[quote name='BigBen'][quote name='eros'][quote name='Machine']NES - SNES - N64 - GC = No backwards compatibility
SMS - Genesis - Saturn - Dreamcast = No backwards compatibility
GBA and PS2 are the only ones I can think of that have been backwards compatible. Would it be nice? Yes. Is it a big deal? I don't think so. It's just another excuse for the haters to criticize MS. How come Nintendo doesn't get criticized for the same shaq-fu'ing thing?[/quote]
I'd like to point out that Sega's hardware devision is now gone and the great Nintendo is fighting with newcomer MS to hold on to 2nd place. Which is a really distant 2nd to 1st. If you think backwards compatiability isn't going to be a huge feature in the next-gen you are sticking your head in the sand.
P.S. -- The gameboy line-up has always had backwards compat. and it is the #1 selling platform of all time by huge margins.[/quote]
While that may be true, if you look closer, backwards compatibility is not the reason for Nintendo's current struggles in the video game market. Take the SNES for example, not having backwards compatibility had absolutely no effect on its dominance. Nintendo is struggling for a lot of reasons (lack of 3rd party support, late player in the current generation of consoles, unable to shed "kid game" image, innovations that don't make sense, etc.). Backwards compatability is not anywhere close to the top of that list.
That being said, for those of you that love backwards compatibility, don't think that you won't have to sacrifice something to get it. There comes a point in time where you are just crippling yourself from a hardware/software standpoint if you insist on keeping backwards compatability. Just take a look at Windows 98 vs Windows XP, XP is much better, but they had to sacrifice some backwards compatability.[/quote]
There are some misconceptions here. First of all, backwards compatibility between sharply defined closed systems is a very difference task than what Microsoft has faced with the massive amount of illegal programming techniques used by application coders of yore. As well, testing the compatibilty of a game system is trivial compared to an hugely popular OS with no controls over who is allowed to produce software for it. The entire PS1 library across all regions at the time the PS2 was being engineered is just a few thousand titles with a substantial amount of duplication across regions. The investment Sony faced was thus much, much lower, especially since there were no huge corporate customer who would go ballistic if their 10-year-old proprietary app stopped workin g on the new machine.
Nintendo's domination, especially in the US, was driven primarily by the stranglehold they had on third-party publishing. If you wanted your game on a Nintendo platform it couldn't appear on a competing brand for a minimum of two years. (I once had to co-sign one of these as Associate Producer on a NES port of a C64 Cinemaware game.) This kept a huge amount of excellent PC Engine games that also appeared on the NES from being brought to the US on the TurboGrafx16. It also strangled Sega in the 8-bit generation. This finally came to an end when Sega sued Nintendo and the case was settled out of court. By no small coincidence the first Genesis version of Street Fighter II appeared very soon afterward. (Why NEC, a much bigger company than Sega didn't sue NOA is that their semiconductor division did a lot of business with Nintendo and the much smaller game division was told in no uncertain terms to not anger Nintendo.)
Nintendo's choice not to make the SNES backward compaitble had nothing to do with technical issues and everything to do with the economics of mask ROM production. Every design on the SNES included functions to allow NES software to run. This is why it's one of the few notable products to use the 65816 processor other than the wretched Apple IIGS. (The SNES was a godsend for a lot of my former co-workers who were heavily invested in trying to code IIGS games.)
A console company's main reason for support software from an earlier system is too keep generating revenue from that software. This worked well on the PS2 because the PS1 was the first truly successful CD-based console. Optical media is cheap, can be produced in small numbers with no great cost penalty, and can be produced on very short notice. This makes it easy to micro-manage supply of PS1 games to the retail channel.
THe same couldn't be said for mask ROMs. They're much more costly, incur an unavoidable setup expense for each production run, and require long scheduling leads for ordering new stock. This is why so few SNES hits were ever given new production after the height of their popularity despite continuing strength in the second-hand market. With optical media you can go back for more with little delay if you underestimated a game's popularity. With ROMs you're screwed big-time if you make a major mistake in either direction.
THe two big exception in console history are the Power Base converter for the Sega Genesis and the GameBoy Advance. In Sega's case their concern was only partially offsetting their dearth of third-party support with access to the Master System library. It was also a matter of convincing retailers who were very unhappy about the piles of Master System games they had that had failed to sell. Sega needed to convince them that the Genesis would not only be a hit but would solve that inventory problem, too. Continued...
the xbox 2. the cpus are completely different. the ps3 will be completely different also, but they can do the ps2 trick and include the ps2's hardware in the ps3. micrsofot isn't going to put in an intel cpu. and nvidia sure as hell isn't going to be helpful.
