Quote:
Originally Posted by photon
PS4 seems like a huge change from PS3 though, has the PS3 chipset been optimized and cost-reduced to the degree that they could include it in the PS4 like the PS3 had basically a PS2 inside it?
I'm skeptical.
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There is a rumor I read a while back that there will likely be no native hardware or virtualized backwards compatibility specifically because of the cost of doing this. Sony cannot afford to price themselves out by pricing the hardware too hire nor lost money on the hardware in hopes of recovering the loss on software sales. As a matter of fact what I've been reading from some analysts is that neither next gen offering by Sony or MS will likely offer native backwards compatibility. It is not only cost prohibitive, but both attempts on the 360 and PS3 was met with lukewarm success - i.e. alot of titles didn't work.
There is speculation that their purchase of GaiKai, the cloud gaming company, may suggest a means of accessing PS3 content without having to build the cost into the PS4. Not sure how that would work though. For Playstation Store purchases it shouldn't be too difficult to determine that you own a title and allow you to stream the game from their cloud service. I would imagine that if you have the physical disk, you'll be pretty SOL.
The best part of this time in the console life cycle is all the rumor and speculation. Will be very interesting to see what unfolds this year.