Hardware Why make a console that is backwards compatible ?

[jalaneme]

why not? lets just don't care about players and sell consoles full of DRM and never care about previous console lines,

also, lets make a remake of every game available to the previous console and sell it as a new title

That is how sony and microsoft works, people still think that it's a hardware restriction, it's not, it all comes down to money, why let us play our previous games on a new system when it's easier to lock it out and recharge us again (hd remasters and remakes and recently the ps now)

Seems to me that it's a bad idea for the Wii U to be backwards compatible with Wii games.
I doubt Xbox1 and PS4 are backwards compatible.
Seems like it ties you to the past, restricting the future.

For nintendo it's a kind of insurance, if there are not enough wii u games to play, they can always fall back on the bc, nintendo were very generous adding wii bc, no other company does that now, when the original wii stops being available people are going to turn to a wii u to play wii games and the added bonus of playing wii u games too, it's good thinking from nintendo.

 

[trumpet-205]

That is how sony and microsoft works, people still think that it's a hardware restriction, it's not, it all comes down to money, why let us play our previous games on a new system when it's easier to lock it out and recharge us again (hd remasters and remakes and recently the ps now)

Nintendo also does remake again and again you know. It all comes down to money. It is much profitable to remake an established title than to develop a new one.

Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft all share one common goal, to maximize profits.

 

[zeello]

PS3/360 controllers are locked out as well...

Keep in mind Xbox One doesn't have a touchpad so there isn't even an excuse.

 

[Guild McCommunist]

The XB1 and PS4 would be backwards compatible if it was more affordable. It really wasn't so they didn't pursue it.

Backwards compatibility is always nice but not necessarily needed. It's a shame that the PS4 isn't backwards compatible because I'd have grabbed one in a heartbeat to replace my PS3 but I understand why they didn't do it and now I'll just wait until the PS4 library stands on its own.

 

[Foxi4]

Sure, it's all a matter of money and not at all about the technical feasibility of things. I mean, a CPU is a CPU, right? Architectural differences are some imginary concept of the big, evil corporations, the XBox One and the PS4 could totally emulate/virtualize previous generation hardware if only Sony and Mcrosoft wanted them to, right? When you wish upon a star, makes no difference who you are...

GBATemp, plz, lrn2technology... ;O;

 

[sion_zaphod]

They may earn more profit by cutting out BC, but that doesn't mean including BC is a good idea for them to begin with. In order to introduce PS2 BC on PS3 with high compatibility, they have to include nearly every components of PS2 (including out of production RDRAM). X360 opt for software emulation all the way and its compatibility is a hit or miss. Can't even get its Halo game playing glitch-free on X360.

I said that sony said the PS3 slim cannot play PS2 games yet now it can through PS2 Classics(Funny that!). The PS3 Fat 60gb and some 80gb were the only PS3's with hardware emulation eg. emotion engine etc. Thanks to clever hacking we are now able to convert PS2 ISO's to PS3 DLC container files. So much for Sony's statement. They just wanted to charge people for all their back catalog.

X360 had BC as well but you needed to install it via xbox live. Halo plays fine but had to convert the ISO to larger DL DVD size.

 

[FAST6191]

As I understand the PS2 classics were various combinations of emulators and ports, both of which take programmer time and effort to make. Sure you might be able to inject some other games into other games (I assume the compatibility was not 100% without a single glitch or missing feature).

Similarly if you make a thing you then get to sell it however the law might allow.

 

[Foxi4]

As I understand the PS2 classics were various combinations of emulators and ports, both of which take programmer time and effort to make. Sure you might be able to inject some other games into other games (I assume the compatibility was not 100% without a single glitch or missing feature).

Similarly if you make a thing you then get to sell it however the law might allow.

PS2 Classics is Sony's equivalent of Nintendo's Virtual Console - emulation and patches indeed. The compatibility is... acceptable, albeit dodgy at times, but at least it allowed for cutting costs.

Of course when Nintendo does it, they get praise for spreading the classics and when anyone else does, they're money-grabbing corporate swine, but that's besides the point.

 

[sion_zaphod]

They are all money grabbing corporate slimes. But Sony are by far the worst. Yes they make good hardware but they treat their customers as remedial.

 

[spinal_cord]

oops.

 

[Jayro]

I always loved playing PS1 games on the PS2, because of the texture smoothing option. It made PS1 games look nice like N64 games, with bilinear filtering via hardware, ridding the pixelated textures. Games like Vagrant Story, Tony Hawk, Final Fantasy 7/8/9, Chrono Cross, and Silent Hill looked significantly better. The PS3 can't even filter the gmes to look as good as the PS2 could. I don't see many emulators that can do it either, to be honest... pSX is damn-near a 1:1 PS1 emulator, so no amping up the graphics with them, sadly. :/

 

[the_randomizer]

I always loved playing PS1 games on the PS2, because of the texture smoothing option. It made PS1 games look nice like N64 games, with bilinear filtering via hardware, ridding the pixelated textures. Games like Vagrant Story, Tony Hawk, Final Fantasy 7/8/9, Chrono Cross, and Silent Hill looked significantly better. The PS3 can't even filter the gmes to look as good as the PS2 could. I don't see many emulators that can do it either, to be honest... pSX is damn-near a 1:1 PS1 emulator, so no amping up the graphics with them, sadly. :/

There is ePSXe and PCSX-R that filter the hell outta those games and look wonderful for 3D games That pSX though....it's inactive unfortunately. Too bad the Wii U can't make Wii games look a little better, they look worse for me.

 

[Jayro]

I agree, there's no reason the Wii U couldn't upscale the games to atleast 720p. Wii U software/OS Developer laziness, me thinks.

 

[the_randomizer]

I agree, there's no reason the Wii U couldn't upscale the games to atleast 720p. Wii U software/OS Developer laziness, me thinks.

Not necessarily 720p, but at least make it look a little cleaner or something. Upscaling to a higher resolution would require more power.

 

[trumpet-205]

Not necessarily 720p, but at least make it look a little cleaner or something. Upscaling to a higher resolution would require more power.

Given how Wii U BC works, which is native execution, I don't think it is possible on software side. Probably what Nintendo should have done is hardware upscaling chip.

Alternative would be to force 480p and let TV do upscaling.

 

[Jayro]

I'm fairly sure the GPU could have upscaled it to 720p just fine, since it can run Wii U games 1080p flawlessly... with power to spare.

 

[trumpet-205]

I'm fairly sure the GPU could have upscaled it to 720p just fine, since it can run Wii U games 1080p flawlessly... with power to spare.

Problem is to ensure games are not broken clock speed on both CPU and GPU are locked down to Wii speed. There is no extra power to spare in vWii mode.

 

[Jayro]

Problem is to ensure games are not broken clock speed on both CPU and GPU are locked down to Wii speed. There is no extra power to spare in vWii mode.

Oh that's right... I forgot about that... But I thought people were trying to hack into all 3 cores for the vWii, is that not possible for legit games to tap into that extra power?

 

[trumpet-205]

Oh that's right... I forgot about that... But I thought people were trying to hack into all 3 cores for the vWii, is that not possible for legit games to tap into that extra power?

Not possible for legit game to use it. it requires program to be recompiled, only useful in homebrew.

Plus it is not just the clock speed, RAM size is locked down too.

 

[Jayro]

Well that's a drag... I was hoping the vWii wouldn't be sandboxed like it is, but rather more integrated like how Sony did theirs with PS1 and PS2, where the PS1 games could be upscaled and filtered. Wii games pulling off 4xAA @720p would be sweeeeeeet.