As a veteran PlayStation gamer I have pretty much accepted that I will not get backwards compatibility on any PlayStation console I purchase. It really sucks that a huge chunk of the great library of games available through out the PlayStation’s history are no longer playable on your PlayStation console. Some games got “remastered” and sell for at least $40 and others are available through Sony’s PlayStation Now streaming service, Both options requiring you to purchase another copy of the game.
Some older PlayStation games are not available to be played on the new consoles at all.
An exec from Sony seems to have addressed backwards compatibility, giving us a look at what Sony’s official view on the feature. PlayStation Europe’s Jim Ryan talked about backwards compatibility in a new interview
“When we’ve dabbled with backwards compatibility, I can say it is one of those features that is much requested, but not actually used much,”
I guess I can kind of see where he is coming from, Everyone I know, myself included, used backwards compatibility rarely on our launch PS3s. The feature was usually only used when I was feeling nostalgic or when we were having a get together at our place.
“-I was at a Gran Turismo event recently where they had PS1, PS2, PS3 and PS4 games, and the PS1 and the PS2 games, they looked ancient, like why would anybody play this?”- Sony’s Jim Ryan
I don’t even know what to say about that last comment. He seems to have missed the whole point in gamers enjoying older games.
Ryan’s comments are not the first Sony has made about the missing feature. PlayStation’s Shuhei Yoshida said
“Backward compatibility is hard,”
“I won’t say we’ll never do it, but it’s not an easy thing to do. If it was easy we would have done that.”
It again looks like backwards compatibility wont be coming to the PS4 anytime soon.