[X] My Assistant

[StealthSigma]

While I have no particular qualms about keeping old hardware around (still have my Saturn and Dreamcast ready to go when necessary) the backwards compatability were selling points for me on the last generation. The PS3 in particular because it meant I could mothball 2 systems. Now I'm forced to either keep more old hardware or buy games again that I already own for emulation, and that's assuming that some of them even see a re-release. Unsurprisingly people aren't happy with that idea. Just like they aren't okay with the idea of "owning" a game that they cannot give to a friend when they are done with it or even loan it to them. Now we're going to just be licensing the IP, which sounds incredibly lame. It shouldn't be any different than purchasing a movie or music (although I know I'm a holdout for buying CDs still). When I'm done with it, I should have the ability to do with it as I please because I own it, provided I don't break any laws.

Well the problem is partially of their own doing but partially of necessity. Consoles have used different hardware architectures because it made good sense. The problem with the x86 and x64 architecture is that it's universal. That leads to overhead. By using custom architecture you're actually able to get a better performance out of hardware than you would with equivalent x86/x64 hardware or to make the x86/x64 as good as the custom architecture you would need to significantly increase the performance of the hardware. So we see Nintendo, Sony, Sega, and Microsoft all making platforms with customer architecture and software that is catered to it. So since you need lesser hardware for the solution it helped drag down costs which is a plus for the customer. The downside is that it meant every generation of consoles was pretty much incompatible with each other without some sort of hardware emulation chip.

We hit a point where the generic x64 x86 hardware has become potent/cheap enough that custom architectures really only make sense in niche environments. That's a good thing. While it may be disappointing that backward compatability is unlikely in the new generation it's not really a bad thing. A clean slate is actually in the best interest of the long term health of the gaming industry.

[X-Kalibur]

I agree that from a system architecture standpoint it's a good thing, after all, aside from having to emulate DOS I can still run all my old PC games (well, minus the ones that were on 5 1/4"). I didn't miss the point in time where I had six systems set up to my TV either though. As it currently stands if I get either system I'd be looking at 4 or 5 actively hooked up systems. Here's to hoping the hardware change really means most of the games will see PC releases and I skip the new Philips CDi.