Why did Sony undersell PS5 backward compatiblity?

gebler · Dec 19, 2020

gebler said:
I don't think they knew how good the BC would be in March, when Cerny mentioned that it worked well for the top 100 games. The 99% claim came much closer to release, when they'd done more extensive testing and given developers a chance to patch problematic games. Perhaps they should have been more clear from the outset that they'd expected a high degree of compatibility across the entire library, but I think they clarified that rather quickly (without putting a number on it, since they didn't have one yet.)

Carn said:
Not true, they updated the article covering Cerny's talk in March iirc.

Unveiling New Details of PlayStation 5: Hardware Technical Specs [UPDATED]

Watch live for a deep dive into PS5's system architecture and how it will shape the future of games.

blog.playstation.com

What's not true? I mentioned the clarification you linked to, and wrote that it came quickly. But it didn't contain the 99% claim, which came much closer to launch, in September:

PS5 will be ‘99 percent’ backward compatible with PS4 games

PS4 games could give you something to play as the PS5 lineup fills out.

www.theverge.com

Deleted member 59126 · Dec 19, 2020

RivalGT said:
Also most people dont care about BC, its never going to be a selling point, focusing on it would be a waste of time.

This is absolutely true. But if you don't offer it, people will make it a huge deal.

WhtR88t · Dec 19, 2020

Nightengale said:
I mean, the reality of it is that Sony could've done both. Heck, they could've done more. They could've deployed tech, platform, marketing and spokespeople - have way more interviews. Talk about BC, talk about tech, talk about OS, talk about enhancements to old games, talk about new games, etc. Let more people aside from Geoff Keighley test out Astrobot and Dualsense months in advance instead of waiting till November before press could get their first hands-on. It's not an either-or situation.

They chose not to. And the many threads this forum has arguing about Sony's lack of communication/arrogance/etc is evidence of that.

They also would have burned through a lot more money doing all this and probably figured the return wouldn't be worth it.

Focus on one message, to a target audience (a larger audience than people who visit gaming forums) and keep your marketing budget in check.

Just because it is possible to do all the things doesn't mean it's a wise investment in employees time or your companies strategy/budget.

PenultimateFantasy · Dec 19, 2020

Why doesn't the PS5 run PS1 and PS2 games ?

It's BC is not as wide ranging ad the Xbox so they probably bavky don't want to draw comparisons

HeyNay · Dec 19, 2020

The age-old business adage of under-promise, over-deliver, is my guess.

Wispmetas · Dec 19, 2020

Well they did not undersell it, I knew how it was going to work before the system came out. They mainly didn't focus on it because they had other stuff to hype up, like the new games and new features.

BC is just that...play your old games but better or not better at all, it is not that exciting apart from the novelty at the beginning and a nice feature to have at the end of the day.

TheWildCard · Dec 19, 2020

Initially it was probably a good thing in case there was a high profile game that wouldn't work, but they must have known that 99% of games was going to work in the final months before launch, I'm am surprised they didn't clarify more strongly then. Then again Sony's been not as big on selling older stuff in general.

JCal · Dec 19, 2020

They absolutely undersold it. If you watch Digital Foundry's BC video, the very first one, even they were surprised that PS4 BC games had access to the full PS5 clocks.

I didn't study Cerny's video the way some of y'all did (lol), so I might be wrong, but Cerny didn't state that that was going to happen. Isn't that the whole point of the image he presented?

"PS5" - "PS4 Pro" - "PS4"

There were going to be different modes of operation. I left that presentation thinking PS4 games were going to run on "PS4 Pro Legacy Mode," if they could, capped at the performance levels of a PS4 Pro, and any game that presented issues would run in "PS4 Legacy Mode" or not at all.

Teddie28 · Dec 19, 2020

I just wish they forced their own devs to update their games to take full advantage of BC. I get 3rd party not doing it, but it sucks GoW and others can't be played at 4K60 without disc workaround.

Richter1887 · Dec 19, 2020

JCal said:
They absolutely undersold it. If you watch Digital Foundry's BC video, the very first one, even they were surprised that PS4 BC games had access to the full PS5 clocks.

I didn't study Cerny's video the way some of y'all did (lol), so I might be wrong, but Cerny didn't state that that was going to happen. Isn't that the whole point of the image he presented?

"PS5" - "PS4 Pro" - "PS4"

There were going to be different modes of operation. I left that presentation thinking PS4 games were going to run on "PS4 Pro Legacy Mode," if they could, capped at the performance levels of a PS4 Pro, and any game that presented issues would run in "PS4 Legacy Mode" or not at all.

Nah he specifically said that some games will run on PS4 or PS4 Pro because other wise the games would run too fast or run into issues. He said that it depends on the game itself so some might run better because they can unlock the framerate and performance to benefit from the PS5 hardware.

zombiejames · Dec 19, 2020

JCal said:
They absolutely undersold it. If you watch Digital Foundry's BC video, the very first one, even they were surprised that PS4 BC games had access to the full PS5 clocks.

I didn't study Cerny's video the way some of y'all did (lol), so I might be wrong, but Cerny didn't state that that was going to happen. Isn't that the whole point of the image he presented?

Yes, he did:

"Running PS4 and PS4 Pro titles at boosted frequencies has also added complexity. The boost is truly massive this time around and some game code just can't handle it testing has to be done on the title by title basis."

mhayze · Dec 19, 2020

They sold it just right. People can read way too much into things and a slight overselling could have led to a "best thing since sliced bread" interpretation which could have led to big backlash and lawsuits and money back requests.
Better to be mildly pleasantly surprised (which is about where it should be if you were paying attention) than the reverse.

Skux · Dec 19, 2020

They didn't, and if they did, it's because they want people to buy PS5 games and remasters/remakes.

blastprocessor · Dec 19, 2020

BC could be much better!

Frame doubling, higher resolutions, higher Anisotropic filtering, Sony need to look into this ASAP.

If Microsoft can do it so can Sony.

What you got from Sony was the bare minimum.

mreddie · Dec 19, 2020

They undersold it in case some didn't work, like Ghosts runs like smooth butter on the 5 but other games don't.

Hell, look at Killzone on the 5, you would think Shadowfall came out this year, also weird that isn't on the PS Plus collection.

Crayon · Dec 19, 2020

There was a whole mythology. A nine teraflop console overclocked in a panic by the hacks at Sony, variable clock foolery making the performance unstable, hard to program for, overheating, super expensive, fake 4k, no bc, bla blah blah. All straight from mark cerny's mouth!

the-pi-guy · Dec 19, 2020

Beer Monkey said:
Are you serious?

Microsoft has a BC team, in-house, and has made it clear that BC is a high priority for years.

Sony had AMD develop BC and Jim Ryan has been really clear that "old games" are not a thing people should care about.

To be clear, this is a messaging issue and I am playing PS4 games on PS5 and loving the upgrades, but Sony generally refuses to publicly value BC.

Sony didn't just pass the burden of BC to AMD and walk away. They did design work with AMD, they did a massive amount of testing afterwards.

MS definitely puts in more effort than Sony does, but the gap in effort isn't as large as you are implying.

JCal said:
They absolutely undersold it. If you watch Digital Foundry's BC video, the very first one, even they were surprised that PS4 BC games had access to the full PS5 clocks.

I didn't study Cerny's video the way some of y'all did (lol), so I might be wrong, but Cerny didn't state that that was going to happen. Isn't that the whole point of the image he presented?

"PS5" - "PS4 Pro" - "PS4"

There were going to be different modes of operation. I left that presentation thinking PS4 games were going to run on "PS4 Pro Legacy Mode," if they could, capped at the performance levels of a PS4 Pro, and any game that presented issues would run in "PS4 Legacy Mode" or not at all.

There was some ambiguity of how it was going to go. But we did know that some games would support the full clocks. It was mentioned by Cerny in March, they have to do a lot of testing because some game code can't handle the boost.

We didn't know if there would be 3 modes for PS4 base, pro and PS5. Or if the modes that Cerny was mentioning were largely just instruction sets.

shadowsdarknes · Dec 19, 2020

mreddie said:
They undersold it in case some didn't work, like Ghosts runs like smooth butter on the 5 but other games don't.

Hell, look at Killzone on the 5, you would think Shadowfall came out this year, also weird that isn't on the PS Plus collection.

They also undersold Ghost of Tshushima.

They advertised the game as "Up to 60 fps" when really it's a 60 fps game like any other. Hell, it holds 60 fps better than most games that flat out advertise 60 fps. Drops are really not noticeable if there are any.

blastprocessor said:
BC could be much better!

Frame doubling, higher resolutions, higher Anisotropic filtering, Sony need to look into this ASAP.

If Microsoft can do it so can Sony.

What you got from Sony was the bare minimum.

Games pushing past resolution and frame rate caps without altering the game code are not the norm on the Xbox.

Frame rate boosts are very comparable between PS5 and Series X.

The AF addition is nice, but that's a relatively minor improvement. Most consumers would probably never notice unless MS highlighted it.

Tatsu91 · Dec 19, 2020

Typhon said:
First it's, "almost all of the top 100 PS4 games will work" ended up being 99%. We were also told that games would perform identical instead of being enhanced, when turned out to not to be true at all, many games do perform better on the new hardware. Why didn't Sony come out and say what they really had?

They even added games since day 1. Medievil did not work day 1 few weeks later it does.

SomaXD · Dec 19, 2020

I dunno if they undersold... i mean i pretty much got a launch ps5 because i didnt have a ps4 pro. Base ps4 and it was loud. One of the biggest reasons for me buying a ps5 was to play my ps4 collection with better performance/4k 60fps whatever.... quietly... lol.

leder · Dec 19, 2020

Yeah I don't think they ever told me that my uncapped ps4 games would run at higher fps on ps5. Like MHW runs way better, and AFAIK got no ps5 patch. They really made it sound like games that weren't specifically patched would run like they do on ps4pro.

As to why, probably because it's impossible to actually test every game thoroughly again on ps5s, and they wanted to be cautious.

Deleted member 51539 · Dec 19, 2020

PenultimateFantasy said:
Why doesn't the PS5 run PS1 and PS2 games ?

It's BC is not as wide ranging ad the Xbox so they probably bavky don't want to draw comparisons

Why would anyone play these?

reKon · Dec 19, 2020

pg2g said:
Everyone, including media, were suprised by how well it worked. They definitely undersold it.

Because most people were being stupid and it's their fault. I will proudly not include people in that group. This was more of a common sense exercise.

Charsace · Dec 19, 2020

They weren't going to push it when xbox has bc for games going back to the original xbox

Deleted member 12352 · Dec 19, 2020

Ah, see... the problem there isn't so much that Sony "undersold" as you're thinking some of the misinformation and bullshit about it that was knowingly spread by system warriors was actual stuff Sony had said.

It's an easy mistake to make I guess with how agressively stuff like the "less than a hundred PS4 games" bullshit was being pushed on here and elsewhere earlier in the year.

PenultimateFantasy · Dec 19, 2020

Zehzin said:
Why would anyone play these?

He does have a cast iron argument

Frag Waffles · Dec 19, 2020

shadowsdarknes said:
Prior to launch we were told what games will work and which ones won't.

They said our saves can transfer over and how to do it.

Sony said games may benefit from increased frame rates and that's true.

Consumers had everything they needed prior to launch.

I recall the statements because I followed it closely. The issue is that Sony did not explain to me or demonstrate to me how my library was to benefit by moving to PS5. It wasn't good enough for me and many others, hence why this thread exists.

Prototype Viktor · Dec 19, 2020

Frag Waffles said:
I recall the statements because I followed it closely. The issue is that Sony did not explain to me or demonstrate to me how my library was to benefit by moving to PS5. It wasn't good enough for me and many others, hence why this thread exists.

Wtf you wanted them to tell you. What a vast numbers of games did in detail when that wasn't going to be possible not even remotely pre or post coco v

III-V · Dec 19, 2020

First, the communication wasn't great, but if you close listened to what MC said, it was evident BC was fundamental in the hardware by design. It was always meant to work very well.

Aesthet1c · Dec 19, 2020

I've been playing Monster Hunter World on it and it looks stunning in 4k and runs at 60 fps still. The backwards compatibility is pretty great.

Prototype Viktor · Dec 20, 2020

spman2099 said:
A lot of people will say that it was always clear, but the truth is that the messaging was anything but. The optimistic interpretation definitely ended up being the end result, but their messaging on this topic was genuinely abysmal. Why weren't they clearer? Could be a number of things. Maybe they weren't a hundred percent sure they were going to be able to deliver the ideal scenario, so they wanted to temper expectations. Or maybe it was just clumsy speech writing. It is impossible to say.

There's no maybe. They knew 100% what they could say it would do which is why they said it that way. Legally they were vague, actually they just told you what would and did happen

tzare · Dec 20, 2020

They didn't under sell it. They just announced it would be there. A ton of people including media outlets, didn't really believe them, with lots of concerns and comparisons with MS that likes to overhype their features, and here we are, it is great.

IOTS · Dec 20, 2020

I think the opposite is closer to the truth. Sony simply did not oversell.

Many people are used for companies to beat their chest and overpromise, so when a company actually sets realistic expectations and tries to be transparent they will be seen as odd. "Arrogant Sony" is meme that wont die but people that paid attention can actually see that Sony has been for the most part very careful not to overpromise since the PS3 era and because they got sued for bunch of small things over the years. Even the DualSense which was talked about a lot more by Sony was not really oversold.

In a way its detrimental to Sony because some people take their humble approach as a sign of weakness or that they have no confidence in their product. This can result in a bunch of FUD that we have seen prior of the launch.

Vashetti · Dec 20, 2020

PenultimateFantasy said:
Why doesn't the PS5 run PS1 and PS2 games ?

It's BC is not as wide ranging ad the Xbox so they probably bavky don't want to draw comparisons

It can, you can buy PS2 Classics on the Store.

Ocarina_117 · Dec 20, 2020

It's annoying to me I need to go some roundabout way to play The Last Guardian at 60fps.

Having to keep the console offline while the game is installed? It's not great.

Weltall Zero · Dec 20, 2020

They didn't downplay shit, people just can't read. To quote myself from back then (March):

Weltall Zero said:
Literally zero of the sentences support this and all of them support the opposite. I know gamer penchant for drama and doomsday scenarios but this has truly reached absurd levels of conspiracy theorycrafting.

Weltall Zero said:
It boggles the mind that "we tested 100 and they all work" turned to "only 100 games work" in people's mind. It's like the opposite of jimcarrey_soyouresayingtheresachance.gif.

The worst part was seeing people running with this interpretation and everyone else reading them in turn and adopting the same reading. It's some serious Emperor's New Clothes effect.

spman2099 · Dec 20, 2020

Prototype Viktor said:
There's no maybe. They knew 100% what they could say it would do which is why they said it that way. Legally they were vague, actually they just told you what would and did happen

They could have been substantially clearer. *shrug*

Mafro · Dec 20, 2020

iirc they basically said exactly what the BC would do back in that pseudo-GDC conference but then there was all the FUD about it here and elsewhere due to what Microsoft were showing off.

tzare · Dec 20, 2020

Weltall Zero said:
They didn't downplay shit, people just can't read. To quote myself from back then (March):

So true

erlim · Dec 20, 2020

Hard to toot toot your horn when your main competitor does it better on all fronts. Nevertheless, it's fortunate they have PS4 compatibility at all.

shadowsdarknes · Dec 20, 2020

Ocarina_117 said:
It's annoying to me I need to go some roundabout way to play The Last Guardian at 60fps.

Having to keep the console offline while the game is installed? It's not great.

That's the fault of the game implementing a frame cap, though.

That's not a knock on the backwards compatibility. That's a knock against the developers for not patching the game for PS5.

But that same result would exist on Xbox without a patch.

Jade1962 · Dec 20, 2020

It's pretty amazing to see that those of us who knew this is how BC would work right after the GDC are still having to explain the same things nine months later. I'm not an engineer or a english major but it was all layed out in Mark Cerny's talk. From the very beginning I felt people had to be going out of there way to not understand. My belief was validated when they "clarified" that the majority of the PS4 library would work on PS5 and the "confused' posters just switched to speculating why Sony didn't say at launch.

Prototype Viktor · Dec 20, 2020

spman2099 said:
They could have been substantially clearer. *shrug*

what for, if what they said was true saying more just leads to people doing what they did anyway, try and make it sound more confusing

spman2099 · Dec 20, 2020

Prototype Viktor said:
what for, if what they said was true saying more just leads to people doing what they did anyway, try and make it sound more confusing

They could have said far less, but with greater clarity. The way they presented the information about backward compatibility created more confusion than was necessary.

Vilam · Dec 20, 2020

They didn't undersell it, people just freaked out over imaginary bs they read into Son'y statements about it.

dep9000 · Dec 20, 2020

blastprocessor said:
BC could be much better!

Frame doubling, higher resolutions, higher Anisotropic filtering, Sony need to look into this ASAP.

If Microsoft can do it so can Sony.

What you got from Sony was the bare minimum.

That's not where Sony's priorities are so they won't do that. MS has been killing it in this department, but they've been doing it for years and have a dedicated team. I don't see Sony spending money to do the same.

NekoNeko · Dec 20, 2020

Sony doesn't believe it's something a lot of people will care about in 6 months and i think they are right.

Bosch · Dec 20, 2020

blastprocessor said:
BC could be much better!

Frame doubling, higher resolutions, higher Anisotropic filtering, Sony need to look into this ASAP.

If Microsoft can do it so can Sony.

What you got from Sony was the bare minimum.

No they don't. They should put their efforts on new games. BC is already good and do what need to do.

tzare · Dec 20, 2020

erlim said:
Hard to toot toot your horn when your main competitor does it better on all fronts. Nevertheless, it's fortunate they have PS4 compatibility at all.

That seems the same exaggerating take we have had for months. MS is more complete, but for previous generation ps4/one it is about the same. And it is not 'fortunate'. Sony worked hard at hardware level to ensure they got it right, and with boosts in some games, just like MS did.

Bosch said:
No they don't. They should put their efforts on new games. BC is already good and do what need to do.

Exactly. I'd rather have new games, that a few with 120 modes only a tiny fraction of people will enjoy

Deleted member 51539 · Dec 20, 2020

Vashetti said:
It can, you can buy PS2 Classics on the Store.

No. You can buy "PS2 on PS4" games. PS2 Classics are stuck on PS3.

Why did Sony undersell PS5 backward compatiblity?

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