There was that news drop from a few weeks ago about the Nintendo Switch 2 and backwards compatibility, and it got me thinking about BC in general with respect to other consoles. With the next-generation consoles likely dropping in either 2027 or 2028, we're already nearing the halfway point of the Xbox Series X and PS5, and I'm starting to seriously think about my digital gaming library and whether or not I'm going to be able to retain it going forward.
My primary gaming platform is the PS5, so when any multi-platform game comes out, I'll end up getting it on PS5. But I'm starting to question whether this is the best move going forward. There are a lot of third party games coming out that I want to purchase and have in my library for a long time - Baldur's Gate 3 comes out in a few weeks, and it's going to be one of those games like Skyrim that people keep coming back to for a very long time. I've never played Mass Effect, so during the next sale I plan on picking up the Legendary Edition so that I can finally experience and own all three of those games. The Metal Gear Solid Collection is coming out later this year, and even though I've played all of those games numerous times, I'm excited to finally be able to buy them as a collection and play through them again.
So as I build out my library, I realize that I don't want to just buy and play through these games once, but I'm going to want to own them in such a way knowing that I can return to them years down the line if I want to. I'm not buying any of these games to play through once and then forgot about forever, and I don't want them stuck on a console that will eventually be impoissible to purchase new. So when I think about my library in that kind of context, I wonder.....is Playstation the best platform for me to be buying all these third party games?
We know Microsoft's stance on backwards compatibility. It's a given that the next-generation Xbox in 2027/2028 will be able to play all of our Series X|S and Xbox One games, as this is part of Microsoft's big "play anywhere" philosophy. But with Sony....things seem a bit more up in the air. On the one hand, I simply cannot imagine Sony abandoning BC with the PS6, as they would basically be forcing everyone to start over again from scratch after 15 years. Everyone's library that they spent 15 years building would suddenly become locked to the PS5. And with Xbox retaining BC, it would just put Sony in a very bad spot. On the other hand....sometimes Sony just does weird stuff, and their commitment to honoring out current PS4 and PS5 libraries going forward just seems a bit more murky overall.
I don't want to continue to buy third party games on PS5 just so that in a few years when the PS6 drops to be told that all the games I've bought over the past 15 years are now stuck forever on my PS5. I keep going back and forth on "Sony will never abandon BC at this point, it's an industry standard now" versus "Well they might depending on what they do with the PS6" and then sit and struggle with whether I want to buy some of these games on the PS5, or start building out a third party library on Xbox or maybe even Steam.
I would have to think that a PS5 Pro with an RDNA 3 or 4 GPU would increase the likelihood of the PS6 having BC, as that would prove that Sony and AMD can make significant upgrades to the GPU architecture itself while still retaining full compatibility with all of our games.
So what is the general expectation at this point for BC and the PS6? Are most people expecting it to play all of our PS5 and PS4 games?
My primary gaming platform is the PS5, so when any multi-platform game comes out, I'll end up getting it on PS5. But I'm starting to question whether this is the best move going forward. There are a lot of third party games coming out that I want to purchase and have in my library for a long time - Baldur's Gate 3 comes out in a few weeks, and it's going to be one of those games like Skyrim that people keep coming back to for a very long time. I've never played Mass Effect, so during the next sale I plan on picking up the Legendary Edition so that I can finally experience and own all three of those games. The Metal Gear Solid Collection is coming out later this year, and even though I've played all of those games numerous times, I'm excited to finally be able to buy them as a collection and play through them again.
So as I build out my library, I realize that I don't want to just buy and play through these games once, but I'm going to want to own them in such a way knowing that I can return to them years down the line if I want to. I'm not buying any of these games to play through once and then forgot about forever, and I don't want them stuck on a console that will eventually be impoissible to purchase new. So when I think about my library in that kind of context, I wonder.....is Playstation the best platform for me to be buying all these third party games?
We know Microsoft's stance on backwards compatibility. It's a given that the next-generation Xbox in 2027/2028 will be able to play all of our Series X|S and Xbox One games, as this is part of Microsoft's big "play anywhere" philosophy. But with Sony....things seem a bit more up in the air. On the one hand, I simply cannot imagine Sony abandoning BC with the PS6, as they would basically be forcing everyone to start over again from scratch after 15 years. Everyone's library that they spent 15 years building would suddenly become locked to the PS5. And with Xbox retaining BC, it would just put Sony in a very bad spot. On the other hand....sometimes Sony just does weird stuff, and their commitment to honoring out current PS4 and PS5 libraries going forward just seems a bit more murky overall.
I don't want to continue to buy third party games on PS5 just so that in a few years when the PS6 drops to be told that all the games I've bought over the past 15 years are now stuck forever on my PS5. I keep going back and forth on "Sony will never abandon BC at this point, it's an industry standard now" versus "Well they might depending on what they do with the PS6" and then sit and struggle with whether I want to buy some of these games on the PS5, or start building out a third party library on Xbox or maybe even Steam.
I would have to think that a PS5 Pro with an RDNA 3 or 4 GPU would increase the likelihood of the PS6 having BC, as that would prove that Sony and AMD can make significant upgrades to the GPU architecture itself while still retaining full compatibility with all of our games.
So what is the general expectation at this point for BC and the PS6? Are most people expecting it to play all of our PS5 and PS4 games?
