Okay, so a lot of people in the past years have gotten their panties in a bunch over backward compatibility and why Nintendo is the only Console Maker who still does it. Today, I would like to provide a solution and go into detail about it. Now, for the most part, I'm going to be discussing Sony as the primary target for this post, since they're the ones who may need this solution the most but what I say here should be applicable to every person, corporation, company, or entity that wants to get into the console wars.
Now, raise your hand if you remember the Launch of the PS3? Keep your hand up if you remember something other than the multiple stabbing incidents. Keep your hand up if one of the things you remember was the $600 launch price. Now, keep your hand up if you know why the PS3's launch price was so high. Of those of you remaining, lower your hand if you think the high price is because of something along the lines of "Greedy company trying to take ma munnie!!"
The majority of you reading this may have found that you dropped your hand at some point in that exercise. Those of you who had your hands up until the last statement was made definitely missed the point. What is the point? Well, that's what this post is about.
You see, back before the release of the PS3, Sony were working on a device that could beat out every other console in overall power output to increase the quality of games that were made for it. In pursuit of that goal, they may a brand new Processor Architecture called Cell. However, they also knew that, like most console generations, the early years would have a drought of games on the system because every generation does. So, they had a special chip for the motherboard manufactured specifically so that anyone who bought a PS3 could play games from the PS2 and PS1 that they more than likely bought years before. This is the reason you might have heard that early iterations of the PS3 were backward compatible, because of that chip.
However, between the Cell Architecture and that chip for backward compatibility, the cost of manufacturing proved to be a lot higher than Sony had anticipated. This was also most likely the reason they rejected the guy who presented motion controls to them in between Microsoft and Nintendo.
Fun Fact: The Wii is only 2x the power of the GameCube and not more because the Motion Controls were so expensive to produce that they couldn't afford any hardware that was stronger.
Another Fun Fact: The Tablet Controller on the Wii U performs that exact same feat of being so expensive to produce that old hardware was required to not make manufacturing too expensive to justify any sales.
Sony received such a backlash following that that they knew they had to sell the console at a lower price. However, what you don't often hear about is that they had to remove some parts from the system to make it lower priced. Why? Well, because if you sell something for a lower cost than it takes to make, you won't receive any profit, that's just bad business sense. And, if there are any parts that you can remove from the system to drastically reduce the cost of manufacturing, that gives you more leeway to lower the price of your device. That's also why most people do not have a Falcon Northwest Mach V Tier Gaming PC. If you want the ultimate in power, just one of those things will cost you no less than 23 thousand dollars, and that's not even factoring in add-ons.
Sure, that power is nice but with an 18-Core Xeon Processor, 256 GB of DDR4 RAM, and three GTX Titan Graphics cards with each one possessing 12 GB of Graphics Memory, that is far more power than you're going to need to run any game you want to play and will be for another 50 years probably. As a result, there are some parts that can be removed or swapped out. 256 GB DDR4 RAM is the result of 8 sticks, you reduce it to one, and that leaves you with 32 GB DDR4 RAM which is plenty. Three GTX Titans are a bit much, just one will suffice for any given game. An 18-Core Xeon is ridiculous and, even if you absolutely want to keep the Xeon for reasons that may have to do with the far off future, there's a 14-Core variant that's cheaper. You could also remove the RAID Hard Drives and get one 2 TB SSD, you could pick the cheapest OS since all of them are 64-Bit, you could get rid of Microsoft Office, and you could get the 1 year Warranty instead of 3, I don't recommend that but you could. All that put together, I just saved you $10,000.
Sony knew this and, the Cell Architecture was necessary because it was the processor, if they removed that, they would have to swap it for a cheaper processor that would've been much weaker and likely wouldn't have performed the way they wanted so they kept it. But you know what's not necessary for a console to function? You guessed it, backward compatibility.
Now, in theory a lot of stuff you put into a high end PC you may want to have if you're doing something really power intensive. If you're a game developer, you're going to need a high powered gaming rig to make and test your games and you want to have as little lag as possible while you do it. So in that sense, if you're making a game for a console, you'll want the processor, RAM, GPU, and hard drive to support whatever you're going to put into it. But, more than likely, if you want your game to function properly, backward compatibility is not going to make it easier, especially if it's exclusive to that console.
A lot of people don't know this but the backward compatibility is so expensive and costs so much that they do not want to take that kind of risk right now. And they're not in a position to be taking risks because of their financial situation. The PS4 has been keeping them afloat so far but every other department of the corporation is losing profit. The PS4 and Sony's Gaming Division are single-handedly keeping the company alive. If they added backward compatibility, that may not be the case.
I say may not because I have a solution that not everyone will like but will ultimately be better in the long run and, if you read the title of this post, you've probably been sitting through all this thinking "When are you going to bring up the Emulators!?" Because Emulators are the solution.
Now, I have not seen every emulator in existence so forgive me if some of these things end up wrong but the highest quality emulators enhance the games that already exist without having to spend more money making and purchasing new versions.
Some emulators are capable of reading disks from a PC's disk tray which, for the PS4, is exactly what people want. Some emulators come with in-app graphics and performance options that can tweak the game from an OS level to make that game better looking, better running, or in some cases, have functionality that natively supports mods.
Now, you might be thinking "Wow, that sounds totally awesome. If all that can be put into a single emulator for a single console, then what's the problem?" And, if you are, thank you for reading and comprehending what is being said.
But to answer that question, the problem is as follows: there are two ways Sony could get a hold of Emulators for PS1, PS2, and PS3. One of which will make them favorable but may cost them quite a bit of money, the other will at least cost a lot less but might stir up some of the PC gaming crowd.
The first of these solutions is for them to take the OS data they already have for PS1, PS2, and PS3, and convert it into 3 individual apps that could be put onto the PS4. If they want, they can even do this for PSP and PS Vita, too. The problem with this is that that might cost a lot of money on the whole, and Sony is not in a position to justifiably be thinking about risk-reward scenarios.
The other solution is to find emulators that already exist for those devices, sue the programmers who made those emulators for copyright infringement and modify the source code to achieve the same goal. That requires a lot less work on their part but PC Gamers won't like it because it takes away one of the apps that they tout as making the PC the best place to game. And, here is where some of the contention is going to come up.
If we are speaking realistically, Emulators are illegal. By making and distributing emulators for people to play emulated games on, they are promoting piracy. A lot of PC Gamers do that, where they say PC is the best place to be a Gamer, only to turn around and show you that the reason is because it's the easiest place to steal. Piracy is not only a crime, it's also a felony. If Sony, and by extension Microsoft, Sega, Atari, and Nintendo wanted to, they could legally pursue anyone who made Emulators and the Pirated Games that go on them and they would have a case for putting them in prison.
Sony could very easily use a Copyright take down on any of the Emulators that are currently in circulation and use the ones they want on their own systems. This may not garner them a lot of favor, or really any, from PC Gamers because it takes away their ability to play some games but, speaking objectively, in terms of any legal sense where Piracy is a Felony, or at least a crime, Sony would be in the right and the PC Gamers raging against them would essentially be a bunch of spoiled teenagers who are angry that they got a toy taken away from them that wasn't theirs to begin with.
And, just to clarify, when I say "spoiled teenagers," I'm not referring to the actual demographic. I'm fully aware that the vast majority of PC Gamers are full grown adults who make enough money to afford their own gaming rigs. When I say "spoiled teenagers" I'm referring more to the behavior that is presented during the potential outcry for allowing them to keep what are essentially stolen goods.
This move would not be popular among PC gamers but, let's be honest, Sony is a Console Maker, they are not competing directly with PC. They say they're competing with PC using the PS4 Pro. However, the vast majority of Sony's Target Demographic are not people who are rich enough that they can play games on a high end rig. Their target demographic is, or at least should be, those people who enjoy playing games that have enough money to buy their console but not enough money to afford a gaming PC.
Performing a Copyright takedown in such a way that they could get a hold of those emulators would perhaps be the safest option in terms of getting backward compatibility onto their system from a software perspective.
That said, I'm not a lawyer, so I don't actually know what the logistics of that are. But, even if they don't file a copyright take down, they could still download any given emulators they find and just modify the code until it works perfectly on their system.
Thank you for reading and have a wonderful day.
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