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[tinfoilhatman]

Microsoft put together the emulation relatively late in the game, it wasn't planned out very far in advance. And they had to deal with emulating an Nvidia GPU on an ATI GPU. I suspect things may be better implemented this time around.

Yea I don't think the GPU will be the issue,

I'm more concerned about the CPU going from PPC to x86 but I would be ever MORE concerned if we were going from x86 to PPC since the PPC has no OOO processing.

Hopefully they can get the devs a tool to recompile the CPU code to be x86 friendly, allot of "simple" arcade games can just be emulated through brute force and if they were coded in XNA it's almost automatic.

 

[WalkMan]

Sony's backwards compatibility model is not only to emulate the previous generation but to enhance it. Vita for instance you get expanded color-depth and bilinear filtering on PS1 and PSP games. Contrast this with Nintendo's approach of just running a hard emulator embedded in their environment. Not all backwards computability are created equal.

 

[GlamFM]

The cost of coding emulation divided by tens of millions of consoles is nothing. The cost of RAM is tens to hundreds of dollars per console.

PS3 BC was not done with emulation...

 

[Beer Monkey]

PS3 BC was not done with emulation...

Yep, and hopefully PS5 can emulate PS4 due to Sony getting away from funky architectures.

 

[GlamFM]

Yep, and hopefully PS5 can emulate PS4 due to Sony getting away from funky architectures.

We can agree on that. So basically what I'm saying is that if Sony has to put a fucking CELL into every PS4 for BC they should can it.
Money is better spent somewhere else.

 

[Tain]

Hopefully they can get the devs a tool to recompile the CPU code to be x86 friendly, allot of "simple" arcade games can just be emulated through brute force and if they were coded in XNA it's almost automatic.

Very few XBLA games were made in XNA, and most XBLA games are pushing the 360 hardware regardless of how they look.

 

[jim-jam bongs]

Yes it is. Thanks to BC I played a lot of GameCube games I'd have otherwise missed via Wii soft modding and emulation. People saying "new systems are about new games" are just train spotters, if you genuinely love gaming then a new game is any game you haven't already played.

 

[macewank]

I'm surprised by people who disregard BC. What if each music label had their own player, and you could only play exclusive on their player?

And what if you weren't sure you could play that music on the next generation's platform?

This is where we are with consoles. It's really unnerving.

You mean like how I can't play tapes in my cd player?


I don't see the big deal with BC honestly. MS half-ass shoehorned it into the 360 and everything was fine. Sony ripped it out of the PS3 and everything was fine.

If I want to play a PS2 game, I'll stick it in my PS2 and play it

 

[Beer Monkey]

We can agree on that. So basically what I'm saying is that if Sony has to put a fucking CELL into every PS4 for BC they should can it.
Money is better spent somewhere else.

That I reluctantly agree to. Stupid Cell.

 

[tinfoilhatman]

Sony's backwards compatibility model is not only to emulate the previous generation but to enhance it. Vita for instance you get expanded color-depth and bilinear filtering on PS1 and PSP games. Contrast this with Nintendo's approach of just running a hard emulator embedded in their environment. Not all backwards computability are created equal.

So did these "expanded colors" exist in the original code(unlikely) or did developers have to go back and add them after the fact.....it had to have been there to begin with or it's like up-scaling 480p to 1080p there's no real added benefit or detail......it's not magic.

 

[macewank]

PS3 BC was not done with emulation...

This statement is wrong.

The launch 20GB and 60GB SKU's were the only systems that had hardware BC. The 80GB SKU with BC used software emulation.

 

[tinfoilhatman]

Very few XBLA games were made in XNA, and most XBLA games are pushing the 360 hardware regardless of how they look.

There are MANY MANY MANY Arcade games that are incredibly simple adaptation of games from 10+ years ago like Tapper, PacMan that can just be brute forced through traditional software emulation.

 

[jim-jam bongs]

So did these expanded colors exist in the original code or did developers have to add them after the fact, it's not magic it had to have been there to begin with or it's like up-scaling 480p to 1080p there's no real added benefit or detail......it's not magic.

Wrong! If you get added colour depth it affects masking and blending of textures and sprites regardless of the original depth. You get a better result without having to modify the original assets. Also the PS1 couldn't even do bilinear filtering or perspective corrected texture mapping, you can easily enable them at the renderer level and make emulated games look substantially better.

 

[true Gek]

Vita is like heaven! PSOne + PSP + Vita *_*

 

[Tain]

There are MANY MANY MANY Arcade games that are incredibly simple adaptation of games from 10+ years ago like Tapper, PacMan that can just be brute forced through traditional software emulation.

I haven't gone down the list, but I'd be surprised if emulated 80s/90s arcade games account for more than 20% of the XBLA library.

I have a ton of XBLA games, and most of them are just as taxing as any retail title.

 

[tinfoilhatman]

You mean like how I can't play tapes in my cd player?


I don't see the big deal with BC honestly. MS half-ass shoehorned it into the 360 and everything was fine. Sony ripped it out of the PS3 and everything was fine.

If I want to play a PS2 game, I'll stick it in my PS2 and play it

Many of us have 100's of dollars invested in PSN\Arcade games with the expectations(right or wrong) that these would be forward compatible, if they are not I will NEVER be purchasing any digital content from MS or Sony again.

And no I'm not leaving old systems connected(or using up space in a closet somewhere) to my limited HDMI ports and clogging up my entertainment center with old tech, dumbest idea ever I have roomates , friends, girlfriends and family that need to use my entertainment center and don't have and shouldn't need a degree in information technology or home entertainment re-configuration to figure out how to watch the 5 o'clock news.

 

[Felix Lighter]

This statement is wrong.

The launch 20GB and 60GB SKU's were the only systems that had hardware BC. The 80GB SKU with BC used software emulation.

Wasn't PS2 BC on the PS3 always partially hardware emulated? I know that at some point they emulated either the CPU or GPU but some piece of the hardware was still required, which is why it has been removed completely at this point.

 

[tinfoilhatman]

I haven't gone down the list, but I'd be surprised if emulated 80s/90s arcade games account for more than 20% of the XBLA library.

I have a ton of XBLA games, and most of them are just as taxing as any retail title.

Agreed and to my knowledge, sorry when i said many many I guess didn't quantify but there's easily probably a couple hundred arcade games that Durango could brute force emulate purely with software or hybrid GPU emulation with the DirectX.

It MAY BE possible for arcade games to be fully loaded into the 5-8GB of memory and "recompiled"(not accurate terminology but I don't know how else to explain) on the fly in memory with some kind of algorithm to make it Durango friendly and sent to the GPU\CPU for processing.

Yes I realize thats all "far reaching speculation" but hey that's what makes this fun for me

 

[Beer Monkey]

Wasn't PS2 BC on the PS3 always partially hardware emulated? I know that at some point they emulated either the CPU or GPU but some piece of the hardware was still required, which is why it has been removed completely at this point.

The (first) 80GB PS3 dropped the Emotion Engine hardware and emulated it but kept the Graphics Synthesizer.

As a result compatibility got a bit worse but it was still better than 360s emulation of Xbox.

The next revisions dropped the Graphics Synthesizer and PS2 support was eliminated as they apparently have failed at emulating the Graphics Synthesizer on the PS3.

 

[Chrysalis]

Many of us have 100's of dollars invested in PSN\Arcade games with the expectations(right or wrong) that these would be forward compatible, if they are not I will NEVER be purchasing any digital content from MS or Sony again.

This. I've spent hundreds on my PC for sure between Steam and GOG. And regardless of hardware upgrades, those games will continue to work. Why should I settle for less on a console?

 

[macewank]

This. I've spent hundreds on my PC for sure between Steam and GOG. And regardless of hardware upgrades, those games will continue to work. Why should I settle for less on a console?

Because you have to understand the difference between PC gaming and a console gaming.

There are fairly major architectural differences between a console and a PC. Console games typically take advantage of tricks and shortcuts specific to the hardware to allow things to run properly. Because of this, you'd need to figure out a way to allow those same "tricks and shortcuts" to be used on future hardware to allow for BC. You could do that by putting legacy hardware inside the system. There is a cost associated with that, and it will be passed on to the consumer. I don't know the cost of manufacturing a PS3 off the top of my head, but I'd guess it's at least $50-$100. Are you willing to pay that much extra for BC? Most consumers aren't. You could emulate it through software... Ask Microsoft how that went. It's just not really feasible.

PC games don't typically have this issue.. Why? Windows. Windows acts as a baseline and devs don't have to code to hardware. They code to API's. It's a completely different ballgame.


Now.. That said. I would love for Sony to leverage their Gaikai acquisition to allow for some kind of Gaikai/Onlive-esque "streaming" solution to allow for BC.. At least for digital purchases. There has to be a way they can verify licenses that way.

But I won't complain too hard if they don't. I'm ready to play new stuff

 

[IrishNinja]

Ps4 having Ps3 BC would mean having to follow a similar architecture to be able to emulate it...

Do we want that?

realistically, no - id hope for emulation. but if they somehow offered a more expensive/limited legacy model with said bits, yeah, i'd prolly go for it.