http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-33142538

If they had this for ps4, I'd get rid of my PS3.

It's a genius move. I wonder if Sony can/would do something similar considering the Cell chip is supposed to make it next to impossible to just convert stuff or whatever. Plus Sony would obviously like to charge you money for Now etc. Now will need to have games hanging out of it from the get go to stand a chance. If it doesn't work flawlessly from the start with a boatload of sensible options ie not Sony digital pricing levels, it'll be about as much use as Home. And now it looks totally outclassed before it's even started.

TBH the main attraction for me would be to keep my old games, especially the Arkham series. Would definitely prefer to play that all on one console rather than having to play AA and AC (and maybe AO) on PS3, and then switch to AK on PS4.

Xbox One's backwards compatibility works because it's tricking your 360 games | GamesRadar
http://www.gamesradar.com/xbox-ones-bac ... 360-games/

Would that work with the PS4?

Certainly wouldn't fit with their money-making attempts...

The 360 and One are both organised internally in a similar way to PCs (in fact the One basically is a PC) so the emulation is, if not straight forward, then at least well understood. The internals of the PS3 are, to use a technical term, [LIFTED] mental. The Cell processor is a highly customised piece of silicon that diverges from your intel/AMD/PowerPC chips in massive ways. Emulating a PS3 on a PS4 (which, again is pretty much just a PC in a small box) would be... non-trivial. It can be done - there isn't a decent working PS3 emulator on Windows yet but there are a couple that are getting there - but it's a much harder job. And therefore harder to justify as an add on for the PS4.

Besides which, the value of backwards compatibilty is a hotly discussed topic. The 360 and PS3 didn't have anything like complete BC yet they sold bucket loads of both of them. How much of the market actually wants/needs BC isn't agreed at all.

The 360's Xenon is PowerPC based and it's cores are effectively the Cell's PPE (modified).

True but it's still what you'd call a 'monolothic' multicore processor. Actually pretty standard stuff these days. The full PS3 'cell' is just weird - it's got a slowish CPU with 7 subsidiary processors (SPUs) that run at twice the rate of the PS4's CPU and each of them has 256MB of very fast cache RAM. And at any point possibly up to six of them might be available but you don't know exactly how many will be at any given time. It's more like the CPU/GPU mix of a modern PC all on one chip but then with an additional GPU as well. Emulating that on a standard Intel/AMD chip at any speed beyond glacial would be an absolute horror show. You might be able to do it on a PC with two graphics cards using one card specifically for SPU emulation but on a PS4? Yeesh.

I was commenting more on the 360's Xenon PowerPC -> One's AMD x86 but yes, that Cell is a funny old thing.

Do we know how they're handling 360 emulation on One? Even if the emulation is easier than PS3->PS4 I'm surprised the One has the raw power required to emulate the 360.

Fourth post, they replicate the 360 OS allowing Live etc to work.

Super meat boy on XB1!!!

Whoop!


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Black Ops 2 is now the most-wanted Xbox One backwards compatible game | GamesRadar
http://www.gamesradar.com/black-ops-2-x ... ompatible/

Why? It's one of the crappiest games in the series.

Nah, the original Black Ops was arguably the worst. It put me off the series to the extent that I only played MW3 a couple of months ago, having vowed never to buy another COD game outside of the bargain bins - I think it was £3.74 on Steam.

What didn't you like about the original Ops.? I think it's still got one of the better multiplayer attempts. Recent years have been utterly awful.

I don't do multi-player any more, and got increasingly hacked off at them passing off a four hour single player campaign as worthwhile, with a few MP maps thrown in. It's easier to swallow if got it for less than a fiver.