's presentation, the PS5 has the innate capability of running in PS4 & PS4Pro Legacy Modes, which presumably means the full catalog just works as they would when played on a PS4 (or Pro). What confused the messaging was that Cerny was trying to explain how BC could take advantage of playback in the PS5 "native" mode, which could result in any number of things going awry due to being "boosted"; as this clarification indicates, the hope is that every game can be "boosted", but that such an outcome could demand additional developer intervention to produce & thus requires prioritized testing to identify key titles for guaranteed "this shit gets even better on PS5".
It's such a bummer. a) They're still selling those games digitally and b) it's such a great back catalog of games.
Yeah, I always figured they wouldn't bother giving off-the-disc BC for PS1 or 2. But that stuff is mostly available as download titles using software emulation on the more recent Playstations, and IIRC Sony has an integrated multi-platform account system, so they should be available to anyone who has already purchased them that way.
PS3 was always kind of a pipedream, as I understood it. I just remember reading about all the issues companies had with multiplatform titles because of its unique architecture, and hearing of the difficulties the emulation community has had (not that I support such things). Our best bet is probably going to be having to buy ports of those, and I don't think you'll see anything other than major 1st party titles, and stuff that was also released for XBox 360 or PC (since it might well be easier to just port that version, although it likely means losing any PS3-exclusive features).
I feel like with Ps3 games there's a missed opportunity there. A large portion of the audience demonstrably went from 360 to Ps4. I'd like to play the Ps3 Infamous games and the Ratchet & Clank games and that one weird God of War they made. Stuff like that.
I do think that's what gets peoples goats when manufacturers talk about how BC isn't possible; that emulators exists where all these games can be played digitally, with little consideration of hardware.
I don't know about PS3, but software PS2 emulators exist.
Actually, in recent years, PS3 emulation has made incredible strides. The comparability list of games running perfectly is up to nearly 55% of everything tested and will only get better with time. An achievement for how crazy the PS3's architecture was.
// Switch: SW-5306-0651-6424 //
Didn't Sony's abysmal ps-mini even use one of these emulators?
But then again, I just got an Xbox One X specifically for my wife to play L4D2 on. All we’ve played so far is State of Decay 2, Ori and the Blind Forest, and now I’m checking out Vampyr before it leaves Game Pass. The only BC aspect I truly care about is having my Rock Band library on here (still need to get that all sorted out).
Maybe BC isn’t really worth it?
But...
a) I still have the original hardware
b) I know I'm in the minority and most people DON'T still own all their old games
c) There's no extra money for Sony in doing it that way
d) It's not that much of a selling feature for "the casuals" aside from PS4 BC (because who wants to play old games with ugly graphics, ew)
I still think it would be trivial to do PS1 and even PS2 emulation in software, but I don't expect Sony to do that.
Do... Re... Mi... So... Fa.... Do... Re.... Do...
Forget it...
If the games are good enough (and I'm sure at least some of them were), their age shouldn't diminish their value proposition
Producing a digital marketplace full of PS1 + PS2 games is likely a more significant hurdle than producing the means to playback that media, as I imagine there are a variety of licensing and archival woes to navigate, with the cost of doing so prohibitive. Even if we assume a great breadth of those catalogs exist in some form within the realm of emulation, ripped from one source or another, I don't know that Sony (or the respective copyright owners) would want to use those [roms?] to populate their official marketplace.
They... already have the digital marketplace of PS1 games.
Also, not sure if everyone knows, but you can play physical PS1 discs on even non-PS2-BC PS3s.
// Switch: SW-5306-0651-6424 //
Something beyond the curated collection of titles found on PSN for PS3? A quick glance shows 211 PS1 games and 98 PS2 games. I'm under the impression that's a very small portion of the overall "legacy" catalog, but maybe that's all anyone cares about?
Sadly, the Japanese PSN has an absurd number of PS1 games released compared to the other PSNs, even on games that got English releases.
Like, Square Enix has basically their entire PS1 library available digitally in Japanese but only a curated list for English audiences for some crazy reason.
// Switch: SW-5306-0651-6424 //
For people wondering, the way this is done on Xbox One (and Xbox Series X, in all likelihood) is that your original Xbox games (and your Xbox 360) games act as physical licenses--the console doesn't use the actual data, even though you couldn't really describe the games as "100% different", it's not considered practical to copy all the data from the disc, then patch it into usable software.
(That is what happens to Xbox One games--if you put a disc in to install, the game will simultaneously install from disc and download patches, even if the patch is comparable in size to the game at this point.)
I assume this would be how the Playstation 5 would work...for PS3 and PS4. In all fairness, I'm fairly certain a PS4 can't even read a PS1 disc to the point of even being able to identify what it is, much less salvage any usable data from it, the way Bleem! style PS1-emulation has worked on x86 systems. The Xbox One can do that much with original Xbox discs, but maybe not much else, because it can read dual-layer DVDs in general.
I'm willing to bet PS1 and PS2 games are easy to emulate on considering it's based on Ryzen x86 architecture. PS3, would be the biggest issue as far as emulation. PS4 would be straight up compatible considering it's x86 as well. Unless you're Bethesda of course and you still rely on clock/fps lock tricks as a foundation for your physics model :P
I would throw my money at them if they would go all in on Backwards compatibility, or as close to all in as possible.
The hell is Sony thinking with that ugly ass white shell on their sexy black controllers.
Also hoping for clear crystal, my fav dual shock variant