Forum Overview :: Gamerasutra :: Do you make more money selling PlayStation games than you spend buying them?

[quote name="Jerry Whorebach"]That's really the only question that matters here. If the answer is no, we should be on the same side. [quote name="Entropy Stew"]I don't expect a corporation to spend time and money to do something without compensation. In fact, I don't even think it's reasonable to expect them to. I guess that makes me a republican or something.[/quote] They were already compensated, when people bought God Hand on PS2. They were compensated again when other people bought God Hand on PS3. Expecting the people who bought God Hand on PS2 to compensate them AGAIN to play the same game on PS3 is sheer bastardry, exactly the sort of thing the free market is supposed to nip in the bud - provided consumers could be relied upon to act in their own interests, for once. [quote name="Entropy Stew"]So you're saying they removed it because it was insane and expensive?[/quote] No, precisely the opposite: <i>"Mr. Tretton conceded that removing that capability, along with a few other features, isn't dramatically reducing Sony's cost of manufacturing the console but will instead encourage buyers of the entry-level PlayStation 3 to purchase more games designed specifically for the new system."</i> [quote name="Entropy Stew"]The original xbox was a hell of a lot easier to emulate on a 360 than a PS3 will be on a PS4. I'm guessing they were able to emulate at a higher level a lot of the time, like Wine does on Linux, since both xboxes were designed around DirectX. The emulation also required profiles for each game to be created and downloaded from XBL, which equates to work developing both the emulation layer itself and ensuring the individual profiles work. Even with all that effort spent, only half the Xbox library works under emulation (though I'm sure they concentrated overwhelmingly on the popular games). The PS4 architecture is radically different from the PS3, and the cell itself is likely an enormous bitch to emulate. Thinking about getting the cell SPUs emulated nicely with the same latency requirements via a GPU-processed emulation (likely what is required from the new arch) makes my head hurt. Maybe SPU code can be compiled to shader code on the fly instead - I don't know, but I have a feeling it would be dodgy.[/quote] Sony managed to get PS2 games running flawlessly on non-backward-compatible PS3s when they saw there was money to be made selling them again. I have to imagine they'd be just as capable if they saw there was money to be <i>lost</i> by not supporting the ones they've already sold. [quote name="Entropy Stew"]Back compat is hard, and stands in the way of progress.[/quote] "Progress" would be a system that runs all the games you want to play - as evidenced by the fact you already bought them - without forcing you to buy them again. Progress would entail acknowledging that, for all their technical advancements, games are not actually any better now than they were in the past - which could be, perhaps counter-intuitively, the first step towards <i>making</i> them better in the future.[/quote]