Xbox Series S Can Now Play Classic Gran Turismo Games

This is the discussion thread for a recent post on GTPlanet:

This article was published by Andrew Evans (@Famine) on December 2nd, 2020 in the Gaming category.

 

Might be a good reason to buy an S as well as an X.

 

I thought I hit my head after seeing this on the GTP home page.

 

It feels so right yet so wrong...

Imagine Sony releasing a "PS2 Classic" much like the PSOne Classic, while this thing can do the same...how awkward would that be?

 

Very early stages... What is RPCS3 would work?

Specs are pretty powerful enough.

 

I want to hear Sony's boss about that

 

very strange...

 

Well, you and I would love to play PS1-3 games on PS5 and beyond, but sadly Jim Ryan thinks they're obsolete, ancient relics doomed to be unplayable, collectible coasters, and what Jim says goes.
This generation, it is definitely the Xbox that Only Does Everything™️.

 

waiting to play Forza on PS5

 

Well this might actually make me change from Sony to MS, something I never ever caught me considering to do til MVG coverage. I still have plenty of stuff to play on my PS3, but when I finally move to current gen idk, MS is getting pretty convincible.

 

Well, maybe even me will change from Sony to Microsoft, but for old gen Playstation games. Sony please turn on your own emulation on PS5. Its easy

 

Nothing that a well equipped PC can't do.

 

That's not the point though, is it? It must be embarrassing for Sony that the lesser of Microsoft's two new consoles has better backwards compatibility with Sony's back catalogue than Sony's new console does...

But I kinda get it, because it'd be similarly embarrassing if the PS5 could play PSX and PS2 games but not PS3, since the average gamer/layperson wouldn't care about the differences in Cell and x86 making it very difficult to emulate the former with the latter. And then there's the fact they wouldn't be able to sell Gran Turismo games again anyway because of the licensing nightmare.

And before someone brings it up, RPCS3 running on PCs is very different to RPCS3 running on a PS5, since PCs are still way out in front with regards to the per-core capability of their CPUs, which is key for emulating a PS3.

 

I doubt they'll worry too much, it's a workaround way of doing it and it's not officially supported so most players won't even consider doing it or be aware that it's a possibility. It feels like a very expensive way to play some old games that aren't even guaranteed to run correctly.

 

Backward compatibility is nice if it comes as standard and you just have to shove your disk in and play. But if you have to go to the trouble of downloading software, signing up for a service (at a cost) and playing around with settings each time you want to play older games, you might as well just dust off your old PS2 and PS3 from the attic and plug them in.

 

Don't know bout y'all but I not interested in playing games from the stone age era.
As a Playstation console user for many years I don't mind being able to play games from perhaps one previous generation but pretty much when I'm done with that I'm done with that and prefer to move on to games made for whatever current generation.

 

Yeah, all true, but it does still demonstrate that backwards compatibility of PSX and PS2 games through emulation, purely reverse-engineered emulation with none of the first-party knowledge Sony has at that, is technically possible to do on the hardware in the PS5 (and no doubt the PS4 too) as it exists today.

I think the reason Sony doesn't allow it (apart from the fact that they'd need to be able to sell games to run on it and that opens up a whole load of issues of its own) is they'd have to explain why the PS5 can't play PS3 games and it's hard to do that without opening themselves up to sensationalist reporting/wilful misreadings of that explanation that say something along the lines of "the PS3 is more powerful than the PS5". I mean just look at what happened with the "most PS4 games will work on PS5 but so far we've only tested about 100" being misreported as "only 100 PS4 games will work on PS5"...

 

Considering how you cape for PCARS and very hard at that, I am not surprised in the slightest that this is also a viewpoint you believe in.

 

Isn't it like a licensing problem to emulate all those old games on newer hardware? I know that hardware is not a problem even for a PS3 game to run well on PS5. But, probably game licensing of content is restricting all these backwards compatibility.

 

I would have done something like that if it was as easy as the program could read the disc. Finding a ROM sounds like a hassle.

 

Agree. But isn't that what emulation does for any console? Maybe the owners and creators of the code can have an answer to that. But again, my point is that probably licensing is what stops all the hassle from ever being worth looking into.

 

Going back to @daan's comment, it sounds like new consoles emulating games from older consoles is seen no differently as playing the original game on a functioning, older console. The licensing only applies to the original game at the time of publishing.

 

Ok you got me there check and mate. Have to confess I'd gotten around to really enjoying Pcars 3. Been playing it almost every day.

 

In my view the problem with PS1 games are absolutely not a matter of age, but of the awkward "growing pains" that occurred when games shifted from 2D to 3D, through both the fifth and sixth generations of consoles. The fourth generation of consoles is a gold mine of classics that stand the test of time. 2D game design had matured by then.

 

Do you not listen to old music? Watch old movies and TV shows? I can't imagine not watching classic films from the 60s and 70s again because they're "from the stone age era".

Fun games are fun games, no matter how old.

 

Personally speaking, the lack of backwards compatibility on the PS4 was a major reason why I went with the Xbox One on the (very freshly) previous generation. I was straight-up ready to buy the system until the clerk told me that older titles wouldn't work on it. With the XB1, the access to new games, as well as access to older games I had never played and the ability to replay some of my PS2/3 games that were sold cross-platform were just too good to pass up. Now, alongside the XB1 I have a BC PS3 and a (rather lackluster) PC, so to an extent my problems are solved.

I believe that both Sony and Microsoft have said that the percentage of people who take advantage of backwards-compatibility on previous consoles was fairly low. However, that backwards compatibility is still an extra feature for consoles, which potentially means extra money on the table. It attracts "older" players to newer consoles, since they don't have to worry about their older games being useless and, depending on who you are and where you live, it really helps in saving space (I pretty much have 7 gaming platforms corralled to 3 devices) and keeping things relatively organized. While I am very much a believer of "go where the games [you want to play] are" and have no real allegiance to any one company, I do think that Microsoft's openness to BC titles is one of the very few areas where they 100% wipe the floor with Sony, and I am still frustrated that Sony still seems to barley get the hints.

In the case of the topic at hand, I will be watching this development to see if the people messing with it are able to stabilize the settings and make it more user-friendly for a variety of titles. At the end of the day, $19 for a Dev Account, the price of a low-end Microsoft Gamecube (that joke just became a bit more literal), and having access to newer titles is arguably a pretty good value compared to getting a BC PS3 in good condition, or the price of building a well-rounded PC.

Also, I'm surprised (but not at all bothered by) to see an article about this on the front page. I know that GTP isn't 100% anti-emulation, but I was always under the impression that direct discussion of the means of emulation was a no-no.

 

It's certainly impressive what the Series S can do in addition to full Xbox BC. My PS2 is still setup and probably gets more use than anything else gaming wise. Such a great back catalogue of stuff to discover or rediscover. Just would prefer to be doing it on a new console.