How important is backwards compatibility?

I personally like having it but it's not a deal breaker.  I've learned to keep all my old games because at some point later on in life I might want to play them.  Being able to cut back on holding onto multiple consoles would've been nice, but what're you going to do?

It's not ridiculously important to me for retail games, but I like it because it provides me with backups, and it saves space. Now when it comes to say XBL titles, the lack of backwards compatibility for that pisses me off.

Renegade_Fury

What!?! XBLA titles aren't BC?  I have a lot of XBLA titles :( this is highly annoying if true (first time I've heard of this)

i think its pretty important. As much as I want to play the I buy a new console for new games is a total shit excuse. Software really needs to start being system agnostic and have more of a software platform it works on.

I have a ps2 but have not taken it out of the box in years, i even have games on it that I wouldn't mind playing but due to the hassle of finding a place for it and hooking it up, plus all the new games I can get, its really a waste.

On PC its become an incredibly awesome luxury. I buy a laptop, I have 200 games for it. I buy a new desktop I have 200 games for it. Yes quite a few of them are older but being able to just want to pick up and play something I haven't in a while, and it is conveniantly there on a one click download basically is awesome. Also with digital becoming more prevalent I think its even more important to have your digital purchases stay with you.

For instance I own reach/fable/dead space and tons of other games on xbox 360. They are only available to play on xbox. Even though its the same **** market place I cannot play those games on PC even if they are compatible, I need to repurchase each game from M$ if I want that to happen. PC doesn't matter at all. I get a new pc, all my software is available depending on the OS.

having no backwards compatibility is really a killer for me. Especially when i really enjoy digital purchases more than disc based purchases. In this day in age I'd rather not have all my software tied to a device that won't be in production years to come. If it breaks, I lose everything. My pc breaks... I buy a new one thats 10x more powerful and I have eerything at my finger tips still.

It's a fantastic bonus, but in the case of the Wii U it really shouldn't have been there.  But it's still just that, a bonus.  Nothing needs to have it, that's why you buy a new console, to play new games.  Keep your old console, it's not going anywhere.

It was a bonehead move for MS to move away from x86 in the first place with xbox 360, but they wanted to combat the cell.  Even they thought the cell would be a huge deal and they didn't want such a huge gap in CPU power, but it turns out as we all know that was unfounded... If they had just stuck with x86 Xbox one might be BC with 2 generations.  Man, that would be something...

Nintendo found the right way to make BC affordable and energy friendly, that is to integrate some of the components of the previous console into the new components, not having to stick the whole chipset in the new console like Sony did with Ps2 and 3.  Who's to say if we ever see any console with BC again though.

[QUOTE="Renegade_Fury"]

It's not ridiculously important to me for retail games, but I like it because it provides me with backups, and it saves space. Now when it comes to say XBL titles, the lack of backwards compatibility for that pisses me off.

littlestreakier

What!?! XBLA titles aren't BC?  I have a lot of XBLA titles :( this is highly annoying if true (first time I've heard of this)

[QUOTE="Renegade_Fury"]

It's not ridiculously important to me for retail games, but I like it because it provides me with backups, and it saves space. Now when it comes to say XBL titles, the lack of backwards compatibility for that pisses me off.

YoshiYogurt