2013-06-20, 08:29 PM
MetaSeraphim Wrote:Also, what are people's obsession with backwards compatiblity? Do people just chuck out their old consoles when they get a new one?
I don't like having my house flooded with hardware I rarely use. It's also very annoying to switch them out all the time, and to top it off above all else, when you don't use hardware (especially newer consoles) for a long period of time there's far more risk of damage. Dust and what not that I may not remember to clean out or not successfully clean out. Also possibly water damage or anything like that. It's easy for that kind of crap to accumulate when it's not in use over years.
Right now if I decide that I want to play a PS2 game, I'm pretty screwed. My old PS2 doesn't support any monitor or TV available to me anymore, because of the video cables. So I basically cannot play PS2 at all without spending money on a dead system for adapters, which may or may not work or even exist.
Yeah, these are all the same issues we have if I wanted to play an N64 game, or anything like that, and those too have their own issues. Batteries on most S/NES carts are long dead, so you can't save anything. The difference is that there's the Virtual Console, or if I'm lazy/desperate, emulation. PS2 Emulation is still extremely fidgety, because of the Emotion Engine and other special hardware crap. Same thing with Wii and X360 emulation, if there's even a stable port for the latter of those two. PS3 as well.
On the reverse side of this, it's far easier for the company that developed the console in the first place to emulate their own product. This is something I believe Locked mentioned in this thread (possibly another) earlier. It's not unfeasible for them to do it, but it may take tens of years for a third party to get 360/PS3 emulation to the point that M$/Sony could do in a few months if it was really their concern.
I'm not saying that I EXPECT backwards compatibility, but it is certainly a HUGE plus when available. I don't know about you but I don't have space for every single console that has ever existed at any point in time. Most people don't.