Next-next-gen
 

It looks like Sony are going to announce the PS4 next week:

YouTube Video

So what is everyone expecting or hoping for from this?

I personally don't see the point. A new console means higher specs and for deelopers to realy make the best of this means higher development costs, all this at a time when games companies are going bust all over the shop. Who apart from EA is likely to chuck huge amounts of money at a new console? Do we really need shinier versions of FIFA and NBA games? Yes it would be nice to have more than 16 a side in Battlefield style games but that's as much to do with people's internet connections as it is the processor on the console. I'm planning on upgrading to fiberoptic briadband once it becomes available in my street in the next few months bumping me up to 50-70 odd mbps download speeds but that's far from the norm these days.

With Freemium gaming being increasingly popular with developers, what kind of games are we likely to see on a new console? I'm guessing more MMO efforts. Sony have realy lacked any must-have console specific titles in recent years and although there are the odd things like Little Big Planet and just recently, Nino No Kuni, nobody's going to fork out a few hundred quid to play an updated LBP. What could potentially be a big boost is if the delay to GTA V is in some part due to it getting ready for release on PS4. If they managed to orchestrate that then Sony could sell a lot of consoles to GTA fans, probably me included.

I don't think connections speed is the issue for BF games considering on PCs there's been 64 person servers since forever.

Not in games with dedicated servers, true, but not that many console games have dedicated servers. Frontlines had 32 a side on the 360 but that was pretty painful.

Other than a small increase in hardware power I'm not hoping for much from the PS4. I feel like they need something huge to really win the console wars next generation, I think everyone is in trouble against the Steambox.

Here's how their last two systems have fared with me:

I didn't buy a PS3 until the exclusive Metal Gear Solid 4 was released. My PS3 library has grown quite a bit in the last year due to buying some PS2 HD game collections, but it's still less than the Wii or 360. I'm even looking to trade some of my PS3 games in because they've been bought on the 360.

Then there's the Vita...I still haven't bought one because there hasn't been a game that interests me enough to do so. I think it has some potential since it looks to be a pretty powerful handheld, though.

I'm running out of reasons to get a Sony console especially since they've lost Metal Gear as an exclusive. Right now there's only about one or two series that'll help me consider buying this console, but if this is going to end up being more than $599 then it won't be enough.

I am curious to see how they're going to do their touchscreen controller or integration with tablets. I'd be surprised if they didn't do it seeing how they jumped into the whole motion controller schtick with the Sixaxis and then the Move.

Not expecting too much about it since the PS3 is still around and kicking. It'll be more of the same, only this time it'll be shinier. Doesn't mean it'll be good, however.

Overall, not overly impressed.

How is it that after almost 20 years the PlayStation brand still has no trade dress more compelling than "these are the buttons on the controller".

Everyone chimes in about larger drives, more downloadability, larger multiplayer integration, multiple concurrent accounts (OMG THE FUTURE IS HERE), even more edges on the polygons (and naturally more bloom), and expanding libraries to include legacy products.


Dear Sony,

Don't sell me a $400 gaming computer. I already have a gaming computer that does all of the above and probably more than your new hardware will. Please improve what you have now as an admitted half step and just fine-tune hardware and promising to deliver software title quality. Don't slowly remove features from your product this time around. Don't make something just because you feel Nintendo pressured you into pushing forward your schedule. Make the Vita worthwhile, please. Give me games for it or software that sells the damn thing.

Don't try to invent something. Your company has had a ton of financial woes and trying to put media on Red-Ray discs or pushing 3D as some sort of capsule I slink into and waffle and hump my way into high scores will just scare me away. If you want to mimic the Surface or the WiiU tablet or replicate your competitors with PS All-Stars, do it right. Don't do it just to put it on the resumé so it looks like you've got the same product.

tldr; make shit like Japanese know how to

I feel like the only reason they're doing it is because the current gen has outlived the typical gen life cycle already, but is still doing fine, and is rather strong despite being under powered compared to gaming rigs you could make yourself. It's not like they make money from selling consoles. All the money they make are from the games.

Reeegardless, since the Wii U has been spat out by Nintendo, both Sony and Microsoft now -have- to respond to it with their own new consoles. Naturally.

As a member of the used video game industry I really...really hope they do away with the idea of disposable discs (aka you can't buy or sell them used, one use only), or DL only games. That's -not- what the consumer wants. And doing exactly the opposite of what the consumer wants only leaves you with a PSP go, and no one wants any of that shit. It's especially discerning when they're trying to spit right in the face of the people who practically keep their companies and interest in the industry afloat. Unless they can successfully rip off Steam for their console, including the crazy ass sales Steam does, they aren't going to be even remotely successful in the next gen.

TL;DR: Seriously, Sony, stop being a fucktard. Make shit backwards compatible, keep discs, and please dear god, don't try to shove a boomerang controller at us again.

I'm waiting for them to suggest using their streaming service to introduce that as their media delivery format.

They're on the right track trying to be Steam in accessing your games anywhere you can get your account online....but streaming content is not yet viable. Just like Microsoft reports about them forcing online to use the system.

The bandwidth can't be supported by enough customers. Many people don't have/don't want their system online. These guys are shooting themselves in the foot by trying to force it if they do.

LET ME SIT IN MY CAVE WITH THE LIGHTS OFF. GIVE ME MY CHEETOS AND ONE CONTROLLER. LEAVE ME ALONE.

I just hope they drop the "no used games" mess. It already sucks that there probably won't be Backward Compatibility but if they go through the used game bullshit, then how the hell are people supposed to know a game is a complete pile of shit? IGN "reviews"? lol. What a joke.

Sure, I get that they are mad at places like Gamestop charging full price (oh excuse me $5 off full price) for used "new" games, but this will kill off places like Gamefly too. I'm not gonna toss $60 (or however much they're going to charge) for every game that looks interesting, only for it to end up being a pile of shit and no way to resell it.

The always online for the 720 is gonna shoot themselves in the foot. If I wanted to always be connected, I'd play on PC. Sometimes I just like not being signed on the PSN (or Live if I had that) and play by myself.

I dunno what'll happen on Wed, but it better be something fantastic for me to drop money on a new system. :\

Sure is going to be fun having input lag on EVERYTHING.

It'll just be another browser game

Yep.

http://i.minus.com/ikldA8ungvbD2.gif

I'm half expecting them to push the 4k UHD display experience with this thing. Via streaming of course but the double capacity blu-ray discs the PS4 is expected to have could probably manage it too. Now, that's only really for potential media of course. The PS3 was promised to do upwards to 2k for gaming when it was announced and pushing things to multiple displays and such but that didn't really pan out at all. I wouldn't expect 4k gaming at all unless it was 1080p up-scaled to 4k which could work I guess with enough AA. Really, if they can even manage a pure 1080p environment at 60 fps with this machine with the rumored hardware specs I'll be surprised.

I hope whatever they show off on the 20th is significant. They'll probably end up holding most of their cards until E3 but Sony really has a lot riding on this and I hope they don't screw it up. I've actually enjoyed the PS3 quite a bit as of late and personally I think both Sony and Microsoft are jumping the gun. They could easily wait another 2 years to release better systems that don't cost them nearly as much and actually deliver a better punch in capability.

I think they're worried about Nintendo having a head start which they really shouldn't since while I love Nintendo they've really only played catch up and re-introduced and re-polished gameplay that wasn't successful on the GameCube by packaging a tool developers know the consumer will have by default. I believe Sony may have learned something from that by if pictures of the PS4 controller are true then bundling the Move tech into the controller. Similarly Microsoft will be pushing Kinect 2 onto people with it's next console as well if they have any intelligence. Differentiating yourself through exclusives and gameplay is basically the only thing these guys can do to keep themselves afloat in terms of gaming. Well at its core anyway. The extra stuff helps too I guess.

I've read some stuff saying that the PS4 will suport 3d. One wonders where these websites get their info from, given that you can already get 3d games on the PS3.

I've actually been using my PS Vita a lot more recently, although granted it's been mainly playing FFIX and a couple of PS Minis. Ridge Racer is pretty decent on it and it was only a tenner for the complete package as part of the one year anniversary sale.

I agree that a download only market would be a terrible idea, especially if Sony haven't worked out why Live is so much better than PSN yet (Let me decide if I want the latest update Sony, don't hang my PS3 for 20 minutes downloading it whether I like it or not). Also one use only discs can fuck off too.

It will be a loooooong time before I can afford to upgrade from HD to whatever becomes the new industry standard so I don't really care about that, although I will care if games start using text you can only read on an Ultra Def tv the way they started making games you could only read in HD on the last generation.

Pang, to be fair, despite having done almost all my gaming on an Xbox for the last 10 years, I still refer to the buttons on the controller as X, triangle, circle and square and Sony don't really have a lot else going for them in terms of brand identity for their consoles.

I really don't see this as a knee-jerk reaction to Nintendo. Nintendo are now a niche market supplier, they're not competitors to Sony and Microsoft. I see it more as a way of shoring up their share price after announcing massive losses again this year. They really need to ditch the TV division and concentrate on stuff Korea aren't better at.

There's not a lot of 4K source material that wouldn't be an awful upscale job. And no, on gaming it would look awful. Even the best scaler couldn't do that much with a 1080p source. It would look like so much horse vomit. Especially not in a 500 dollar middling piece of hardware.

People need to stop with the "they can still wait" stuff. We're using 7 and 8 year old hardware that wasn't cutting edge when it came out. They can't wait. They've already waited too long. Everything coming out these days is a trade off between playability and muddy shit graphics. The hardware is stretched too thin. I don't understand why people want to wait when every game they get renders closer to 480p than 720p. We should have had a successor in 2011.

Besides it's not like 4k uhd tvs won't be upscaling shit themselves anyway.

I guess it has been a while. I guess I was just hoping for beefier hardware than what's rumored is all. It's going to be a rather ho-hum jump in my opinion but I'm willing to be wowed.

I can't imagine any scaler, especially a built in TV one, being any sort of decent. The one in the 360 is actually pretty fucking fantastic, all things considered. Thankfully your TV doesn't do the scaling in that case; imagine how terrible it'd look! It'd look only slightly better than SD cable broadcasts. Yuck.

I too wish we would have beefier consoles around the corner, but it is what it is. I don't think we'll see any 600+ dollar SKUs either, so right out of the gate they've got to be less powerful comparatively in order to not lose as much money per unit sold.

I hope that, if these rumoured specs are true, what we get is a shortened cycle instead of a longer one. Quintuple in 2018? That'd be nice. (Provided Sony doesn't implode on itself).

It's strange when I'm more excited by gimmicks like Oculus and Shield than I am by Durango and Orbis.

I have no idea what a single one of these things mean. I am now old.

One is a 3d head tracking device that you wear and the other is essentially a handheld that you can stream your pc for gaming. They're kinda neat.

Three dimensional head tracking sounds like shit. I like the sound of the other thing.

I have myriad diverse opinions on things I know very little about.

So if anyone wants to watch this (about 25 minutes away from starting), here are a few links:

https://us.playstation.com/meeting2013/ (US)
PlayStation Meeting 2013 (UK)
PlayStation (Twitch)

Well that was sort of a waste of time. We caught only a glimpse of the controller and its kinect device. We got a lot of yakety yak and not enough actual gameplay of which most of it was derived from PCs or prerendered. No bullet points for important shit like will it take discs, is it download only, is it anti-used games, and what the fuck does the console even look like? They're saving a lot for E3. I'm hoping some really long running PS3 projects get moved to PS4 and actually make it for its launch window: looking at you last guardian. There's a lot of potential and the PS4 seems to be a step in a good direction but the unanswered questions could make or break the console and the same is aimed at Microsoft as well. Right now, I'll probably get one depending on what games are at launch and if the answers I seek are favorable. I hope Sony and Microsoft don't do anything stupid.

I remember someone pointed out in chat no mention of backwards compatibility either, which I'd be surprised if Sony did incorporate this time around. If it is indeed discless then the answer is obviously no.

More footage from Watch Dogs, however, was a positive.

BC will be streamed, and therefor god damn fucking terrible.

Call me when North America actually has an internet backbone worth a fuck before people try this cloud gaming diarrhea please.

Calllllllllllllllled it. And I'm sure that it'll only be for PSN+ since that's valuable bandwidth. And maybe even making you repurchase shit you have on PS3. Or a "PS4 license" bullshit.

I really hope the "EyePad" tablet comes to fruition. Also lol Square Enix "WE ARE MAKING A FINAL FANTASY GAME. THAT IS ALL."

But the biggest laugh I got was Metzen of Blizzard sucking their cocks in "we've always had console gaming in our blood." No, you haven't. And the only reason you're doing this is for a quick cash grab since Diablo was pretty much a failure and was simplified enough to be a console game.

The one good thing I've taken from today is that they're going to "super advanced" x86 architecture, which means the fucking geniuses out there that want to emulate the system shouldn't have many problems getting a bootable OS for PC, thus saving me $500 in the event that an exclusive game comes out that I want (Infamous and Killzone, sit back down please).

But yes, please fuck yourselves over and force streaming gaming and online purchases only. Destroy the used game market (until legislation passes to allow reselling digital media for these things) so you can isolate the majority of your customers.

I didn't catch Sony's stream, but I can tell that I missed absolutely nothing from sifting through news of what they showed. It looks like every game they announced is for the PS4 and the PS3, so why would I plop down a couple hundred bucks on a new system with a whole new set of problems?

Speaking of problems, check out that controller. Adding a touchpad and a big, flashing LED light aren't really improvements I was looking for. I can already imagine all the headaches putting a Share button on the controller to immediately start streaming/posting videos to Facebook is going to cause. If they were going to improve on the Dualshock 3 it was a pretty simple job.

1) Let me charge the thing without fighting it for 10 minutes.
2) Detachable battery pack.
3) If I'm playing while charging, please don't start issuing random control inputs. I'm not amused when the controller decides that it'd be hilarious to walk off cliffs in Dark Souls.

Also, Bungie couldn't be more self-congratulatory if they tried. It's genuinely impressive how pretentious the quotes are in this article. My two favorites:
In short, exactly the lack of anything interesting I expected. Going by the PS2 and PS3 I already figured that it would be at least a year before there would be any reason to consider buying it anyway. If they do force streaming of games then it may not even be then. I can't see that being stable at all, and a repeat of Dark Souls with kicking you to the title screen if your connection is interrupted for a second.

What upsets me the most is PS4 is just catering to the graphic whore crowd while setting the gameplay in the backburner. It worries me when I see a lot of potential games (Deep Down looks awesome but it looks like CGI without a HUD) to be backlogged because of the time spent on making prettier environments.

Isn't this the third generation of Sony consoles that has done exactly that? Remember the Emotion Engine? Or the revolutionary Cell Processor™ that promised 15 billion micropixels per nanosecond or whatever the fuck that was supposed to do? If you're expecting anything other than a shinier version of the norm from Sony, you're fooling yourself. Gamers are slaves to hype like few others, and Sony knows it.

Just going to throw my name into the mix of people that are totally unimpressed so far. Vita functionality is going to be a waste to people that don't own the handheld (read: most of the gaming population) and they really need exclusive software to drive the system. A share button is extremely superficial...Why not just make it part of the home button menu, without stamping it into the main controller? And hardware-based BC please (no stream), otherwise I'll just keep my old systems hooked up.

Lastly...I dare Sony to launch this thing for $600 again, with no pack-in. DOA.

I'm kind of curious how they'll emulate the start and select buttons for streamed PS1, PS2, and PS3 games. There's an Options button in the place of start which is fine and while the select button wasn't heavily used the Share button takes its place and if that is being used for well sharing your play session of anything then where does the button that functions as the select button come from?

BC isn't that big deal for me. I wish they'd kept it in for the PS3 slim I bought but it's not the end of the world for me. I have an original PS2 that plays both PS1 and PS2 games fine. Although I have thought about getting PS2 slim or whatever its called with the flip open top since apparently it has a better disc drive that allows faster loading.

I really hope this E3 Sony answers most of our questions and that most of the answers are good ones.

Q from audience: Will the PS4 support used games?

A from Sony: I'm not authorized to answer that question. But we have a SHARE button! And it's cooler than Microsoft's Back button!

I love all the righteous anger in this thread. Yes, the press conference was roughly 1.5 hours too long and short on details, and there wasn't enough shown to make me a day one purchaser, but nothing pissed me off either (until just a moment ago). Sony confirmed the PS4 will play used games, and the streaming is only for BC games, not the new stuff on the system. BC is nice, but it's not a make or break for a game system. The system does include the ability to play games as they download, which is nifty. I don't care much either way about the sharing/social features, and it's a new system with faster processor/better graphics, so woohoo, I guess.

What does tick me off is today's confirmation that PSN purchases won't transfer over. Unless they're planning to offer some sort of conversion credit (ha), then I'm not going to repurchase things just so I can stream them on the new console.

Something people don't seem to catch on to is that the first gen of all new gaming platforms exist using the same gameplay mechanics as the previous generation's. Why does the new Killzone not impress anyone? Because its just the same Call Of Duty gameplay we've seen for the entire run of the PS3 PLUS really stupid physics of hanging off a rope which looked *astonishingly* terrible for all sorts of reasons.

You have to wade through the first run of games to actuall see some changes. Remember how late in the PS1's lifecycle that Metal Gear Solid came out?

(Luckage mentioned ""PS4 license" bullshit". I know a number of people working in the industry and this is where they're going. Since its legal to sell games second hand ((the supreme court covered that in the late 80s)), developers have decided that you must now buy licenses to access the real meat of the game - this is why the last two Mass Effect games had that extra $15 bonus card thing in it, so when the kids turned in their copies for credit and someone bought it, Sony would still get SOME money for the purchase of an already purchased game. I can't blame them for wanting to make money or losing money because someone wants to save money - but it still doesn't sit right.)

Yeah.

Man, as soon as Blizzard showed up, I honest to god thought they were going to pull a Lost Vikings surprise or something for their console comeback. NOPE.

Diablo 3. Sigh.

They have been talking about making Diablo III into a console game for a while, they never said which console though.

It's cool that they're only working with Sony, but shitty that they're just doing Diablo III.

Oh, they WERE talking about it for a while? Weird. I guess I don't understand why there's such a huge backlash from pc gamers NOW about how Diablo 3 is consolitized (I KNOW ITS NOT A WORD).

The only thing they did was come out and finally say that Diablo 3 was always meant to be a console game. Can't spell BLIZZARD without an Activision.

I'm not even mad about it since I've never liked most of Blizzard's games anyway. Only ones I cared for were Lost Vikings and Rock and Roll Racing. The rest is RTS and MMO - two of the type of games I don't really much like. Sooooo...

Additional Spam:
Also here's a thing that sums up yesterday for the most part.

YouTube Video

PlayStation 4 Not Backwards Compatible With Retail or Digital Games - IGN

Wat.

Came here to link that. But yeah, I figured they'd screw people with disc versions not being compatible, but digital as well? This is what they get for "HIGH TECH PC INFRASTRUCTURE" design, nullifying the use for older content. By saying it won't work, they have no intention of it working. If it was a maybe thing, they'd keep quiet.

CLETUS, HAND ME THAT THERE SHOVEL DO GIVE THE GRAVE FOR OLE SONY.

If they don't react to the outpouring of anger over not honoring PSN purchases and PS/Ps2 emulation (I'm not sure if the PS4 could emulate PS3 games without it being a shitload more expensive), this console is going to be fucking DOA.

I don't quite understand why everyone is so fervent on making sure this thing is backwards compatible. Let's take a think for a moment and realize that backwards compatibility only really started with the PS2. The only backwards compatible systems are the Wii, Wii U (forgive me if I'm wrong with that one), ps2, ps3 (ps1 discs, and some of those can play ps2), and limited backwards compatibility on the Xbox 360. Oh, and of course Nintendo's handhelds, but a lot of those were just rehashes of each other. I can't particularly remember anyone complaining the n64 couldn't play snes games. Or even the dreamcast being unable to play saturn games.

While backwards compatibility would be grand, it's not exactly a deal breaker for me. A deal breaker would be something like the inability to play used games, that's just...well, retarded if it didn't. The consumer wants to buy used games, and it'd be terribly stupid of them to not allow for it.

If its such a problem, why not just keep your ps3? I kept my ps2 just so I could play ps2 games. I kept my psp because I didn't want to rebuy all those games on the psn.

And quite honestly, none of the people who come into shop seem to even realize that the xbox 360 can play (a limited amount of) xbox games, or that the wii even though it has neato controller ports can play gamecube games, or that even the ps3 can play ps1 games. And when I do tell them this, it doesn't really spur them on to buy those games, anyway. So I guess there's your main consumer of these things :\

From what I understand, it will be streamed from their cloud service or something. Not sure on all the details though. So you can play PS1-PS3 games, but they are emulated... or something like that. I dunno, I'm confused about it all. Maybe E3 will shed some more light.

I still have my Playstations 1 and 2 and have an early model 3 that plays PS2 games, so it's not like I'm going to be without those. Actually I haven't turned my Playstation 2 on in some time now, I wonder if it still even works.

All that aside, a few of the games look kinda cool. Deep Down looked interesting to me at least. But I'm not sure a few games that look good is going to make me want to scream "Shut up and Take My Life savings!"

Tande, no one expected to be able to play SNES games on N64 because it was a time where a new system meant just that: New. Moving Forward. Sony was the one that opened that door when they made Playstation 2 backwards compatible with 1. Then everyone was like "Man, that's so cool! My old games I love won't collect dust and I don't have to keep 2 systems plugged in all the time!" When PS3 was released, they claimed "We'll never drop Backward Compatibility." but then started bitching because they were "too expensive to make, so we're dropping BC". If anything, blame Sony on this new well.. "demand" I suppose is the right word, on making systems play the older games without having to replace them digitally or buying HD Remasters.

Because a PS3 is not going to work three years down the line.

And when PSN shuts down (and it will eventually), people will lose entire digital collections of bought games. Playstation Plus subscribers especially.

It's not only about whether one specific console plays this or won't play that, it's also people slowly realising all-digital is maybe not that great after all if something like this is going to keep happening. Consider all that DLC separated content that's coming with and to retail games nowadays, if it indeed comes to PSN content not being compatible with PS4/PSW.

Yeah. I worry about how M$ is gonna handle all of the XBLA games. We've bought so much on there. Including Minecraft.

Except new Wii's don't have that or the ability to even load GC games. Even Nintendo is getting out of the backwards compatibility thing.




Which is bullshit.

Point made! Though what does BC do for Sony besides let you play those games without buying them on the PSN?

Either way I'll still have all my physical copies kept safe and ready to play on my good ol' PS2 or PS3.

I'm confused at the idea of them not honoring the purchases off the PSN being downloaded onto the PS4. They let you do that on the Vita. Unlike Nintendo's system, the PSN has a real log in and record of what you buy and isn't completely ass backwards. If they completely nix that, that'd be a slap in the face of everyone who bought those games. Guess we'll see in the future.

PS4 doesn't use PSN.

And I'm guessing since a lot of downloadable games on PSN are just PS3 games in downloadable form, if retail games won't work, downloadable games won't either. Pretty sure it's both an architecture thing as well as a business thing. They can't guarantee compatibility on all (if any) of the titles, so they won't bother at all, just like they did with removing the emulation BC for PS2 games on PS3.

As for the Vita, the downloadable PS3 games don't work on Vita. You can't even download them on it. They just often have PS3 and Vita versions of a game and sometimes support crossbuying in hopes of getting more Vita sales so when you buy one, you also get the other, but it's never the same files, and not for all titles.

For the most part, emulation is kind of a non-issue. Yes, emulating one generation behind (PS3 emulating PS2) does require different hardware since software emulation is very much software based, which is why we can still do PS1.

However, the "all or nothing" logic is bullshit. All my PS1 games work on my PS3 except my all-time favorite (Wing Commander 3) because it uses a video compression codec made specifically for that game. So why didn't they just cut out PS1 emulation all-together if they couldn't run one of the most expensive games of all time?

I sincerely doubt the PS4 will do PS3 emulation unless they throw another $80 worth of tech into the unit. But (most) PS1 and PS2 games would definitely run under software emulation, without hesitation.

This is simply them milking the consumer. The concept that "its not in the architecture" is a fallacy, like raising a building but not putting any fucking doors in it. You build the doors beforehand because otherwise, why bother?

When I got a PS3 I was a bit bummed that it wouldn't play PS2 games because I still had a few to play but to be honest, I've not played a single Xbob game since I bought a 360 and I've still to get round to playing those last couple of PS2 games since I got a PS3 so lack of BC isn't really an issue for me. It's nice to be able to stick PS1 games in and play them on my Vita but at a couple of quid a pop, I don't mind re-downloading the PS1 games to have them sat on a memory stick either. Seeing as how I just got an SD projector and I'm going to use my PS2 as a DVD player through it, I might actually get round to playing those last couple of games one of these days.

All the social stuff on this is largely pointless for me, although watching Acer play games is always amusing.

I'm sure the streaming crap isn't a "OH HEY GAME GRUMPS LIVE" sort of thing, but a shameless plug for "online personalities" to make money alongside Sony (and sure i'll assume MS does this too since XBL is already stuffed with it) via advertisements and spammed shit.

But the reason backwards compatibility is an issue is that in the case of a floppy drive or CD, your PC games are still good now as they were 20 years ago. Your NES still works because of the quality of hardware (read simplicity) permits the system to still function properly 30 years later. I'm not worried about my kids having a dud NES in 15 years. I'm worried about my kids asking why there's a yellow light on the PS3. I'm worried about them having a 360 catch fire and pull them into the drive tray. I'm worried about them turning on my old WiiU to find out that super smash brothers only works online and only on a service that had been offline for 5 years.

I simply want to buy a product that I know I will still be able to use later. I don't want developers telling me how long I'm allowed to play a game. I don't want to be restricted unlike my childhood of gaming.