eli5 How can PC games from literally 1998 run from the PCs of today but you can’t play older console games from the current consoles?

Question

why is “backwards incompatibility” a problem on consoles and not on pc when they’re basically just the same electronic parts (cpu, gpu, ram)

In: 7

Answer 1

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.