PS4: Stop caring about backwards compatibility people!

i totally agree, also because the new console is x86 based developers wouldnt go through the trouble to port old games to work with the new hardware, also the idea of having the cell processor in the new console to allow emulated gaming of PS3 games would be too costly just like what happened with the PS3.

most sony fanboys who even watched the conference probably already own a PS3, and anyone who doesnt will probably just wait anyway for the PS4, or get the PS3 for cheap later. From what i can tell developers seem to want to keep PS3 in the loop anyway for up coming games and are developing them for both PS3 and PS4, just like what they did with the PS2 and PS3 for quite a while after release. of course that would be select titles that they would be willing to do this with.

its simply put, technology moves forward, and to do that we have to drop the old for the new, either that be hardware, software, etc.

Well try and think of it in someone else's prospective, I don't own a PS3, but I have been interested in playing PS3 exclusive titles. It's been a few years and I'm more of a PC gamer than anything else and I know the PS4 will be announced in a few months so I'll just wait a bit longer, buy a PS4, buy the PS3 games I am interested in and everybody is happy.

But now I don't want the PS4 because of all the social integration and now I just want to buy a PS3 for cheap and call it a day. I would love to have a PS4, but with all these new "features" and it not being backwards compatible, then there really isn't a reason to get the new console if I only want to play the old games.

The only thing I am excited about is that it is X86 based, so "porting" games will be easier than before and therefore the PS4 exclusives might be able to have a later release date down the road for PC/Xbox players that don't want the PS but want to play the game, probably won't happen, but they have the option to do so.

What if i dont have a PS3 and want to buy a PS4 so I can play PS3 games and my old PS2 games because my PS2 broke down. So youre saying I should buy a PS2,PS3, and PS4? Seriously, dont be that stupid.  

woah settle down everyone, we are aware that there are many different scenario's we have only explored the small few of them so far. I understand consoles break down, my PS2's laser has died and that is not the biggest issue since my PS3 is backwards compatible. but also you have to understand hardware also breaks down over time. im sure there was not that many whiners back in the nes/snes generations about backwards compatibility.

Actually it can play downloaded PS3 games, but why would you want to purchase a game you already own on disk?

I read so many articles on the PS4 yesterday that I can't remember which one said it would be able to play downloaded PS3 games otherwise I'd post the link. This confused me because as others ponted out, the PS4 has a different architecture. I would think this would make any version of PS3 games unusable, not just the disk version.

Wait a minute. PS3 didn't have an x86 CPU? Actually considering they "had" to have a separate chip inside the PS3 to play PS2 games, I'm not surprised.

Well you could buy a launch PS3 that can play PS2 games then buy a PS4. Maybe $40 cheaper and one less console. ........ I'm done with consoles  .

well in my city there is a shop that sells refurbished PS3's and they are all the originall backwards compatible models with 60gb hdd, for $150, and on sale sometimes for $120, they are pretty cheap, just a matter of finding one and if ps3 and ps2 really mean all that much to you.

and yes PS3 games will be available via the PSN, but who knows if it will be just a stream gameplay or actually download and play from the console itself.

Lots of people spend *** tons of money to have a PC, a laptop, a tablet and a smartphone and they use them for the same stuff: Go online, check their Facebook, watch videos on Youtube, play games, surf the web, check their e-mail and watch porn... yet they complain they want to play PS3 games and PS4 games but they won't buy neither of them because "PS3 won't be as cool as PS4 but PS4 won't play PS3, PS2 or PSOne games"

PS3 is basically an emulator, let alone PS3 & PSN games, a PS3 can run, GENESIS, NEO GEO, Arcade, PSOne, PS2 and PSP games. If you want to play any of those then buy a PS3, they are cheap and will become even cheaper when PS4 arrives. If you don't own a PlayStation then buy a PS4 and wait 'till Sony release games from older PlayStation consoles via PSN.

Sorry to break the news to you, but the x86 architecture of the upcoming PS4 actually won't have much if any bearing on the ease of porting between it and PC/Xbox. The architecture is far less significant than were the PS4 to make use of the DirectX's api's. It won't though, and so porting won't actually be made any easier despite there being more architectural similarity than before. What does bode well for PS4 however is that there is a far better chance of the system's possibilities being fully explored, given that people do have some background knowledge of the x86 architecture and so therefore have a blueprint to work from.

That's if they use DirectX in the first place. With AMD hardware inside, they can easily make the game on PC first with OpenGL in mind and then port downwards and since Mac/Linux also utilizes OpenGL fantastically, that means it can become completely cross platform and easily portable.

It'll be easier to create the game on PC and then port downwards, thus having PC in mind first, ergo better games for everyone.

It's very likely that PS4 will continue using PSGL, which doesn't do any good for non-PS4 users.

OK, let's say you need to render some graphics on a console game you're making. Are you going to re-build the wheel, or are you going to use existing middleware? For middleware options, you have feature rich engines like Unity and Unreal, or you could go with something that is going to just take care of your 3D Rendering needs, and use a solution like Ogre. Cool thing about going with an option like this, would be that you don't have to worry about porting across from say Xbox360 to PS3 as much, since the engine is handling a lot of the work with API calls and such.
- Getting the code to run shouldn't really be hard, it's getting things optimized to run smoothly, that's the headache. Especially with something like the PS3, where you have SPUs, and tight memory constraints.

Anyways, I suppose if you were to write your own solution to render graphics (unlikely), you'd basically have to assume that API calls are going to be different from platform to platform, and build in some kind of abstraction layer...


Anyway, what I'm getting at, is that this API stuff, well... It's NOT a major hurdle for developers. That's why they don't bitch about it very much. Try to find a PS3 dev saying something like "Wow, working with PSGL has been so much more difficult for us vs DirectX." You won't.

The fundamentals of how these API calls and such work aren't so different, that it's going to be problematic. You'll hear some whining here and there that OpenGL "does things backwards" or whatever, but that's a freaking shrug off.

Not to mention that on consoles they have the ability to write code directly to the hardware, bypassing using APIs all-together.

*breath*

Which is why I completely disagree with a statement like "The architecture is far less significant than were the PS4 to make use of the DirectX's api's"

No. The architecture changes are significant. Developers no longer need to go through nearly as much effort doing things like breaking stuff off into self-contained sub-programs, small enough, and specific enough to work on an SPU. Now, instead, they get 8 regular cores.

Everything that you said is only relevant if PS4 supports DirectX or OpenGL. Sony's made no indication that they're moving away from PSGL though.

PS3 devs mostly use LibGCM, since it gives them better low level control. They may even send commands to the GPU directly through C or assembly. They barely even use PSGL, which is the higher level API. If they did use PSGL more, it has similarities to OpenGL ES, but uses Cg, which is real similar to Microsoft's HLSL used in DirectX. Ideally, if you had a PS3 dev that was supposed to be working with PSGL, they'd be familiar with both DirectX and OpenGL.

As far as whether the PS4 will support DirectX or not? Well, what I'm trying to get across, is it doesn't matter.