Comment by wmf
Microsoft maintained backwards compatibility across Intel+Nvidia, IBM+ATI, and AMD+AMD so it's possible. Sony hasn't invested as much in compatibility, instead just keeping the same architecture for PS4/5.
Microsoft maintained backwards compatibility across Intel+Nvidia, IBM+ATI, and AMD+AMD so it's possible. Sony hasn't invested as much in compatibility, instead just keeping the same architecture for PS4/5.
Historically. But not presently.
They could include a software emulator at least for the PS2 (not PS1 because afaik the drive in the PS5 does not read CDs) on the PS5 and let people use old discs, but they don't and instead sell again old games packaged with the emulator in their online store.
True but if you're referring to the fact that you can play Xbox and Xbox 360 games on newer hardware, I believe Microsoft has a team that has to individually patch these games to work for newer hardware.
Sony does something similar I believe with their new Classics Catalogue as part of their most premium PS Plus tier.
Yeah I remember the Xbox 360 being hit and miss with backwards compatibility - their FAQs said that most of the time the people working on it had to just look at the raw assembly of games they were trying to get running to figure out what went wrong.
Most games were not backwards compatible between Xbox and Xbox 360. They had to do work to make game work and prioritized the most popular games, most notably Halo. With that said, there were certain features that did not work properly. There was a Halo 2 map they took out of the online pool because it used a heavy fog effect that would not render on 360.
From 360 to Xbox One there was a similar situation where they would patch individual games to work, but because it was at least partially emulated, publishers had to sign off on allowing their game to be backwards compatible.
Sony has historically invested a lot into backwards compatibility, going as far as shipping the previous gen's GPU and/or CPU with the PS2, initial PS3 models, and the PS Vita.
PS3 compatibility on the PS4 was notably absent, though.