Despite Microsoft's Move to Support It, Sony Has No Plans for Backwards Compatibility

[Picci]

PS Now is the foundation for a bigger picture for Sony for the future. Just as Win10 is for Microsoft. Unfortunately we are watching the birth towards all digital releases

[Fresh Tendrils]

Well, when gaming becomes all streaming will be the time I finally put the controller down for good.

[42]

Quote: Originally Posted by Fresh Tendrils

Well, when gaming becomes all streaming will be the time I finally put the controller down for good.

Yup.

[NYGiants4Natic]

Quote: Originally Posted by Picci

PS Now is the foundation for a bigger picture for Sony for the future. Just as Win10 is for Microsoft. Unfortunately we are watching the birth towards all digital releases

Big diff between streaming and digital releases

Sony and MS will never just run games on streams. The future is downloading games to hdd and no discs.

PS Now is a terrible money grab by Sony. PERIOD

[Skyboxer]

We aren't even close to having the infrastructure for all digital gaming. Between the lack of high speed in all areas as well as the caps some providers have. ..it's a ways away.

[Picci]

Quote: Originally Posted by NYGiants4Natic

Big diff between streaming and digital releases Sony and MS will never just run games on streams. The future is downloading games to hdd and no discs. PS Now is a terrible money grab by Sony. PERIOD

LOL...Yes, you're correct. There is a big difference between the two. And Sky is correct too. We're not there yet but we know how fast technology is changing.

The future of PS Now isn't only about renting Sony's vast library of games to play. Sony is in the process of offering a service that will be a whole new way of gaming via cloud streaming. Just like what Microsoft will be doing with Win10 and Azure soon. PS Now went live back in Feb this year so they're not even a year old. Pretty much infancy stages? Their vision is much more than what your only thinking of.

Here's a couple of examples of this terrible idea.

You're sitting at the airport waiting for your flight. You decide that you want to play a playstation game on your smartphone. You connect a ds4 (or whatever tech is available at the time) into your phone usb and play an online FPS. (PS Now)

You're playing The Show on your PS4 and have to shut down so you can drive the family over to the in-laws house for Fathers Day. You know they don't have a PS4 but they do have a tablet. You can pick up the game from where you saved it on the cloud and resume it. Plug in your controller and your playing again. (PS Now)

Thanks to the ever changing tech apps you can now port PS4 Remote Play to work on practically any modern Android device. I'm pretty sure Sony can find a market for this.

[daniel77733]

PS Now sucks. Personally, Sony would have been better off lowering the price of the PS3 to $100 and let gamers build a cheap PS3 collection. With that said, I don't know how PS Now is doing for Sony but as long as it's making them money, there's no reason for them to ever do backwards compatibility and to be honest, im happy that they're not because then, developers and publishers will focus on getting those older games to run on the current consoles through emulation rather than focusing on the current consoles at hand.

I haven't cared about backwards compatibility since PS2 as back then it made a lot more sense and far easier to do without any emulation. Microsoft is simply trying everything they can to make up for the cluster**** from two years ago and I give Phil Spencer a lot of credit and props but as every company knows, once you piss off your own loyal fan base, it's extremely difficult to get them back.

As for digital downloading full retail disc based games, if either ever happens, the industry will crash. Buying games digitally is such a huge waste of money for the consumer no matter how you slice it. Spending $60 on a game that takes literally forever to download and install (as one PS4 user is finding out on NeoGaf in regards to Batman Arkham Knight), there's always so many problems that unlike the disc can't always be fixed for whatever reason. Add in the fact that buying games digitally just gets the suckers, errr, I mean gamers to spend more money on a bigger hard drive or another console that includes a bigger hard drive. Also, digital games have no monetary value whatsoever and since that's all the companies care about, as a consumer, I started and am the same.

Microsoft and to a lesser extent Sony definitely want to move towards all digital and while there's a lot of gamers who think this is good because they think that they will get "Steam like sales" yet they won't simply because there would be no other alternatives for the console versions of games. PC games is different in terms of market share and whatnot. Consoles though, every games would be screwed and not in a good way.

Funny thing is that when you look at console bundles, the majority of them (especially Microsoft) include games digitally. They all already have plans to go all digital at some point. I'm guessing with the 10th generation (PS4/Xbox One is eighth) of gaming. Could happen as early as the 9th generation but im pretty sure that both Sony and Microsoft have early plans for their next consoles already as most companies usually start a lot earlier than expected in regards to their next consoles.

Bottom line is that digital is horrible every way you look at it. The only positives that exist are for the publishers that released the game that you just bought digitally. For consumers, there's literally none.

In the end, to each their own but if/when gaming goes all digital, the previous generation of gaming would be my last.