Will there ever be a backwards compatible Xbox One and PS4?
No.
The article is done.
Thank you for your time.
I kid. This question popped up in the heads of many people interested in buying an Xbox One or Playstation 4. Or both if you can afford it. Sell your house. I won’t judge.
It’s not really a deal breaker if the consoles don’t offer it, but it’s definitely a nice feature to add on. Makes it easier to play your old favorites that were released for the previous iterations.
Now that the Xbox One and Playstation 4 have made their ways into consumer’s homes, it’s pretty clear that these consoles are not backward compatible, but will they ever be? Will Sony and Microsoft create different models for the Xbox One and Playstation 4 that are both slimmer and backwards compatible?
The internet being its usual self, has brought up a few points on why these companies decided on not making the new models backwards compatible.
Here is one that I came across most often while researching this topic:
To Make Money off Remade and Remastered Games
This theory comes off more as a conspiracy within the gaming industry. According to this way of thinking, Xbox One and Playstation 4 were not made backwards compatible in order to force players to repurchase their favorite games on the new consoles.
Companies aim to make money, so it’s easy to see how people came to this conclusion.
However, when you take into account that the companies behind the making of the consoles and those behind the making of the games, this theory holds no ground. When you buy a console, that money goes to the company that made the console. When you buy a game, that money goes to the company that made the game.
Obviously this is the simplest way of putting it. There’s many different actors involved in the selling of either products such as the distributors who hold these products in their stores.
Of course, one could theorize that this is much bigger than just clandestine console to video game camaraderie with the means of making more money by ripping off consumers, but honestly that would just be too far of a stretch.
The real reason, or at least the reason that is much more practical is:
It Requires More Work and Will Drive the Price Up
I’m pretty sure many of you are familiar with the act of emulation. If not, well emulating a game is the act of imitating the inner working of another console in order to play the games made for that console using the hardware and software built in to the machine that will be doing the emulation via a downloaded program.
I bring this up because emulation is one of the options console developers have in order to allow the console to be backwards compatible. If the decision is made to use this method, it will mean that the developers over at (let’s say) Sony would have to create new software that could emulate the Playstation 3 and the install that software into the Playstation 4.
Sounds easy, right? Well, at its core it really is a simple answer, but in order for this to happen the PS4 would have to be significantly more powerful than the PS3. It is a powerful machine, but its power will have to driven up even more in order to smoothly emulate and play the PS3 games.
Another answer to this issue would be to include the chips of the PS3 into the PS4. Although it is the most feasible option of the two, it’s still not feasible enough for companies to go with it. Not to mention the trouble when it comes to the different architecture of the consoles.
Meaning it won’t only be a matter of putting the chips in, it’s also a matter of redesigning the architecture of the console to accommodate for the addition of a new chip.
In both cases it all comes down to cost of manufacturing. Both options will cause the price of the unit to rise, and in a very competitive market these companies seek out to be the cheapest while still being the better console.
Sadly, this means backwards compatibility is possible, but will be too much of a financial risk. Sony made the mistake of making the original PS3 backwards compatible, which caused their console to be the most expensive upon release. They and Microsoft saw that as a learning point for their future consoles.
Will we ever see a backwards compatible Xbox One and Playstation 4?
Maybe. If Sony and Microsoft decide to take a hit on their mark-up profit margin and make resigned consoles with backwards compatible capabilities, then yeah our chances of seeing them seem pretty optimistic. However, I don’t see that being the case right now.