why is “backwards incompatibility” a problem on consoles and not on pc when they’re basically just the same electronic parts (cpu, gpu, ram)
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Windows PCs have been based on the same basic software for decades, Microsoft Disc Operating System, or MS-DOS. Even after moving fully to the Windows GUI systems of today, DOS has operated in the background and is still accessible via Console programs.
Everything from the file systems to the file types are just additions to the old system. Really old programs don’t work as well without tweaking, but that is just a matter of slowing the machine down to work with older clock speeds.
Consoles, on the other hand, are rebuilt from the ground up, usually. Xbox (not surprisingly a Microsoft product) built the new software and hardware close enough that the new consoles play old games. The Nintendo Wii and Playstations 2 both had hardware designed to play Gamecube and PS1 games, respectively.
But the architecture of a PS5 is so wildly different from the PS3 that the only way to allow for backwards compatibility is through Streaming. It would be like trying to install a Mac game onto a Windows PC. It just doesn’t work.
Old console games were often coded with a ton of shortcuts to take advantage of the very specific hardware setup that the console was guaranteed to have.
You don’t have to worry about random differences in processor clock speed or RAM arrangements or sound card oddness – they’re all exactly the same.
If you try to run that software on anything else, it breaks in all sorts of weird ways.
That means you need a layer of software called an “emulator” to pretend to be the old hardware, and this can be difficult and resource intensive.
TLDR, money.
Some games from 1998. Try running most on current hardware and there are A LOT of issues, most will crash without tinkering or patches.
Windows has “emulators” for older software so it can still run, because the issue is bigger then games, and there’s demand for older software in general to be usable on currnt windows. If it wasn’t for these emulators, nothing beyond 10-15 years ago would run as the majority of system architecture went from 32bit to 64bit. (And 16 bit before that)
Consoles tend to be an entirely new operating system, and backwards compatibility isn’t a priority, as there’s basically no benifits to the manufacturer to add support.
Backwards compatibility could be implemented, but it would bring up a lot of issues, games wouldn’t run and there’s nothing you could tinker with to get it running, people would whinge that it never works, developer’s would need to spend time patching old things instead of fixing current issues.
Hardware is different from old consoles and in most cases not available nor compatible with old game media. This results in a form of emulation needing occur to play the old games.
Electronic components have evolved rapidly over the last 20 years, resulting in old stuff getting replaced. Hardware is not just some sort of magical Lego block you can toss together and have it function like somthing else. (Not a suitable ELi5 topic imo)
On a PC we have access to niche third party input methods and data replay methods making emulation of hardware a breeze.
For a console it’s all proprietary hardware and software, so the companies who make modern console either just can’t justify increase costs or size by adding old hardware into them. As far as let’s say CD based game media they could read the data then emulate the old hardware to play the games using the original media. Essentially it’s cheaper for them to just port that all over via software so it functions similar to the wii-u or switches virtual consoles as an example.
TLDR: it’s niche and costs more/takes up more space/ old hardware isn’t available, so console creators just don’t do it.
How are you going to run a game on CD/DVD (or *gasp* floppy disks) on the average modern computer? Also, if you *have* a drive that can read the media, a large proportion of games from 1998 *won’t* work on your modern machine without *a lot* of tinkering, if it will work at all.
Bacisay the same it not enough. For software to work it needs to be functionally the same in both hardware and software. It if is not you need to write software for that.
Backward compatibility is not something that game console manufacturers think it a high priority because the get money from selling new consoles and new games.
For PC most computers are not sold for games but to do other tasks. A large part of the market is companies. In a company setting you like to run the same software on older and newer computers. The software can often be something written especially for them so cost a lot of money to port. It can also be software by companies that are no longer in cuisines, so you can get a new version even if you like. For corporate use, backward compatibility is very important and the maker of the OS and hardware know this.
For PC the make of the OS and hardware do not get money for newly sold software that other companies make. Consoles, on the other hand, require licenses to publish games on them and the console makes get money for each sold game. So the incentive you have are quite different.
A pickup truck from 1998 can still carry a large load today, but if you need to transfer a large load on a motorcycle, things will be a great deal more difficult. PC’s were intended to be general duty workhorses, like a pickup truck, whereas consoles were optimized for one thing, like a motorcycle is intended to transport one person at a time.
It is not the same basic electronic parts in different generations of consoles. Each generation use a specific model of each component and it might not have anything in common with the previous or next generation. So one console can have a PowerPC processor, the next generation a tailor made special processor, and then they might go for an x86-64 processor next. And next up they might chose an ARM processor or maybe RISC-V. These processors have almost nothing in common except being processors. They work in completely different way so they can not run each others code.
Meanwhile PCs do not have generations. Each new component that is launched by any of the manufacturers have to be compatible with any of the components made by different manufacturers in the past five or so years, and software written for PCs ten years ago. So there is no opportunity to do anything revolutionary differently. Any new innovation needs to be backwards compatible with everything else. And this does mean that by accident things happens to backwards compatible with programs written 30 years ago.
The only similarities in the PC market to what is going on in the console market is the Apple PCs. These are made by one single company and they can therefore end up pushing for revolutionary changes in the technology. They did this when they changed from PowerPC to x86 and then again recently when they switched to ARM. But it should be mentioned that in doing so they made a huge effort on the software side to get most existing software compatible with the new technology.
Windows machines have followed a single common processor architecture since the early 80s. It’s been extended multiple times, but it’s fundamentally the same architecture from back then. This means that fundamentally, a modern computer can still understand the instructions of ancient programs.
Consoles usually changed the architecture of the processor and graphics every generation. So the new console literally wouldn’t know what to do with the code written for the old console. To get an old game to work, it would have to be rewritten completely, as emulation required too much power.
The two most recent console generations (PS4/5, Xbox One/Series) share the x86 architecture with PC, which means there is (comparatively) little work to make a game which works on an Xbox One, an Xbox Series, a PC, a PS4, and a PS5. In fact, both Sony and Microsoft say that their PS4/XBO libraries work on the newest machines.
The new computers are all capable of running the games if there was software to do it. Companies just don’t want to spend money on that software.
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