Iwata & Region Locking

[cidbahamut]

Re: Iwata & Region Locking

And what happens when those old consoles finally give out? What then?

Motherfucker I am tired of people embracing the concept of permanently destroying entire eras of games.
"Oh it's not important to print new copies of books since you already have your centuries old manuscript from when it first came out."

Fuck you.

[Icemage]

Re: Iwata & Region Locking

Hmm. I would argue that the price point always matters except for people with more money than sense, especially for a feature like backward compatibility.

The people who most want to be able to play older games are the people who have older games--which means they probably already have the older consoles to play those games. BC then, is little more than a bullet point in the advertisement. How much more increase in the price is worth that "one more thing you can mention in ads"? That's the way I look at it.

I don't see it as an all-or-nothing sort of situation. There is definitely a convenience issue to backward compatibility; less clutter under your TV, especially if you have a limited number of A/V inputs on your set. There's also the option of selling or giving away your older hardware, which can (in some cases) offset the higher cost of implementing BC as a standard.

There's also a desirability standpoint: If someone doesn't own the older hardware but was interested in the games on that platform, then the new hardware that supports both now has the appeal of the combined games library.

All of these factors affect different demographics in different ways, however. I think we've seen from this past generation that in practice most people didn't give a crap about BC. You can see it in the level of excitement in the general populace about the Xbox One and PS4 as well, and I've not heard a single person say "Wow the Wii U is great because you can also play Wii games with it."

On a personal level, I think some of the reason I'll eventually get a Wii U (aside from whatever fistful of worthwhile exclusives it gets from Nintendo or anyone else) is because I can give some of my Wii games a more fair shake. I'm not particularly interested in using Dolphin, so if that means I can run a cleaner 480p view of a game like Pandora's Tower over HDMI, that's a nice fringe benefit for me that the Wii doesn't realistically offer me.


Icemage

[ItazuraNhomango]

Re: Iwata & Region Locking

And what happens when those old consoles finally give out? What then?

Motherfucker I am tired of people embracing the concept of permanently destroying entire eras of games.
"Oh it's not important to print new copies of books since you already have your centuries old manuscript from when it first came out."

Fuck you.

Easy, easy. I'm merely describing things from the console makers' perspective.

Well, what I would imagine would be their perspective. Personally, I was rather glad to have PS1 compatibility in my PS2. And, yes, I've worn out two PS1 and one PS2 myself.

That said, if it doesn't make financial sense, there would be no point to making consoles. Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo are not your friends. They have employees to pay, shareholders to please. If not enough people value backward compatibility, it'd be illogical to include it.

I think we've seen from this past generation that in practice most people didn't give a crap about BC. You can see it in the level of excitement in the general populace about the Xbox One and PS4 as well, and I've not heard a single person say "Wow the Wii U is great because you can also play Wii games with it."

That's the same sense I'm getting; backward compatibility isn't much of a competitive advantage.

I think what will happen in the future is that older games will be hosted on some emulation servers ("cloud", whatever). I would imagine the the dominate models will be monthly/weekly subscription for library of games (think "Atari bundle", "EA Sport buffet", etc.), or pay-daily/hourly-for-what-you-play.

A company that controls the entire stack (from console to server to a good library--with old and new games) may be able to leverage nostalgia into a formidable revenue source, if counting advertisement opportunity on top of subscription and rental-like fees. I'm leaning to MS as the eventual winner, but it seems like Sony is half a step ahead with the purchase of Gaikai.

[Malacite]

Re: Iwata & Region Locking

And what happens when those old consoles finally give out? What then?

Motherfucker I am tired of people embracing the concept of permanently destroying entire eras of games.
"Oh it's not important to print new copies of books since you already have your centuries old manuscript from when it first came out."

Fuck you.

Seriously.

I'll admit I haven't touched most of my PS2 games in some time, but that's largely been because my PS3 is breaking down somewhat and running those games - especially SOTET - causes the stupid thing to overheat and I really don't want it to brick on me as it's irreplaceable at this point (thanks for that, Sony...)


Even if I don't play them that often, I like having the option to play my older games. That crack from Don Matrick about people wanting BC must be backwards was one of the most offensive statements I'd ever heard out of a member of the industry.

- - - Updated - - -

On a personal level, I think some of the reason I'll eventually get a Wii U (aside from whatever fistful of worthwhile exclusives it gets from Nintendo or anyone else) is because I can give some of my Wii games a more fair shake. I'm not particularly interested in using Dolphin, so if that means I can run a cleaner 480p view of a game like Pandora's Tower over HDMI, that's a nice fringe benefit for me that the Wii doesn't realistically offer me.


Icemage

I thought PT looked fine in component, but I'd love to see how Twilight Princess, Metroid Prime 3 and Xenoblade scale in HDMI.


The PS2 and PS3's BC features were major influences in my purchase of them, as in each case I traded up - my PS1 was starting to give out, and I saw PS2 could use not only the discs, but the memory cards too (always hated that PS2 cards couldn't carry PS1 saves though) AND the damn thing had upscaling - there was an option to smoothen out PS1 games so they looked nicer and reduce load times.

PS3 had the smoothing but I don't think it was as good and it ditched the loading times, but also came with digital memory cards which at the time floored me - I couldn't believe Sony went to that kind of trouble to cater to the last gen.


And then they dropped it all. Now it's like Nintendo's the only one who gives a shit, but the best they can offer is the VC and charging you all over again for stuff already owned... bleh.

I hope PS4's streaming service doesn't suck.

[Firewind]

Re: Iwata & Region Locking

Eh it's obvious that the streaming service again, is motivated purely out of greed. Why give BC when you can just force everyone to purchase 3 generations worth of games again? Sure the hardware issues that it would create is a valid argument however, the only reason I'm not calling out Sony at this moment in time is because we have no idea how they are going to implement BC. At the moment it seems to be Schrödinger's Console.

That said with how they handled the Vita and BC, I am running under the assumption that unless we bought everything off PSN, we're going to have to buy it again until further notice.

[ItazuraNhomango]

Re: Iwata & Region Locking

Eh it's obvious that the streaming service again, is motivated purely out of greed. Why give BC when you can just force everyone to purchase 3 generations worth of games again?

Sure there's greed involved, but "making money" is a good incentive for companies to provide services, no? And, once emulation servers become the norm, it would be much easier to keep the old games around.

And, they can't "force" anyone to buy anything; gaming isn't food, clothing, medicine, or shelter--if the price/value is wrong, even the most ardent gamer can refuse to purchase. (Theoretically.) At best/worst, the companies can strongly compel people to buy--hopefully with reasonable price points and decent convenience/service.

Sure the hardware issues that it would create is a valid argument however, the only reason I'm not calling out Sony at this moment in time is because we have no idea how they are going to implement BC. At the moment it seems to be Schrödinger's Console.

Isn't it already established that PS4 won't have hardware PS3 compatibility? (If going by history, PS3 didn't have PS1 compatibility--or did I misremember that?)


* * *

Money runs the world--and, more importantly, help the devs (hardware and software) buy food and caffeinated drinks. Not that I love more expensive gaming, but for anything that is of value to myself and other gamers, I want a bit of money to flow to the devs.

The trouble is, some anti-gamer practices like region locking help bring in the revenue, while some features we want such as backward compatibility add additional cost. The console makers have to make complex decisions, years in advance of production, to guess what the market will best love/tolerate.

Sometimes they hit it out of the park (e.g. PS1, PS2, maybe Wii), sometimes they trip and fall before getting to the plate (e.g. xBox One, that Apple-Bandai thing). Ultimately, though, they all want to make money off the gamers over a long period--that means they want to keep us reasonably happy. In light of that, I just don't see a reason to get mad at the console makers for missing one or two features or adding one or two restrictions that already have common precedence. They are not out to get us. (I think?)

[Icemage]

Re: Iwata & Region Locking

Isn't it already established that PS4 won't have hardware PS3 compatibility? (If going by history, PS3 didn't have PS1 compatibility--or did I misremember that?)

PS4 doesn't have native PS3 backward compatibility. Sony claims that they're going to try to get PS3 BC in via Gaikai cloud streaming, but whether they can pull that off is questionable at best - and I doubt they'll ever get it working properly in the next five or so years of this coming console generation.

PS3 has always had a very functional PS1 emulator in all models, and that has never changed.

They are not out to get us. (I think?)

Microsoft certainly was with the Xbox One, even if the root cause was greed, not malice. I don't think I've ever seen such a contemptuously anti-consumer device ever announced (and even after their reversal on DRM, it's STILL a potential Big Brother in your living room).


Icemage

[Malacite]

Re: Iwata & Region Locking

Yeah I'm sure there's a special place in gamer hell reserved for folks like Don Matrick.

[cidbahamut]

Re: Iwata & Region Locking

gamer hell

wut