• 9point6@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    And also, whenever the next one comes along that library will still be there

    Every other console you have the concept of “backwards compatibility” as a feature rather than an expectation.

    • halcyoncmdr@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      To be fair that’s because software on consoles is designed for specific hardware. With newer hardware the old games won’t just work, because they were complex for very specific hardware. So for BC you end up with emulation which requires a lot more processing power than the original hardware, and is not perfect.

      Or using the old hardware like the PlayStation 3 BC for instance, they literally had the PS2 hardware in the PS3 to handle BC. And as time went on they removed that hardware to save costs and BC went with it.

      PC gaming however, and by extension portables like the Steam Deck however are running software developed more generically for wider ranges of architecture to begin with. It means less hardware optimization, but it generally means compatibility out of the box as hardware improves since it wasn’t designed with extremely specific hardware anyway.