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It’s about time Sony showed PS3 some respect (VGC)

kingfey

Banned

For a company that’s only beaten by Nintendo in terms of longevity in the console space, PlayStation isn’t the best at celebrating its legacy.

Sure, it can throw together an extremely well-edited and nostalgic video highlighting the glory days of the PlayStation launch and the pill-influenced mid 90s hype of WipeOut and Parappa.

However, when it comes to making those games playable, outside of the disappointing miniature PSOne, there’s a strange absence of PlayStation’s history on its modern consoles, and no generation is more conspicuous by its absence than the PlayStation 3.

The PlayStation 3 wasn’t a failure. Not by the end, at least. Sure, it was undoubtedly Sony‘s most challenging home console – it reportedly lost billions at launch – but by the time that generation ended, PS3 actually marginally outsold the Xbox 360, a console that’s widely regarded to have ‘won’ that particular race.

But the negative sentiment was probably a good thing for Sony in the long run. Without the PS3 and the disastrous messaging that seemed to permeate throughout that generation, it wouldn’t have made such a huge splash with the PS4, laying the banana skin for Microsoft to make its own mess with the Xbox One.

As one exec involved in the consoles remarked: “The PlayStation that emerged at the end of PS3 was a much more gritty, determined, focused entity than the much more hubristic organisation at the beginning of the PS3 era.”

By the PS4 era, Sony was doing its best to make you never have to touch your PS3 again, namely by porting all of the big games from the system to the PS4 in flash new remasters. No longer would users have to dig out something the size of a George Forman grill to play the Uncharted series or The Last of Us.

Sony seemed burned by it. While, again, it wasn’t a disaster, it’s the first console, and only so far that hasn’t been a giant success. It’s the only PlayStation home console (not counting the PS5) not to break 100 million sales. It’s still the 8th best selling console of all time, but even that wasn’t enough for Sony, which very swiftly moved on.

At launch, neither the PS4 nor the Xbox One supported backwards compatibility. But eventually, in its fight to regain some of the ground lost in 2013, Microsoft invested millions into creating an Xbox 360 emulator that could work in the Xbox One’s software, opening the door to hundreds of classic titles.

Many expected Sony to follow suit. But then… nothing. While a few PS2 titles were ported to PS4 and PS Now had a modest suite of streamed PS3 games, no proper backwards compatibility function was added to the system.

That’s why when patents emerged implying that the PS5 could support backwards compatibility across all generations of PlayStation, people were excited. But this wasn’t present at launch.

Now, the new PlayStation Plus has been announced. When the service launches, players will be able to download PlayStation, PlayStation 2, PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 games as part of its expanded offering. However, those looking to play PS3 games will have to settle for streaming them. Just like PlayStation Now.

That’s very disappointing.

While this hasn’t been stated publicly, the consensus is that due to the unique architecture of the PS3 and its infamous cell processor, emulating the system within the PS5 in software, (in the same way that the Xbox Series X emulates an Xbox 360), would be incredibly difficult.

However, fans aren’t convinced. YouTuber and developer at Night Dive Studios ModernVintageGamer tweeted in the wake of the announcement that emulating the PS3 on the PS5 was “absolutely possible” but that “Sony has never been interested in investing the millions to make it happen”.

Sadly, his second point is probably the real answer. Ultimately, Sony is a business, and outside of the hearts and minds of players and the preservationist community, what does it get from allowing you to download PS3 games onto a PS5?


It would argue that you can still play the games, and even though the library isn’t complete, or anywhere close, neither of the modern consoles offers full backwards compatibility anyway. There’s a romantic idea that one day you’d wake up and put every PS3 disc you own into your shiny new console, but it’s not one that’s realistic. There’s also the licensing factor which absolutely cripples certain genres of games, like sports, wrestling or driving, due to the expiration of contracts and server closures.

However, there are some series that Sony has completely marooned on the PlayStation 3. The inFamous series, PlayStation’s superhero series before they had Spider-Man, is only playable on the PlayStation 3. Despite the series getting a PS4 entry early in the console’s life cycle, and an almost yearly rumour of a collection, the three games, inFamous, inFamous 2 and inFamous: Festival of Blood, can only be played on modern consoles via PlayStation Now.

The same is true of the Killzone series. And the Resistance series. These franchises that Sony built its first-party empire on are forgotten, while only Naughty Dog’s Uncharted and The Last of Us seem to remain in the zeitgeist. Both inFamous developer Sucker Punch and Killzone developer Guerrilla have moved on to new franchises, Ghost of Tsushima and Horizon respectively, but it’s a shame that there’s no way to play these games in a modern setting outside of a streaming solution that is far from ideal.

That’s another factor in all of this. If the streaming solution was good, I don’t think as many people would be disappointed by this announcement. Not only is the steaming of PS3 games not available in every region, even in regions with fast internet, and on the best consumer internet you can currently get in the UK, PS Now is a latent, blurry and frankly, ugly way to play them.

The input delay is horrible and the image is muddy and constantly tears. I understand that in most cases it’s a 720p image, further compressed by streaming, but when blown up on any modern TV, it just looks bad.

Sony’s attitude towards the PS3 era looks clear: ‘If we didn’t bring it to PS4, it doesn’t matter’, which, considering this new £100 a year service is going to be targetted to the hardest of the hardcore Sony fan, feels like a mistake. We’re yet to see how the PS1 and PS2 are handled, but considering the games from those consoles will be downloadable, it’s likely the games will at least feel better to play, eliminating the streaming lag.

It’s truly a shame to see how PlayStation continues to treat its third generation. Much of what’s so good about the platform now, namely its focus on big, shiny first-party experiences was birthed from the PS3. The excuses about how technically challenging it might be to get PS3 games running natively on the PS5 hold less and less water as more emulators emerge in the PC scene, running on hardware far below that of a PlayStation 5.

But for now, this is how the legacy of the PS3 lives on. Instead of focussing on the great things it did and the franchises it started, it’s remembered as a hard to develop for system that has architecture so awkward that Sony would rather leave it in the past. But for many, especially for those for whom the PS3 was their first gaming generation, it’s a disappointing erasure of an important era in gaming.
 
Most people don’t give a shit about DOWNLOADING ps3 games.

Most people don’t even care about playing them, period. The minority probably have a ps3 slim sitting around somewhere with 100 games. Most gamers will try a game or two and forget all about it.

Sony have the numbers, they know people dont really care outside of the vocal minority. Not worth the investment for local emulation
 
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00_Zer0

Member
Did you just link an article and proceed to post the whole thing in the OP? This isn't a way to start a thread/conversation bro. What are your thoughts besides aricle says this? Low tier effort. I give you 1/10
 

MScarpa

Member
it literally adds 100ms of latency and has bad image quality... if you find that playable... I mean...

that's like an audiophile going around saying "listening to music on a free subscription of Spotify over my phone speakers is absolutely fine!"
Ok well i don't have issues with it. So not sure what you want me to tell you. Should I stop enjoying it because you don't like it? Speaking of Spotify, I love Spotify, it's fantastic. ☺
 

01011001

Banned
Ok well i don't have issues with it. So not sure what you want me to tell you. Should I stop enjoying it because you don't like it? Speaking of Spotify, I love Spotify, it's fantastic. ☺

you can enjoy it, but just because you find a really bad way of playing games enjoyable doesn't mean it's fine.

don't assume people have such low standards, just like I wouldn't tell some music fanatic with a gigantic sound system that what I described earlier is a perfect good way to listen to music lol
 

AGRacing

Gold Member
Most people don’t give a shit about DOWNLOADING ps3 games.

Most people don’t even care about playing them, period. The minority probably have a ps3 slim sitting around somewhere with 100 games. Most gamers will try a game or two and forget all about it.

Sony have the numbers, they know people dont really care outside of the vocal minority. Not worth the investment for local emulation

I am so sick of this garbage...

What numbers do they have ? How are they measuring the fact that I've got an offline PS3 plugged into a TV in my basement because I don't have enough free HDMI ports on my main TV? Is Microsoft sharing their legacy title sales information with Sony? I know I've bought a lot of those. Are they tracking the amount of money I've chosen to shift to Xbox on 3rd party titles... since I know they're far more likely to support my accessing them in the future? How are they tracking the interest of us rich men who grew up in the 90s have in re-buying games they've let die ? Also - are they at all interested in actually backing up their bullshit sentiment about these games being "art" - when they let most of it collect dust.

Sony should just get off their asses and make an effort. Pay for the licenses in waves and release a few big titles at a time. They'll sell. And I say that out of my love for growing up with them and nothing else.
 

yurinka

Member
No. According to the developer of the best PS3 emulator and an Insomniac/ICE game engine developer during PS3, PS5 can't properly emulate PS3. At least not a big majority of games and at full performance etc. According to them extra hardware would be needed.

It's impossible according to them, can't be emulated. It isn't a matter of spending millions on an emulator, it's that PS4 or PS5 hardware can't handle it. Each game must be ported, remastered or remade on its own from the ground to have them running natively on PS4 or PS5.
 
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MScarpa

Member
you can enjoy it, but just because you find a really bad way of playing games enjoyable doesn't mean it's fine.

don't assume people have such low standards, just like I wouldn't tell some music fanatic with a gigantic sound system that what I described earlier is a perfect good way to listen to music lol
HAHA you're LITERALLY telling me it's not okay to like streaming games because YOU think it's sub standard. That is ridiculous. To each their own I guess. I must be the only person streaming games. It's amazing they can even stay in business with it being so terrible. 😂
 

sn0man

Member
It would argue that you can still play the games, and even though the library isn’t complete, or anywhere close, neither of the modern consoles offers full backwards compatibility anyway. There’s a romantic idea that one day you’d wake up and put every PS3 disc you own into your shiny new console, but it’s not one that’s realistic. There’s also the licensing factor which absolutely cripples certain genres of games, like sports, wrestling or driving, due to the expiration of contracts and server closures.
I think this particular excerpt regarding backwards compatibility and softwarwe licensing is a red herring when it comes to full hardware emulation.

If emulating a gaming console would cause or trigger some sort of sports or car or other licensing issue, we wouldn’t have 99%+ PS4 compatibility on PS5 or similar from Wii to WiiU or any of the other hardware emulation or inclusion solutions.

If Sony Emulated the PS3 hardware on the PS5, they’d enjoy similar compatibility to those other systems. You put in the game and you play.

I agree Sony doesn’t see the monetary benefit but if they keep selling a majority of PS5s with discs then that should be enough of an enquiry to give it a try. It’s a goodwill win that might sell some people a PS5 (that they’ll ultimately profit from regarding other software and services).
 
Sony have never been that good with emulation, i can see why they don't want to invest, it will cost alot, with no guarantee the end result will be any good, but i think that's a mistake, if ur going succeed in a subscription service , you need content, look at ps now, content wise it a load of shit, they need games asap.
 

Swift_Star

Banned
Most relevant ps3 games are already remastered for ps4 so whatever. If anything, Sony should remaster all their ps3 first parties to ps4/5 and be done with it. There’s nothing really good stuck on that hardware anymore.
 
Most, not all of them. And Konami should’ve released all MGS games on ps4/5 already. It’s pretty sad they didn’t yet.
Yeah I think they're crazy for letting that one stay locked to the PS3. MGS 4 Guns of the Patriots would be huge if it were remastered/re-released since there are a bunch of folks out there who didn't have PS3's that didn't get to play it, and those of us who did would probably jump right back into it(I darn sure am this year lol).

Then again I str8 up hated the ports of other Metal Gear games to other systems/and the PC Ports...I think the only port or remake I liked of any of them was the gamecube one I think?
 

ethomaz

Banned
No. According to the developer of the best PS3 emulator and an Insomniac/ICE game engine developer during PS3, PS5 can't properly emulate PS3. At least not a big majority of games and at full performance etc. According to them extra hardware would be needed.

It's impossible according to them, can't be emulated. It isn't a matter of spending millions on an emulator, it's that PS4 or PS5 hardware can't handle it. Each game must be ported, remastered or remade on its own from the ground to have them running natively on PS4 or PS5.
That is interesting… do you have any link to read?

I know that PC PS3 emulator can’t emulate over 30% of the games even with the most top hardware PC today.
 
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yurinka

Member
That is interesting… do you have any link to read?

I know that PC PS3 emulator can’t emulate over 30% of the games even with the most top hardware PC today.
It's explained here including the quotes I mentioned:

A video made by the guy of the tweet quoted in the article show the facts of why PS5 can't emulate properly PS3 including these quotes from people who really know what they are talking about.
 
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JaksGhost

Member
I swear to god somebody from VGC has infiltrated this forum because how many more of their articles do we need clogging shit up. I’m not clicking but I bet they love the ad revenue from the traffic from here.
 

adamsapple

Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
Another reason to buy a good PC and install RPCS3.

Sony could at least sell those games in the store and run an emulator on the PS5.

Yeah that'll be an interesting thing, whether Sony sells them piece meal or you can only access the PS3 stream behind the sub pay wall.
 

yurinka

Member
You've linked to a MVG video from 2020.

This is what MVG said 2 days ago:





I'd think his latest statement is the more accurate/pertinent one.

I know he made the video, which explains very well why PS5 can't emulate PS3 and where people who knows what are they talking about (devs from the PS3 emulator for PC and Insomniac engine coder who did work on Sony's game engine that many of their teams did use for PS3) debunks what he says in this recent bullshit tweet. They say PS5 hardware can't do it and explain why.

The PS5 hardware didn't change since he made the video, what it's explained there remain true. Maybe he doesn't remember his own video.
 
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adamsapple

Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
I know he made the video, which explains very well why PS5 can't emulate PS3 and where people who knows what are they talking about (devs from the PS3 emulator for PC and Insomniac engine coder who did work on Sony's game engine that many of their teams did use for PS3) debunks what he says in his recent tweet. They say PS5 hardware can't do it and explain why.

The PS5 hardware didn't change since he made the video, what it's explained there remain true.

I've seen the entire video, not once in the video is it said that emulation is impossible. Not sure where you're getting that from.

This is what the Insomniac person says:

16ijok.png




Again, they talk about it being tricky and complex. But that would be Sony's task to figure out how to work. And I'm sure their in-house engineers can do a more efficient job of it than some hobbyist emulator authors working for free over the last couple of years on their own free time.

Look at the original Xbox and 360. There are no commercial emulators for Xbox and the 360 Xenia emulator is nowhere close to as refined as RPCS3 is. Yet MS are able to emulate several games from the OG Xbox and 600+ Xbox 360 games not just on the modern Series consoles, but even the weak sauce Xbox One hardware from 2013.

It's not a matter of it being possible or not, but a matter of if Sony sees it worth it as a gesture of goodwill towards the fanbase. Which they currently do not.
 
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yurinka

Member
I've seen the entire video, not once in the video is it said that emulation is impossible. Not sure where you're getting that from.

This is what the Insomniac person says:

16ijok.png




Again, they talk about it being tricky and complex. But that would be Sony's task to figure out how to work. And I'm sure their in-house engineers can do a more efficient job of it than some hobbyist emulator authors working for free over the last couple of years on their own free time.

Look at the original Xbox and 360. There are no commercial emulators for Xbox and the 360 Xenia emulator is nowhere close to as refined as RPCS3 is. Yet MS are able to emulate several games from the OG Xbox and 600+ Xbox 360 games not just on the modern Series consoles, but even the weak sauce Xbox One hardware from 2013.

It's not a matter of it being possible or not, but a matter of if Sony sees it worth it as a gesture of goodwill towards the fanbase. Which they currently do not.
It is said twice. Rob Wyattt (Insomniac) says "Sustained single core performance on a SPU is still higher than anything on the market" = PS5 can't emulate properly something that is faster than the PS5.

The emulator coder says PS5 would need extra hardware including the SPUs or equivalent. Meaning PS5 can't emulate it properly.

Unlike in the case of PS3, nothing prevents Xbox OG or 360 from being emulated on XBO, Series or modern PCs other than licensing and desire from MS (or hobbyist emulator coders) to do so.
 
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DenchDeckard

Moderated wildly
In the grand scheme of things the ps3 was shit, but it did have some genuinely great few games. Uncharted 2, motorstorm pacific rift……yeah probably those two lol.

ok, mgs4 was alright too.
 
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Topher

Gold Member
Look at the original Xbox and 360. There are no commercial emulators for Xbox and the 360 Xenia emulator is nowhere close to as refined as RPCS3 is. Yet MS are able to emulate several games from the OG Xbox and 600+ Xbox 360 games not just on the modern Series consoles, but even the weak sauce Xbox One hardware from 2013.

The Xenon was a much simpler CPU than the Cell though. Not really a good comparison. Either way, I think Sony could probably do it but there is little financial incentive to do so.
 
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